Free to Play

For Kathryn Hahn, Afternoon Delight was a game changer.

In the 2013 film, Hahn ’95 played Rachel, a wife and mother who looks to enliven her marriage by arranging a visit to a strip club with her husband. Rachel forms a bond with one of the dancers, whom she invites to become her young son’s live-in nanny. The film, which exposes painful, even cringe-worthy realities of modern marriage, was described by reviewers as groundbreaking and “meticulously acted.” Hahn’s performance was “disarmingly frank,” one review noted.

Filmed in just 21 days, the indie hit was intensive and immersive for the cast. A single scene could take all day to shoot, as the actors improvised and fed off of one another’s performances. Rehearsals, runthroughs and power naps took place in what Hahn calls a “creative womb,” a rented Southern California bungalow where images and quotes from John Cassavetes — the pioneering independent filmmaker who brought an improvisational, actor-first aesthetic to American cinema — covered the walls.

Hahn drove her own car in the film, and she’d find energy bar wrappers and crushed water bottles in the minivan’s crevices after filming wrapped — reminders of her “work family.”

“I would be driving home so juiced that I just could not wait to get back to work the next day, because I was riding those feelings of discovery,” Hahn says of making Afternoon Delight. “It was that feeling that I’d been looking for since college, the same feeling of play that I had when I was at Northwestern.”

After Hahn’s supporting roles in a series of mid-2000s comedies, Afternoon Delight signaled a shift in her career, leading to edgier, more sensual, more substantial roles and cementing Hahn’s place as an awards circuit mainstay and a sought-after star working across genres and mediums.

Her IMDb page reads like a review of the past two decades of pop culture: Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse. Free Agents. Bad Moms. Transparent. Parks and Recreation. Hahn’s most recent work includes roles in the HBO shows Mrs. Fletcher and I Know This Much Is True, as well as parts in the Disney+ miniseries WandaVision and two Apple TV+ shows: The Shrink Next Door, an upcoming series based on a podcast of the same name, and the animated Central Park.

While under California’s stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hahn recorded voice-over for Paige Hunter, her Central Park character, from inside a closet in her house. “I’m so technically not savvy, but the crew was very patient with me and walked me through every step,” Hahn says of her work-from-home setup.

Hahn is regarded by her former professors and professional colleagues alike as a dedicated artist and a captivating performer. And it’s clear that she’s deeply in love with her work, not the trappings of celebrity but the craft of acting: the deep dives into character, the exploration and messiness each role brings, the dedication to her fellow actors — and the creative magic that results.

EAGER TO ACT

Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Hahn always knew she wanted to be an actor. “There was no other choice,” she says. “I didn’t have stars in my eyes. I just had no other option in my mind.” As a child, Hahn performed in local theater productions at the Cleveland Play House. That experience led to her first television role — on Hickory Hideout, a children’s program featuring puppet animals living in a treehouse — but she had her sights firmly set on theater. When it came time for Hahn to apply to college, Northwestern was a perfect fit.

“I knew that I wanted a liberal arts education,” she says. “It was important to me as an actor to have that foundation.”

Hahn quickly found her Northwestern family, which included Sandler, now her husband, and Jeb Brody ’95, a lifelong friend who is president of production at Amblin Partners, the film and television production company headed by Steven Spielberg. Brody and Hahn now live down the street from each other in Southern California. Even when they were students, Brody knew Hahn had something special.

“There was something about Kathryn’s presence as a performer that was recognizable right away,” says Brody. “She had the kind of performer’s magnetism that you couldn’t miss. You wanted to find out more about her characters — to explore, investigate and understand them.”

Hahn, who worked in the campus prop shop and as a manager at downtown Evanston’s Unicorn Cafe (which closed in September after 29 years), also met Sandler during her first year on campus. Hahn and Sandler began dating in their sophomore year, and they eloped on their 10-year anniversary. They now have two children, Leonard, 14, and Mae, 11.

“It was like you took two of the most creative and talented minds at Northwestern at the time, put them together and shook them around every day,” Brody says of Hahn and Sandler’s relationship. “It was astonishing to be near.”