She now plays a country music star on "Nashville," but Connie Britton once spent three months in tight quarters with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., learning mandarin in Beijing.
Gillibrand and Britton, who now lends her name to the senator's "Off the Sidelines" project to encourage female leadership, were both Asian Studies majors at Dartmouth College.
"Connie was our aerobics instructor, she taught aerobics every morning," Gillibrand dished Tuesday night at BuzzFeed Brews, held at the 201 Bar. Gillibrand said she and Britton became "very close" in the isolated environment.
Gillibrand also admitted that she had hoped Katniss, heroine of the popular "Hunger Games" trilogy, would be an "Off the Sidelines" icon. But she felt disappointed by the novel's "anticlimactic" ending. "What I wanted [Katniss] to do is run for higher office," she said.
