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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Amy Madigan to this program. The Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress has enjoyed a very successful career in film and on television. Her latest role is in the new movie, "Gone, Baby, Gone," which is directed by Ben Affleck, his directorial debut. Also appearing in the film is a guy she knows fairly well, a guy named Ed Harris - they're married. The movie opens around the country this weekend. Here now, a scene from "Gone, Baby, Gone."

[Clip]

Tavis: What'd you think of Ed's goatee in this movie?

Amy Madigan: Oh, I think it looks hot. (Laughter)

Tavis: When I saw him come on the scene, I was, like, nice goatee, Ed.

Madigan: Yeah.

Tavis: I like that.

Madigan: You like that, do you?

Tavis: I liked it.

Madigan: Yeah.

Tavis: How is he, by the way?

Madigan: He's wonderful. He's directing a film right now in New Mexico called "Appaloosa" with - and he's also acting in it - with Viggo Mortensen. He's playing his part in that, and Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons, and they're just riding horses, and they have guns, and it's a very cool story, based on a Robert Parker novel, as a matter of fact.

Tavis: After 23 years of marriage, (unintelligible)?

Madigan: Twenty-four.

Tavis: Twenty-four years - you guys are used to being apart, I guess, for extensive time?

Madigan: Yeah, but I still don't like it. We're just revisiting - we're lucky because when we're together we really have all that time, but it's still difficult.

Tavis: I know you've, I'm sure, told this story many, many times about how the two of you got together and got married, but for those who have not heard the story, it is the most unconventional dating - well, I'll let you tell the story about how you and Ed Harris actually hooked up.

Madigan: Well. (Laughter) Hooked up can mean a lot of things, depending on what neighborhood you happen to be from.

Tavis: Okay, got married, how about that, how about that?

Madigan: Ed and I had met prior to working on a great film called "Places in the Heart," that Mr. Robert Benton wrote and directed, and we were shooting in Waxahachie, Texas, with our dog. And we had taken out a marriage license, because we kind of talked about it, and we were just having breakfast one morning and he said, "Well, you want to get married today?"

So I - okay. We don't have to go to work till later. So we went to the justice of the peace, Reverend Billy Ray Moon, who was a great guy, and our dog was our witness, and took about five minutes. And then after we finished, we walked outside and we had our truck, and Ed sat down and went like this. (Laughter) And I said, "Babe, what's up?" Is everything all right? And he just said, "Just a little dizzy." And he got whiter than I did, all right? But anyways, 24 years later, so it was a good move.

Tavis: That's amazing.

Madigan: Yeah, it was fun. And then we went back to the set and worked. And we were, like, ooh, we've got a secret. So it was fun. And we basically had some beers and played pool.

Tavis: That was your honeymoon.

Madigan: Yeah.

Tavis: At a pool hall somewhere.

Madigan: Yeah. (Laughs)

Tavis: Wow.

Madigan: Well, and Waxahachie is kind of a small place, so there's not a lot.

Tavis: So "Gone, Baby, Gone," I saw it a couple days ago.

Madigan: Yeah, what'd you think?

Tavis: I thought it was good. It was good. It had a lot of twists and turns.

Madigan: Yes, and does.

Tavis: Holly and I - my producer and I were talking, I thought there were two times, at least two times at the end of the movie where I thought it was over. At one point, I got up to go down into the kitchen to get a sandwich.

Madigan: Right.

Tavis: And came back, and it was still on.

Madigan: Then come back.

Tavis: I had to rewind it, because I thought it was over with. So it had a lot of twists and turns, but I thought Mr. Affleck did a good job for his directorial debut.

Madigan: Yes, I thought he did a wonderful job. He knows Boston so well. He's very tight there; he's tight with his whole family. And the people in the community there, we just went in and shot, and we used so many people that really lived there and worked there, and they were fantastic. Ben really, really worked hard on it, because he wrote the script with another gentleman.

I'm a big Dennis LaHayne fan, who wrote the novel, who also wrote "Mystic River." So I thought he really pulled it off. It's a tough one, though; it's not a real cheery film, but.

Tavis: You want to take a stab at describing it and the character that you play in it?

Madigan: I play Bea, who is the aunt to a little girl who is kidnapped. And I am so upset and so wired about the whole thing that I call two private detectives, played by Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, to come and help the police augment the case and find this little girl. I want this little girl found.

Tavis: I personally have never had the experience - I had a friend of mine once whose niece was missing.

Madigan: I can't even imagine (unintelligible) that.

Tavis: I was about to ask you, have you ever?

Madigan: No. We have a daughter, and I just really can't - you always read these stories and realize how many people do get through it. I don't know if you get over it, but that would just be, I think, the worst nightmare, which is why my character is so intense. And I basically have to convince our heroes to take the case on.

Tavis: So I assume by now, I was laughing when we played that clip at the top of the conversation, I was saying to Amy off camera, you can't yell at your wife that way, Ed Harris. (Laughter) But I assume the two of you have worked together so much now, and you guys have a pretty good rhythm when you're on camera?

Madigan: Yeah, I really like working with Ed. I think it's the type of thing when you're so close with someone, it's going to work well or it's really going to be a disaster. But we met doing theater in Los Angeles together a million years ago, and we've been able to work together a few times. I look forward to working with him again, yeah.

Tavis: Before you got into acting, you were into music - I read you were into music?

Madigan: Yeah, I played music for -

Tavis: Traveled for, like, years.

Madigan: And I've played music for - I've played -

Tavis: Tell me about your music career.

Madigan: Well, I played joints and clubs and colleges, and just traveled around and it was fantastic.

Tavis: Played the instrument?

