Amy Irving back on stage in Williams classic at John Drew

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Toward the end of “Carrie,” the Brian De Palma film based on the Stephen King novel, what seems to be the hand of the title character reaches out from her grave and grabs Amy Irving’s arm.

This remains one of the scariest scenes in American films. Yet Ms. Irving doesn’t trade on that famous scene or, for that matter, much of her movie work. In fact, her resume is ripe with a wide variety of stage roles.

The most recent listing is “The Glass Menagerie,” and East End audiences will have an opportunity to see the Tennessee Williams classic beginning on July 8, the first night of previews for the first full-scale production presented at the renovated John Drew Theater of Guild Hall in East Hampton.

Though only in her 20s when she made such career benchmark films as “Carrie,” “The Fury” (another film by Mr. De Palma), “The Competition” with Richard Dreyfuss, and “Yentl” directed by Barbra Streisand, Ms. Irving was already a stage veteran. She was born into a stage family in Palo Alto, California. Her father, Jules Irving, was a film and stage director who years later ran the theater program at Lincoln Center. Her mother is the actress Priscilla Pointer and her brother is the film director David Irving. (She also has a sister, Katie, who is a teacher.)

That same resume states that Ms. Irving was only 2 when she made her stage debut in a production her father directed. But she noted in a recent interview that her stage career goes back even farther.

“I was actually in my mother’s belly while she was on stage doing ‘Playboy of the Western World,’” she said, “so I literally have been acting my entire life.”

She was first noticed at age 12 when she had a scene with the actor Stacey Keach in the Broadway production of “The Country Wife.” She went on to study theater at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She must have studied well, because back in the states Ms. Irving was quickly listed in the Rolodexes of many casting directors. On television she appeared on such shows as “Police Woman” and “Happy Days” and in the miniseries “Once an Eagle.”

She then went on a roll with movie roles. After the early ingénue parts and in addition to the Richard Dreyfuss and Barbra Streisand films, Ms. Irving starred in “Voices,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” and “Micki and Maude.” She had received an Oscar nomination for her role in “Yentl,” but perhaps her most noteworthy performance was in “Crossing Delancey,” for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. She also appeared in the Disney movie “Tuck Everlasting” and co-starred opposite Michael Douglas in Academy Award-winner Steven Soderbergh’s film “Traffic.” Loading up the DVD player, Ms. Irving can also be found on screen in “Bossa Nova,” “Carried Away,” “Deconstructing Harry,” “I’m Not Rappaport,” “13 Conversations About One Thing,” “Hide and Seek,” and “Adam.”

Her theater work has been especially rewarding and certainly consistent. She starred in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at the Roundabout Theater and received critical acclaim on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at the Booth Theater, for which she was nominated for both the 1994 Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. She has also starred in the Broadway productions of “Amadeus” and “Heartbreak House,” for which she received another Drama Desk nomination, and she won an Obie Award as Best Actress for her performance in “Road to Mecca” as well as receiving a Drama Desk nomination. She had the leading role in the 1991 Los Angeles premiere of “The Heidi Chronicles.”

It was at the Santa Fe Festival Theatre in 1994 that Ms. Irving starred with her mother in “The Glass Menagerie,” so in a way she is coming full circle while her mother is trying to let go. “She’s been gracefully dealing with what is sort of a passing-the-torch moment,” Ms. Irving said. “We talk on the phone a lot and she asks about the scenes we’re working on that day. She’s flying in from Santa Monica to see the show, and it will be a great pleasure to have her here.”

Neither Ms. Pointer’s performance nor the interpretations by Laurette Taylor and Katharine Hepburn in earlier productions of “The Glass Menagerie” are front and center on Ms. Irving’s radar as she navigates her way through this role with the help of director Harris Yulin. “I always walk out there feeling like I’m the first one doing it, and my Amanda is going to be different from how she was played before,” she said. “I can’t be thinking of Hepburn. No actress can, or we wouldn’t be able to perform.