Going off script

Lumet herself has never had any problems with drugs or alcohol. "But everybody knows somebody who is dependent, who is addicted to something," she says. "I have known so many people who have gone through this or are going through this. But I don't necessarily think this is a movie about addiction but a family that has something they are not dealing with."

But like most writers, Lumet mined her own life to create "Rachel's" central universe. Lumet also has a sister -- Amy -- who is a sound editor. The parents in the film (played by Bill Irwin and Debra Winger) are divorced; Lumet's parents divorced 30 years ago. Kym and Rachel's father has remarried, to an African American woman (Anna Deavere Smith); Lumet's parents were also an interracial couple.

In addition, the movie's titular character is marrying an African American. But race isn't an issue in the film. It's so much not an issue that it's never even discussed.

"Isn't that lovely?" Lumet asks. "Race doesn't matter."

But it did matter way back when her grandmother married white composer Lennie Hayton in 1947. Interracial marriages were illegal at the time in California, so they moved back east. And Lumet says eyebrows were raised when her parents were married in 1963.

But this is not the world of "Rachel," nor the one inhabited by her children (she also has a 4-month-old daughter). "My first husband -- actor Bobby Cannavale -- is Cuban," she says. "And my second husband, Alex Weinstein, is a nice Jewish boy. My children look like a lot of things. They look like Americans."

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susan.king@latimes.com