Madigan: I played second keyboards - I wasn't the main piano player - and all sorts of weird hand percussion. Glockenspiel.

Tavis: Wow. (Laughter)

Madigan: I studied piano for a long time growing up, and I was the singer in a band with a guy. We used to do rhythm and blues music. I'm from Chicago, so blues and rhythm and blues was a big, big - still is a big influence on me. And we do very strange, eclectic kind of almost performance art stuff, too, and it was a ball. I loved it, and it's just so immediate and visceral, and I just kind of made a move to try the acting game out.

Tavis: That was easy for you to do like this. You went from I just made a move to go from music to acting a lot easier - this is a lot easier to do than it is to actually do. How did you make that switch, and what brought that on?

Madigan: A very good friend of mine at the time who was a piano player - and I'd kind of felt like I was beating my head against the wall in music - suggested that I kind of try my hand at acting. Because I had done it in high school and I'd done it in college and I enjoyed it very much, and I would play a lot of characters on stage through the music.

And I just kind of made a right turn. But that was after many, many years of playing six nights a week, so you'd be up in front of people and you would be working it out every night. So for me to make the move perhaps was a little easier than some other people, because I didn't feel so intimidated about performing or auditioning for people.

Tavis: So compare and contrast for me the music business and -

Madigan: Well, the music business is just -

Tavis: - and Hollywood.

Madigan: Well, I don't know about Hollywood, but (laughter) the music business is just - I shouldn't talk about the business, because it's a very different animal right now, as we read about every day with downloading music and how that's changed. But just playing music, it's so visceral, it's so immediate, you're just in that moment.

I've done live theater, of course, and that's so exciting, but I don't know, there's just something about music that you can just translate in three minutes to somebody, like, their whole life. So I just loved it. But also, all that craft and all the time I spent woodshedding really helped me to start in Los Angeles in theater and actually to get a job in front of a camera, which I had no idea how you did that.

And the first job I got was a television show, and the director's going, "Cut, cut." And I was like, “Well, I thought I was great.” (Laughter) And there was a big, yellow X on the ground, and that was my mark, and I was supposed to be over there and I was basically where you were. And I said, “Oh.” So I had no idea. But those are the things I learned quickly, but really, the immediacy of that, too, was a lot of fun for me, so I just kind of took to it.

Tavis: I'd be lying if I said I knew by heart, of course, by memory every role you've ever done, but I'm trying to remember whether or not you've been able to cross the two in an acting role, where you bring your music.

Madigan: I would love to do that. I've been able to do it on stage, but I haven't been able to really do it in a film. And I think it's tough to take live music and really, let's say contemporary music, rock and roll music, and put it in a film and have it be live and it work. So maybe that's something in the future that could be out there. I would love to do it. But I've been able to do it on stage, which has been really fun.

Tavis: Now you're from Chicago.

Madigan: Yes, I am. Say it with reverence, and say it with pride, Chicago's great South Side.

Tavis: There you - oh, South Side, too?

Madigan: Yeah, South Side, American league, Sox.

Tavis: Wow.

Madigan: I still like the Cubbies, even though they were swept.

Tavis: So you're from a very political - well, first of all, from Chicago, a very political town.

Madigan: Yes, and it still is.

Tavis: But you happen to be very a very political family. Your father?

Madigan: My father, who was - we're actually right now preparing for his 90th birthday party.

Tavis: Wow.

Madigan: Yeah.

Tavis: That's cool.

Madigan: Yeah, as a young man he worked on Capitol Hill, worked for "Face the Nation" and a lot of those early news programs, and he was the editor of "Chicago American" and was the news analyst and political analyst for WBBM in Chicago. So I grew up with a lot of information, a lot of information, a lot of news, a lot of television sets on simultaneously, which I think you bring to yourself or else you kind of run away from it. But I still love news to this day, very much so. And your program, as a matter of fact, because you're really kind of -

Tavis: No, I appreciate that.

Madigan: - get a lot of people on the program that I think have a different forum to speak as opposed to a four-minute clip on a little chatty talk show, or something.

Tavis: Well, I appreciate that. Speaking of which - today's Tuesday? Speaking of which, Thursday night, Barack Obama.

Madigan: Yes.

Tavis: So from Chicago, you got Hillary, and you got Barack.

Madigan: Yeah, right. (Laughs) I know it.

Tavis: So what's your dad saying now?

Madigan: I don't know what my dad's saying on that. I kind of have to talk to him about what he's going to do for that. I know personally the people that I've spoken to from Chicago, they're quite split. I think they're both really unbelievable candidates, and Hillary, of course, having all the background that she has. To think that we have a Black man and a woman, it's just kind of an unbelievable situation.

So I don't know, I think people are - a lot of times, I don't think people know what they're going to do till they actually get in there, and who they're going to pull that lever for. I know the mailings are going out, I know that you've done some debates. I think people are a little tired at this point, so I'll be really interested to see how it kind of shakes out in the next eight months.

Tavis: Well, Chicago wins either way.

Madigan: Yeah. (Laughter) That's true.

Tavis: The movie is "Gone, Baby, Gone," it is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, stars one Amy Madigan, her husband, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman -

Madigan: Morgan Freeman.

Tavis: Casey - it's a wonderful cast.

Madigan: Yeah, it really is a great cast, isn't it? And great people, right from the streets in Boston, who really make the movie alive, I think.

Tavis: Well, so do you. Amy, nice to have you here.

Madigan: Oh, thank you so much.

Tavis: My best to Ed.

Madigan: Okay.

Tavis: Good to see you.

Madigan: All right.

Tavis: That's our show tonight.