•• Virginia Madsen is an Oscar nominee, a longtime working actress, a mother, and the founder of film production company Title IX—great feats on all counts. Madsen has had dozens of roles in her career including Maya in 2004’s Sideways  and Princess Irulan in 1984’s Dune—and is most recently a star of The Hot Flashes (alongside Darryl Hannah, Brooke Shields, and Wanda Sykes), a new film released July 12 from director Susan Seidelman about a group of misfit middle-aged women who form a basketball team to raise money for breast cancer prevention.

– First of all, is Wanda Sykes as hilarious as she seems?
Yes. Wanda is one of the best women I’ve ever met. She’s so much fun. She’s got such a strong spirit, and she’s incredibly generous. People would jump out of their cars and leave their car running in the street to come over to hug her. And she always says hello to people and stops and takes a picture. She didn’t care at all, she just loved it.

-Was your character in The Hot Flashes a fun departure from your dramatic roles?
I’ve been experimenting with comedy over the last few years and it’s something that I’m learning about. This was one of the first times that I got to be funny and not just the “straight man,” like Maya in Sideways. So it was a lot of fun for me to work with the physical comedy and what I got to do with my look. I really enjoyed it. Continue Reading  

•• Witches of East End has cast its spell on Virginia Madsen, tapping the Oscar-nominated Sideways actress for a multi-episode arc.

The new Lifetime drama which received a 10-episode order in January, centers on Joanna Beauchamp (Julia Ormond) and her two adult daughters Freya (American Horror Story‘s Jenna Dewan-Tatum) and Ingrid (American Dreams’ Rachel Boston), both of whom unknowingly are their family’s next generation of witches, , who lead seemingly quiet, uneventful modern day lives in Long Island’s secluded seaside town of North Hampton. When one of the daughters becomes engaged to a young, wealthy newcomer, a series of events forces her mother to admit to her daughters they are, in fact, powerful and immortal witches.

Virginia Madsen will play Penelope Gardiner, the mother of Freya’s fiance Dash (Eric Winter). The cast also includes Mädchen Amick as Joanna’s sister Wendy and Jason George as Ingrid’s beau. Maggie Friedman, who helmed ABC’s similarly-themed Eastwick, will serve as showrunner.

•• William H. Macy, Virginia Madsen, Peter Facinelli and Andrew J West have come aboard the dramedy Walter, about a young man who believes that he is actually the son of God. As such, the eternal destiny of everyone he encounters is his responsibility which is a lot to manage along with his job at a movie theater, his loving but neurotic mother and his growing but unspoken affection for his co-worker. Life becomes even more complicated when a mysterious figure appears who forces Walter to examine the true meaning of life.

Neve Campbell, Leven Rambin and Milo Ventimiglia co-star in the pic, which has started shooting in Indiana and LA and is based on a short story written by Paul Schoulberg, who also wrote the screenplay. West plays Walter as he did in the 2010 short film of the same name. McG protege Anna Mastro is making her feature directing debut on the feature version, which is being produced by Zero Gravity’s Mark Holder and Christine Holder along with Brendan Patrick Hill, Ryan Harris and Benito Mueller.