For the last few months, Angela Goethals, who was Macaulay Culkin’s big sister in Home Alone 34 years ago, has been auditioning for a very significant role in her hometown.
She’ll learn on Tuesday whether she gets the part.
A mother of three, she hopes to bring the skills she’s learned on stage and in the movies to the school committee and school system, helping “our kids to go through this educational journey in our town (Westerly) and come out with a deep understanding of themselves and curiosity about the world, prepared to live a full and beautiful life.”
Angela, a Democrat, is in a six-person race for four school committee positions. She’s a celebrity, who fell in love with the town when her husband, Russell Soder, also an actor and Warwick native, brought her to see the house, located in the shadow of Westerly’s beautiful Wilcox Park and Granite Theater. They’ve been living in Westerly for some seven years.
She and her husband have been away from acting for a few years, concentrating on bringing up their children, Brooklyn, Teagan, and Tristam.
Angela, who says she may return to acting or the theater or film in some capacity in the future, currently has been an audio books narrator.
A Vassar graduate, she was motivated to run for school committee because of “what drives all parents, that we love our kids. We want all the magic, all the depths of academics and opportunity for them…I was curious whether I could add to that conversation in a meaningful way.”
It’s an interesting race, where candidates, no matter what party, bring unique qualities to the conversation. Four of the candidates have developmentally disabled children, one is an author, another a former school superintendent, an accountant, and even a real estate appraiser.
For Angela, she believes the “power of the arts is to teach and instruct. The power of the creative arts in general is to plant these seeds in our kids’ minds … immersive experiences, our intellect is one thing, our hearts are another. I think the arts bring those two together.”
Angela was born and brought up in New York City, the daughter of a single mother. Rosalind, whose career ranged from a psychiatric nurse to teacher. She was a cheerleader at Stuyvesant High School, and at Vassar on the equestrian team. Angela is also the great-great-granddaughter of George Washington Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal.
Introduced to acting by a family friend, her first professional role was as an understudy in an off-Broadway play when she was nine. Her first movie was Rocket Gibaltar, where she played the sister of Culkin’s, something she believes helped her get the role in Home Alone.
She has a long list of credits in theater, film and on television. She’s performed on Broadway and off-Broadway; appeared on television in such shows as Phenom, 24, CSI, Boston Public, Law & Order, and many more; in film, besides Home Loan and Rocket Gibraltrar , Jerry Maguire, V.I Warshawski, Spanglish, and more.
She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, won the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress, and was nominated four times for a Young Artist Award.
For now, however, the role she most covets is that role on the School Committee where she hopes to bring about “positive change for my kids, my friends’ kids and kids in the community.”
This is her second try at winning a spot on a school committee that has often been subjected to contentious efforts by some residents, demanding book bans and railing against an equity audit of the school system.
For her part, she opposes book bans, encourages discussion and understanding.These are positions she’s come to from what she’s learned as one of two daughters of a single mother, living in New York City, acting from the age of 9, and landing the role of Linnie, the older sister, in Home Alone.