February 24, 2026 • 48 mins
Anjelica Huston has lived many lives, all with grace and charisma. As the daughter of John Huston (director of The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, and more) she was movie royalty from birth. But she grew up in rural Ireland and went to high school in Swinging-Sixties London. That meant she developed a set of values far removed from Hollywood high society. Her first career was as a high-end fashion model, a favorite subject of Richard Avedon and later a muse of Halston. But she had always wanted to be a movie actress, and she spent time in the trenches, working on her craft in classes and smaller roles before her Oscar-winning turn in Prizzi's Honor. Right as she was leaving the photo studio for the movie studio, she met Jack Nicholson: "he made me laugh," she tells Alec. The couple defined Hollywood cool for almost two decades. Huston tells Alec the story of all of her transitions -- romantic, professional, and geographic. Her two wonderful memoirs are A Story Lately Told and Watch Me.
Originally aired April 7th, 2020.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Angelica Houston is a remarkable actress who has lived a
remarkable life. She has an oscar for her emotionally complex
and very funny performance in Pretty's Honor as the Black
Sheep mob daughter may Rose, Pretzyn and Amaya.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I've got a reputation to live up on the family scan.
Everybody be disappointed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
If I started her pitch perfect. Mortitia in the Adams
Family will be loved for generations.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh, I'll be fine. I'm just like any modern woman
trying to have it all, loving husband of family. It's
just I wish I had more time to seek out
the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But to fully understand the context of our conversation today,
you'll also need a line from a movie. Here Houston
had nothing to do with Annie Hall. We're gonna meet
Jak and Angelic and have a drink there, and if
you'd like to come, we'd love to have you in.
We can just sit and talk. That was Paul Simon
ad libbing to Diane Keaton in nineteen seventy six, trying
(01:16):
to conjure the most unpretentious but exclusive party in all
the world. Jack and Angelica will be there, no last
names needed. Jack is Jack Nicholson, of course, Houston's boyfriend
for almost twenty years, starting in the early seventies, and
for all that time, nobody embodied the nonchalant glamour of
(01:37):
the Hollywood New Wave more than they did. Angelica Houston
is the daughter of Prima Ballerina Enrica Soma and John Houston,
one of the greatest filmmakers who's ever lived, the director
of the Maltese Falcon, the treasurer of the Sierra Madre,
the African Queen, and Pretty's honor for which his daughter
(01:59):
won that Oscar. Angelica didn't spend a lot of time
on set with her dad growing up, but she does
remember being with him in the studios smoky Darkwood offices
in the final days of a Hollywood inhabited by the
fast talking, sharply dressed producers and agents of the Golden Age.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
They were the remnants of the old School. They were serious.
There was a definite regard for the auteur. The agents
worked for the auteurs, and these guys commanded respect. Even
Irving Lazare, who was the book agent who was commonly
known as Swifty, and it was about four feet tall
(02:42):
and looked like a gnome. Yeah, but there was there
was a kind of grandeur to it. I remember being
around them, and they were affectionate towards me. I was.
I was my dad's daughter, so I was. I was
sort of tolerated.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, maybe more than tolerated.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, no, toted.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, you did the one film with your dad first,
which was what year was that?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That was called Walk with Love and Death, and that
was in nineteen sixty eight. I was sixteen years old.
I knew nothing except that I wanted to be a
movie actress and why movie actresses were beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
They and they got the attention of the men in Hollywood, well.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Even before the men in Hollywood, you know, because I
didn't grow up in Hollywood. I grew up in Ireland,
i know. And I went to school in England, and
I had a really fantastic mother who showed me not
just movies, but showed me theater and took me to
plays and operas.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And where was she from?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
She was Italian, but she was raised in New York
and she'd been a balanchine dancer, and she had a
very eccentric, wonderful father.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
What do he do?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
He was a restauranteur called Tony Selma, and he used
to stand on his head and sing opera for his Cleontel.
It was called Tony's Wife.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well part of town seven fifties, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
And the Rockefellers went there, and people loved him a lot.
He was like no one I've ever met. He was
an eccentric but wonderful. But my mother took me everywhere.
I saw not only Maria Callis singing Tosca, but I
also saw Iicontina Turner when I was like fifteen years
old at the Revolution. Yeah, I saw it all. I
(04:33):
saw Sir John Gilgod, I saw Dame Margaret Rutherford, I
saw Laurence Olivier, I saw Donnie LaRue. I saw the
best that England had to offer. Your parents met where
they met in Los Angeles many years.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Before, and she'd come out here for what to work.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
She'd been offered a contract by Selznik because she was
very beautiful and her face was on the cover of
Life magazine. As a young beller, she roomed with Audrey Hepburn.
She was part of that whole movement of young women
very beautiful, who are being groomed for stardom? And then
she met my father. She'd actually met him at Tony's restaurant.
(05:14):
My grandfather always insisted she write an essay if she
was allowed to go to the theater or to see
a ballet. So some years before my father was about
to go off to war, and he'd promised her that
he would take her to the ballet and she wouldn't
have to write an essay about it. But then he'd
reneeed on his promise because he was sent off to war.
(05:35):
So at least that's how he.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Did.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
He was a director already and the film, that's right.
