"Etheline Tenenbaum kept the house and raised the children, and their education was her highest priority."
Another role written with a particular actor in mind was the part of the Tenenbaum family matriarch Etheline. Anderson saw Anjelica Huston as Etheline from the start. 

"Along with being a great actor, she also has a warmth and sophistication and a very interesting background that seemed like something to draw on," Anderson says. "Also, I think she's had experience with people who are like the characters in the film, so she just seemed to fit in. But, mostly, I just wanted to write something specifically for her."

 "I was already a fan of Wes's work because I had seen 'Bottle Rocket," Huston says. "After we had lunch together, I watched 'Rushmore' and really enjoyed it. And then I read the new script. I agreed to do it with very little deliberation. I like the interaction among the people, the fantasy quality and the dark humor. 

"Etheline is very loving toward her children but she is bound to Royal. They're devoted to each other in a way. I think for Etheline, Royal is a necessary heartbreak. So although he drives her mad and she tries to protect the rest of her family from him, she realizes that there is a need in the household for a father. "

As soon as I accepted the role, I started to receive drawings that pertained to my character," Huston continues. "Mostly, she appeared in very small suits with strange hairdos in the drawings. Wes also sent me photographs of his mother, who is called Texas Anderson, an archaeologist, like my character. He even produced his mother's old eyeglasses for the early scenes. I asked him, 'Wes, am I playing your mother? ' I think he was astonished by that idea," she laughs.

Credit: The Royal Tenenbaums press kit

About Anjelica Huston...
This striking, darkhaired actress made an inauspicious film debut in 1969's A Walk With Love and Death directed by her famous father, John Huston, and played in two other films that same year-Sinful Davey (also directed by her dad) and Hamlet-before vanishing from the screen for many years and appearing only sporadically for many years after that. She surprised everybodycritics, audiences, movie-industry typeswith her sly performance in 1985's brilliant black comedy Prizzi's Honor (again, directed by her father), which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Since then she's limned many fine characters in a string of meritorious movies with varying box-office success. She earned additional Academy Award nominations as Ron Silver's long-lost wife in Enemies, A Love Story (1989) and as John Cusack's amoral mom in The Grifters (1990).

Huston was perfectly cast as the sinister but svelte Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values. She teamed up with Jack Nicholson for The Crossing Guard (1995). As if to prove she could play women of a non-exotic nature as well, she starred in the outstanding 1993 miniseries "Family Pictures," following a woman's life over several decades through her relationship with her husband and children. In truth, Huston has little to prove; she has become one of the screen's finest, most original actresses.

Credit: Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia

Filmography

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - Etheline Tenenbaum 
The Man from Elysian Fields (2001) - Jennifer 
Time of our Lives (2000) 
The Golden Bowl (2000) - Fanny Assingham 
Agnes Browne (1999) - Agnes Browne 
Ever After (1998) - Baroness Rodmilla De Ghent 
Phoenix (1998) - Leila 
Buffalo '66 (1998) - Janet 'Jan' Brown 
The Crossing Guard (1995) - Mary 
The Perez Family (1995) - Carmela Perez 
Buffalo Girls (1995) (TV) - Calamity Jane 
Family Pictures (1993) (TV) - Lainey Eberlin 
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) - Marcia Fox 
Addams Family Values (1993) - Morticia Addams 
And the Band Played On (1993) - Dr. Betsy Reisz 
The Addams Family (1991) - Morticia Addams 
The Witches (1990) - Miss Ernst/Grand High Witch 
The Grifters (1990) - Lilly Dillon 
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) - Dolores Paley 
Enemies: A Love Story (1989) - Tamara 
A Handful of Dust (1988) - Mrs. Rattery 
Mr. North (1988) - Persis Bosworth-Tennyson 
The Dead (1987) - Gretta Conroy 
Gardens of Stone (1987) - Samantha Davis 
Good to Go (1986) 
Captain Eo (1986) - The Supreme Leader 
Prizzi's Honor (1985) - Maerose Prizzi 
This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - Polly Deutsch 
Ice Pirates, The (1984) - Maida 
Frances (1982) - Mental Patient 
Rose for Emily (1982) - Miss Emily Grierson 
Postman Always Rings Twice, The (1981) - Madge 
The Last Tycoon (1976) - Edna 
Swashbuckler (1976) - Woman of Dark Visage 
Hamlet (1969) - Court Lady 
A Walk with Love and Death (1969) - Claudia 
Sinful Davey (1969)

Credit: The Internet Movie Database

The Royal Tenenbaums Criterion Collection

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The Grifters
(nominated for Best Actress in 1991)

Prizzi's Honor
(winner: Best Supporting Actress in 1986)

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