THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 20, 1994 TAG: 9407210761
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines
SUSAN SARANDON has built a reputation portraying strong, independent women on the screen - she's been Oscar-nominated for her role as a woman on the run in 1991's ``Thelma and Louise'' and as the single-minded mom in 1992's ``Lorenzo's Oil.''
Off screen, she can be just as tough, voicing her mind on issues such as AIDS and women's rights.
Does she think her outspoken nature on public issues has hurt her career?
``Who knows?'' she said. ``It would be like fleeing from a burning building and worrying about if your slip is showing.''
Sarandon is now playing Reggie Love, a quick-thinking, fast-talking lawyer who helps an 11-year-old boy evade the crime underworld in the film version of John Grisham's best-selling novel ``The Client,'' which opens this week at local theaters.
For the interview, she was sitting, Indian style, on a couch in the Regency Hotel in New York, eagerly talking about the Haitian crisis. ``Clinton is a disaster,'' she said, shaking her bright red hair. ``Yes, I voted for him. He's the best guy who got as far as he did, but he is really ill-advised. He's continuing a fascist and racist policy that was already there toward Haiti.''
Her unmistakable eyes roll, checking if I'm listening carefully - and to see if I'm taking notes. Joan of Arc, appealing to the court, couldn't have been more intent.
Sarandon even considered going into Haiti, ``but it's a real hell hole. I can probably do more here.''
Her position drew international attention when she and her live-in lover, actor Tim Robbins, raised their concerns while presenting awards during the 1992 Oscars broadcast. As a result, they have been banned from presenting Oscars.
``There were a lot of negative as well as positive reactions,'' she said. ``A surprising number of people wrote in supporting me. I felt that if I'm going to appear on the Oscars, or anywhere else, they have to take me as I am. It's not as if I was being paid for doing a job. You are not paid to be on the Oscar show. I was appearing as myself.
``It was like a 27-second mention - not as if I made a long speech. Here they are showing Sharon Stone's underwear, but they can't stand for someone to make a so-called `political' statement. In our society, people are being urged not even to ask questions. That's very dangerous. Hopefully, none of us will be intimidated. I know I won't. It's not as if I'm against everything. It's not as if I'm obsessed. I'm just for some things, and I don't mind being heard.''
Sarandon took two years off after ``Lorenzo's Oil'' to be with her three children, including two sons by actor Robbins, whom she met when they filmed ``Bull Durham'' in Durham, N.C. She has been in no rush to return to work.
``My kids are so funny - it's so easy for me not to work,'' she said. ``It takes a lot for me to pack them up and run off to make some movie. I've been looking for a comedy. I'd like, particularly, to make a romantic comedy - a really sharp, sassy one with good dialogue. But it's difficult to find. It's just so much more painful to be in a mediocre comedy than a mediocre anything else.''
Sarandon was not impressed by the success of the book ``The Client.'' Within a month of publication last year, more than 2 million copies were in print and a movie deal had been made. ``Grisham has apparently made a pact with the devil,'' she said. ``Everything he touches turns to gold.''
Joel Schumacher, who also directed ``Falling Down,'' ``St. Elmo's Fire'' and ``Flatliners,'' wanted her, and only her, for the role of the lawyer. And a meaty role it is - the woman has lost her child in a combative divorce suit and is a former alcoholic who is down on her luck.
``Susan has three children of her own,'' Shumacher said. ``I could see her with the boy in the story. She is fair-minded, compassionate, politically committed. I could see her taking care of this boy. If she hadn't done the role, I probably wouldn't have made the picture.''
`It's the boy's picture,'' Sarandon said. ``He's the center - not me.''
Brad Renfro, a boy from Knoxville, Tenn., who has never been in a movie before, was chosen from more than 1,500 boys interviewed for the part. He was recommended by a Knoxville social services worker who had worked with him in a school program. ``He's a tough little kid,'' Schumacher said. ``I didn't want an actor. He's a natural. I don't at all take credit for his performance. He did it himself.''
``The Client'' was filmed in Memphis, and Sarandon said the city itself was a major character. ``I took the kids to Graceland to see Elvis' home,'' she said. ``My 4-year-old was shocked that Elvis had died. It was the Memphis summer of broken hearts. `Why no one tell me Elvis dead?' he asked.''
Sarandon was born Susan Tomaling and grew up as the oldest of nine children in New Jersey. She attended Catholic University in Washington, D.C., earning a degree in drama. In 1970, she made her acting debut in a star-making role in the cult film hit ``Joe.'' Her early film credits included co-starring with Robert Redford in ``The Great Waldo Pepper'' and, in 1975, singing in the late-night cult classic ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'' She doesn't want to talk about that flick, saying: ``Well, it's ancient history. So much has been said. No, I didn't know it would last this long and, no, I don't want it to go away. It can stay. It's OK.''
