When Cathy
DeBuono was playing middle blocker at the University of
Kentucky, volleyball was her life. “I hardly remember classes,
just volleyball,” says DeBuono. She made the big jump from
Yonkers, N.Y. to Lexington, Kent., when UK offered her a
scholarship, one of a handful of colleges interested in DeBuono.
At the time,
Kentucky was a Top 5 NCAA Division I school in the sport, and
had the position she wanted to play.
“I played
middle blocker. I’m 6-feet tall – and in the world of
Division I volleyball, I’m on the small side,” said DeBuono, who
also excelled in fast-pitch softball and basketball in high
school.
“I had a big jump at the time, and I was kind of scrappy and
fast,” said DeBuono.
DeBuono also had two powerhouse coaches at UK, including Kathy
DeBoer, who is now the Executive Director of the American
Volleyball Coaches Assn. The assistant coach at the time was
Mary Wise, who is now well known in the volleyball world as head
coach at the University of Florida.
“I just really, really had a lot of respect for DeBoer, and I
really looked up to her. I just thought she was an amazing
authority figure, and that’s how I ended up in Lexington,” said
DeBuono of her former coach.
During her time in the off-season, she decided to check out
acting. Outside of a part in "Fiddler on the Roof" in elementary
school, she hadn’t done any acting.
“I always knew at some point old age or injury would end
athletics for me,” she said.
It turns out the actress Ashley Judd, who grew up in Kentucky,
was attending UK at the same time.
“During the off time, I auditioned for one of the theater
department’s student directed plays. I had no idea who she was.
She struck me as this really intelligent, quirky girl right
away,” said DeBuono, who talked about clowning around with Judd,
who she knew as a student, but not in terms of her family’s
fame. “She used to climb on my back and have me carry her, and
point out where she wanted me to go.”
Judd, whose own acting career launched with "Ruby in Paradise,"
is a part of the famous Judd family, with mom Naomi Judd and
sister Wynonna Judd one of the most well-known duets in the
country music scene.
Judd is also well known in Lexington for being a huge UK
basketball fan – she has written an article about her love for
the team in a Kentucky paper, and has posed wearing nothing but
a hockey jersey in promotional posters for the hockey team.
Judd pulled DeBuono aside at a going away party for Judd, who
had decided to head to the Peace Corps. “She was really
supportive, and took me aside and told me she felt I should go
into acting. The next time I heard from her, she hadn’t gone
into the Peace Corp. She called me in N.Y., and invited me to
the premier of 'Ruby in Paradise.' ”
While DeBuono considers herself an out actress now, she wasn’t
out until after college. She knew another player on the team
that was gay, but was never officially out to her team.
“I pretty much came out when I discovered that was right for me.
I fell in love at 21. We found each other in a straight world.
We kept it between us in our own little world for about six
months. Then I came out to my family. My sisters were great, my
dad was great, and my mom had a hard time with it for a good
handful of years, but she is great now.
"She is all on board with it. She had a learning curve, like all
of us. My parents grew up in the 1950s, and they knew nothing
about gay people and gay culture, and they knew nothing about
what to expect, and what that meant.
"My mom has come a long way. I’m so proud of her. I had to tell
her a few years ago to stop apologizing. She deserved her
learning curve. Now she’s great – she refers to my girlfriend as
her daughter-in-law.”
DeBuono’s mom went with her to the screening of one her first
movies, the Lee Friedlander film, "Out at the Wedding." The
movie was shown at OutFest, a gay and lesbian film festival held
in Los Angeles.
DeBuono’s mom also went with her to the film’s after party at
the nightclub Eleven, a popular spot for parties held for the
opening of gay films in Los Angeles.
“It was her first time ever in a gay bar. We had to laugh about
it. We had a little cheer about it. I asked her, ‘Mom, did you
ever think you would be in a gay bar with me?’ ”
“No!” she told her daughter.
“Cheers!” Cathy said back.
