THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 10, 1995 TAG: 9510100020
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
TWENTY-EIGHT years down the road, Mrs. Robinson is still in good shape.
To a generation of moviegoers, Anne Bancroft will always be the hip, self-absorbed older woman who seduced young Dustin Hoffman in the trend-setting classic ``The Graduate'' in 1967.
Mrs. Robinson was immortalized in song as well as film. ``The Graduate'' entered the record book as the film that first proved that young ticket buyers could make a hit all their own.
Movies have never been the same since.
Anne Bancroft, Oscar winner and oh-so-serious actress, was laughing it up across the table as she talked about her latest movie effort, ``How to Make an American Quilt.''
``It's an ensemble work, and what an ensemble,'' she said. ``I play a woman named Glady Joe - full of anger from the past. It's a very disturbing part to do. You have to get an image of some betrayal in your life and bring it to the surface. It has to happen, so unceremoni-ously.''
The cast includes Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn, Jean Simmons, Kate Capshaw, Maya Angelou, Alfre Woodard, Lois Smith - a veritable list of who's who of actresses.
But was it fun?
``Work is never fun to me,'' Bancroft said. ``Work is work and fun is fun, but I'll admit I've often liked work more than fun.''
Anne Bancroft won the Oscar in 1962 for recreating her stage role as Helen Keller's tough teacher in ``The Miracle Worker.'' It was Broadway, with this role and with ``Two for the Seesaw,'' that had turned her into a ``serious actress'' after Hollywood shamefully wasted her in early B pictures like ``Gorilla at Large'' and ``The Girl in Black Stockings.''
Born Anna Maria Louise Italiano 64 years ago in the Bronx, she began as an actress and dancer at age 4,. She later studied at the Actors Studio. Hollywood called but didn't know what to do with her.
Her debut was in a melodrama called ``Don't Bother to Knock'' with Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe played a psychotic killer; Bancroft was merely ``the girl.''
``I was in awe of her,'' Bancroft said. ``I didn't see the sex symbol thing. I saw this wonderful girl who was playing this strange, strange role with such imagination.''
Bancroft has no bitterness about those early years. ``I know everyone says I was misused, mishandled and all that. I didn't see any of that,'' she said. ``Here I was, this little Italian girl from the Bronx, set down in Hollywood. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I had no idea I was being misused.''
On Broadway, though, she became a serious actress. However, she has no yen to go back to theater.
``The last time I did stage was here in Los Angeles, and it was six weeks of pure hell,'' she said. ``The only time I was happy was when I was actually on stage. I had no life other than stage. I'd leave for the theater at 7 p.m., at about the time my husband was getting home. I'd never see him. If you do stage, you have to live for it. I prefer a daytime job, and going home at night.''
Speaking of marriage, hers is one of the great puzzles of the Western world. For 30 years, she's been married to the zany, irreverent and totally loud Mel Brooks, the man who created the beans scene in ``Blazing Saddles'' as well as all those howlers in ``Young Frank-enstein.''
She, on the other hand, has received three Academy Award nominations (for ``The Pumpkin Eater,'' ``The Turning Point'' and ``Agnes of God'') besides her win. She's often pictured as a faultlessly dressed, ultra-serious and ultra-professional actress. What could they possibly talk about at home?
``Could it be that you're just as wacky as your husband?'' I asked.
``Wacky?'' she retorted. ``Well, I'm not sure what you mean by that, but we have been married 30 years. I'll tell you about last night. He was looking at the Dodgers baseball game. The Padres kept creeping up. He was so involved. Testing him, I said, `I think that shortstop is pretty sexy. Nice buns.' Without a blink, he said, `You know, I think so too.' He didn't look away from the screen. He was making fun of me. He makes fun of me a lot.
``I say to him, `You never listen to me.' He doesn't hear me. On the other side of the ledger, he doesn't CARE if I don't listen to him. Oh, well, it's a marriage. Since it's lasted 30 years, I might as well stick with it. Right?''
Bancroft took the role in ``How to Make an American Quilt'' because of the script. The director, Jocelyn Moorhouse, produced the hit ``Muriel's Wedding'' last year and directed ``Proof.''
``I saw those films and liked them, but I wondered if she had the temperament to be a director,'' Bancroft said. ``You have to take charge. I found out that she does.
``I could never be a director. I'm too interested in me. It's all I can do to handle my own performance. I don't feel in the mood to hold someone's hand. I raised one child. That's all I can do.''
Raising her daughter, she said, was the toughest job she ever had. ``Nothing prepares any of us for being a parent,'' she said. ``It's the hardest job in the world, and we're all thrown into it unexpectedly.''
She is mightily impressed with her young co-star Winona Ryder. ``She is immensely gifted,'' Bancroft said. ``So sweet. So lovely. So pretty. She's a real natural. When the camera rolls, the right thing comes out.''
The most difficult scene in ``How to Make an American Quilt'' for Bancroft was the one in which she had to sing a Neil Diamond song, sitting in the front seat of a car with Burstyn and Ryder. ``Neil Diamond's kid went to school with my kid,'' she said. ``They live right down the way in Malibu, but I didn't know this song from anything. It was sprung on us suddenly. Winona knew it. For me, it was a real challenge.''
Not such a challenge, was her assignment to learn to actually stitch a quilt, a skill needed for close-ups. Alfre Woodard expressed great difficulty with it. Bancroft and Angelou, however, took to it easily. Angelou learned quilting from her grandmother. Bancroft learned it anew, and she finished her own white-on-white quilt between scenes on a work table set up in a corner of the soundstage.
``I have great patience,'' Bancroft said. ``I learned that when I took on the quilting. Actually, to be an actress, great patience is needed.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Anne Bancroft, left, and Winona Ryder star in "American Quilt"
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW PROFILE by CNB