At 47, Sarandon continues to get sexy roles that defy the usual Hollywood canon that only young starlets have a sex life. She co-starred with Robbins and Kevin Costner in ``Bull Durham,'' James Spader in ``White Palace'' and will appear next with Sam Shepard in ``Safe Passage.'' It adds up to a kind of one-woman crusade to prove there is romance left for the middle-aged woman.
But she's set for a turnaround. She's just finished filming a remake of ``Little Women,'' in which she shouldered the ultimate mother role.
``It's not a signal that I'll play only mother roles from now on,'' she said, ``although I would be quite content to play mother roles. I think moms are, or can be, the most dramatic and interesting women - if only they wrote scripts that reflected them. After all, I played a mom early on - Brooke Shield's mom in `Pretty Baby.' That didn't seem to typecast me.''
In that controversial 1978 film, Sarandon played a prostitute who allowed her child to go to the highest bidder in a New Orleans bordello.
``Little Women'' is different. ``Winona Ryder is the driving force of it,'' Sarandon said. ``As the mother, I kind of hold it together, but I loved all my daughters. It's a much more historically accurate version than has been filmed before. It's, of course, during the Civil War, and it's a time of hardship. We don't have ruffles and big hairdos. I remember the one with Katharine Hepburn, but I can't stand to look at the MGM one, the one with Elizabeth Taylor. It's pretty Hollywood.''
Sarandon, whose children go to a Quaker school in New York, said: ``I prefer to raise my children in the city and send them to a school where they'll see, and meet, all kinds of people. I don't want to shelter them or bring them up in any kind of privileged conditions. They've already known people who have died of AIDS. They've seen homeless people on the streets. They know there are things out there that are not pretty.
``When River Phoenix died, one of my kids wanted to talk about drugs. I told her that most drugs were not worth trying the first time - not ever. I know that she has no romantic ideas about them, but beyond that, kids have to make up their own minds. You can only give them the information and encourage them to think. I tried things when I was young. You have to learn.''
Later this year, she'll be seen in ``Safe Passage,'' another film in which she plays a mom. ``I play the mom of seven sons, and I prove that you can be that mom and still be a person - still be sexual,'' she said. ``Sam Shepard and I went for some humor in it. The film says that the meaning of being a family is to be functional. There should be no such thing as a dysfunctional family.''
Sarandon credits her involvement with politics to ``the college years.''
``We were blessed with clear issues at that time - coupled with youth,'' she said. ``Who would have thought the X Generation would have such a hard time finding an issue?''
She shakes her head.
``I guess I'm STILL a hippie.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
In the new movie ``The Client,'' Susan Sarandon plays a lawyer
protecting an 11-year-old boy (Brad Renfro).
Color photo
Sarandon and live-in lover Tim Robbins stirred controversy with
comments at the '92 Oscar show, below.
Photo
Susan Sarandon met her live-in lover, Tim Robbins, when they starred
together in the baseball film ``Bull Durham.''
Graphic
SARANDON'S FILMS ``Joe'' (1970)
``Lady Liberty'' (1971)
``Lovin' Molly'' (1974)
``The Front Page'' (1974)
``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' (1975)
``The Great Waldo Pepper'' (1976)
``The Great Smokey Roadblock'' (1976)
``One Summer Love''
``Dragonfly'' (1976)
``The Other Side of Midnight'' (l977)
``Last of the Cowboys'' (1977)
``Pretty Baby'' (1978)
``King of the Gypsies'' (1979)
``Something Short of Paradise'' (1979)
``Loving Couples'' (1980)
``Atlantic City'' (1981)
``Who Am I This Time?'' (1982)
``Tempest'' (1982)
``Beauty and the Beast'' (1983)
``The Hunger'' (1983)
``The Buddy System'' (1984)
``Mussolini and I'' (1985)
``Compromising Positions'' (1985)
``Women of Valor (1986)
``Witches of Eastwick'' (1987)
``Bull Durham'' (1988)
``Sweet Hearts Dance'' (1988)
``A Dry White Season'' (1989)
``The January Man'' (1989)
``White Palace'' (1990)
``Thelma and Louise'' (1991)
``Bob Roberts'' (1992)
``Light Sleeper'' (1992)
``Lorenzo's Oil'' (1992)
``The Client'' (1994)
``Little Women'' (1994)
``Safe Passage'' (1994)
Mal Vincent
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES by CNB