Kathy Hardigan, DeBuono’s first volleyball coach and a friend
and mentor since DeBuono was 15 – was at the film opening as
well. DeBuono’s credits Hardigan with her success in the
volleyball world.
DeBuono, who was at UK from 1988 to 1991, broke records in block
solos, block assists, and attack percentages during her playing
days. She is still ranked in the Top 10 in those categories.
She won gold in the 1991 and 1992 U.S. Olympic Festivals, a
series of competitions put together by the U.S. Olympic
Committee that divided up the country into regions, and pitted
teams against each other in a multi-sport setting that was meant
to better prepare athletes for the Olympic Games.
In her senior year, DeBuono blew out her ACL. She had
reconstructive knee surgery, but her volleyball career was over.
Ready to jump into acting, she went to the American Academy of
Dramatic Arts and finished up in 1994. She then headed to Los
Angeles, and landed her first acting job with a recurring role
"Chicago Hope," and then on the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"
series, landing a role for three seasons as a double for “Dax”,
played by Terry Farrell, as well as playing an assortment of
Klingons and other aliens.
“I loved that job,” said DeBuono. “You just played in space all
day.”
She even made it to a Star Trek convention. “It is a whole other
alternate and very interesting universe,” said DeBuono. “Those
people are dedicated people. It really impressed me what fans of
the show they are to know those details.”
As far as being out on set, that was never an issue. “People get
to know you and understand that your partner is a woman. I’m
6-feet tall, and Italian, and gay, and you learn these things
about me as you get to know me.”
DeBuono then took a break from acting, and got her masters
degree in clinical psychology, and began building her practice
in Los Angeles. That’s when she got the call from Friedlander,
who remembered DeBuono from a series of shorts she had done
years ago for the gay and lesbian film circuit.
JD Disalvatore, who produced the shots, took straight movies and
remade them with a lesbian cast. Disalvatore went on to produce
the award-winning "Shelter," a gay surfing movie.
DeBuono was supposed to act in a short directed by Friedlander
that recreated the Rocky movie with her as a lesbian Rocky.
“When I came back into acting to do 'Out at the Wedding,' I
realized that there is a whole gay entertainment industry that
exists that didn’t exist four or five years ago,” said DeBuono.
In the last few years, two networks dedicated to gay programming
have launched – the Here! Network, based in Los Angeles, and
LOGO, based in New York.
The Rocky movie was never shot, but she and Friedlander stayed
in touch, which lead to DeBuono being cast as one of the main
characters in "Out at the Wedding."
In the series of shorts that were shot, you notice that DeBuono,
who has dark hair down past her shoulders, has really short hair
in a couple of the films.
“I had really long hair most of my life, and then in 2000, my
dad got cancer, and lost all of his hair, and so I took a trip
back to New York, and I cut off all my hair as short as I could
without going bald, just to sort of join him,” said DeBuono, who
made her dad laugh when he saw her shorn hair, which she grew
out after he died.
DeBuono has a tattoo on the inside of her right forearm that she
got after her dad died. It’s Sanskrit, and means “Liberated by
faith.”
"Faith is interesting – when you remember it, and you are in the
middle of it – it is really liberating and peaceful – as human
beings, our minds can forget really easily what that feels like.
People ask me what my tattoo means and if I am 'liberated by
faith,' and I have to say, ‘Yes - when I remember to be.’
:That is the constant struggle of being a human being I think –
balancing our minds, and remembering that peaceful place of
faith, whatever that faith is for you," says DeBuono.
Since "Out at the Wedding," DeBuono has a part in the pilot of
the Michelle Paradise show on LOGO, "Exes & Oh's." DeBuono’s
next movie is "Again Comes Lola," co-written by Ellen Seidler, a
writer who has covered sports for ESPN and Logoonline.com, and
Megan Siler.
DeBuono, who continues to balance building her acting career and
her practice as a psychotherapist, lives in West Hollywood with
her girlfriend, one of the board members of the popular lesbian
fundraiser Single De Mayo.
