I love IMDb résumés that seem to tell a story, or hide a mystery.

Last night Mindy and I were watching Two Lovers, that Joaquin Phoenix-Gwyneth Paltrow thing from last year. (In general, we love movies where the stars have seven letters in both their first and last names.) It was pretty good.

But the whole movie, I was annoyed that I could halfway-recognize the actress playing Joaquin’s girlfriend’s mom, Carol Cohen. She must have been on a couple Law & Orders, I decided.

Today I looked her up on IMDb. Her name is “Julie Budd,” which rang a bell. Where do I know that name…?

Turns out Ms. Budd has only acted once before in film or TV…and its was 27 years ago! She plays the Streisand-esque singer in the crappy 1981 Disney movie The Devil and Max Devlin, with Elliott Gould and Bill Cosby. We had it on VHS when I was a kid and watched it over and over. “Roses and rainbows…”

So she makes a splashy debut in The Devil and Max Devlin (“Introducing Julie Budd!”) and then doesn’t act again for almost thirty years! But then lands a co-starring part in a pretty big movie. Seems like there must be a story there, though Ms. Budd’s website doesn’t provide many clues.