He did several movies. He did Let There Be Light
in the Battle of San Piedro, seminole documentaries for that time.
He had a bit of a fight with the War
Department later on because they considered them a bit too graphic,
a bit too honest, say.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And when he came back from the war. Because what
I'm trying to track here is Ireland, England, La, Why
did you grow up in Ireland? Was that his idea?
He wanted you guys to live over there.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, he was part of the committee for the First
Amendment McCarthy was hard at it, beating all the writers
out of Hollywood. My father and Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper,
Lauren McCall, a bunch of them formed a committee for
the First Amendment, which was basically that you know, you
(06:31):
could stand on your rights as an individual as a
citizen not have to answer questions from the committee. And
I think the whole thing left Dad with a really
bad taste in his mouth. He was making a movie
called African Queen when I was born, and then afterwards.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
When where did your mother deliver.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
You cedars of Lebanon in Cinta, Monica.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Where did they shoot in Africa?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes, in the Belgian Congo.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Hepburn and Bogart and your father went to the Belgian Congo.
This is back in the day when women would deliver
babies and the father was on the road.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Your dad was making African Queen when you were delivered.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes, he was, and the call was making meals, you know,
I think, cooking up bugs for dinner and stuff. When
he returned. He then went practically immediately into Moulin Rouge
in Paris, and my mother was sort of chasing him
across the continent and left me behind. I was like
(07:29):
three months old, and finally came back and collected my
brother and I and brought us to France, where we
lived in Deauville for a while, and Saint chanelus why
to be nearer to.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Him like a base for you, a European base exactly.
But when you say she was chasing him around, was he?
I mean, listen, I'm going to I'll get this out
of the way up front, Okay, I want to. He
was such a great director. He's one of the greatest
directors that ever lived. Was John Houston incorporated a tough thing.
To keep God those fires going? Did he always have
to be shooting and going and working?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He was on Yeah, he was on the march my father.
He was working on the next picture while shooting the
last People. He loved to shoot, and he loved locations,
and he loved hotels, hotels, challenges, women, consequent cigars, a
certain amount of liquor. He liked the chase. He was
(08:24):
a sportsman, a daredevil, and I think extremely enticing to
women in general. So I think my mother was attempting
to keep up, which of course was hopeless. It was
hard to tame him, Yes, indeed, I think, but she
tried well, I don't know that she tried to tame him,
but I think she tried to keep up, to keep.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Up with him. Your parents get divorced when you're how old?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
My mother died when I was sixteen years old in
a car crash, and they hadn't divorced.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Where did this happen? The accident?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
She was killed traveling to Venice.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Where were you?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I was in London at school.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What was she like? What was your mom like?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
My mother was incredibly beautiful. She was very sensitive. She
had an Italian background, even though she was a New
York Italian. She was a good girl. She pleased her father.
She wrote him long letters when she was on the
road in the ballet. She was still in the court
(09:28):
of Ballet when she was in her teens and almost
until she married my father. She'd come to Los Angeles
just in the previous couple of years, and she'd gotten
immediately pregnant with my brother. She had incredible taste. I
don't know where she got it from, but she knew
about things. Yeah, she was a great decorator. She was
(09:52):
a wonderful hostess, but she was earthy as well as
just beautiful and aeradite. She had a full laugh and
she had great wit, and I think it was hard
for her because in a way, you know, she wasn't
like those beautiful adjuncts to the gentleman. She was very
(10:14):
specifically herself.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
When your mom dies when you're sixteen, which is very
a significant age, what happens to you in terms of
your mom, I'm assuming was around.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
More, yeah, and I was living with my mother. I
may have been seventeen, actually going to school in London.
I'd done this movie with my dad where we were
a very very bad relationship point. During that movie, I'd
said all my life, I want to be an actress.
I want to be an actress, and finally he'd launched me.
(10:50):
This was a huge thing that he'd done for me.
I think, against everyone's better judgment, And to tell you
the truth, I never liked the part. I never liked
the film. I didn't really have any regard for it.
And who was I to feel that way? And who
(11:11):
was I not to be grateful? So this was a
really bad moment between my father and I. And it
was after I came back from making that movie barely
speaking to him, which that's not a good relationship for
a director actress.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I've been.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It's an ugly thing. But anyway. I then took a
job understudying Maryanne Faithful in Tony Richardson's Hamlet, which in London, Yeah,
at the Roundhouse. Nicol Williamson was playing Hamlet. I rather
enjoyed that because mary Anne was in delicate health and
she often didn't go on, so I had I had
(11:53):
some good opportunities to go on. And Shakespeare is like
a protective shield. He's like a hazmat suit. You can't
be bad. I don't think with lines chance a lot better,
you know. And I remember lines in A Walk with
Love and Death like go shoot a cow not. I
reacted so badly to the script. I was barely able
(12:16):
to do it, you know. But now having been given
a little bit of a chance to go on and
flex my muscles, I was really liking, you know, treading
the boards. It was at that time that my mother died.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
You were doing that show.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I was doing that show. And when she died, the
show was on its way to New York, and I
grabbed a seat on board and went to New York.
And I don't even remember my father's having an objection.
I think he was so sort of bewildered by by
(12:55):
my powers of escape. And by the time he caught
up with me in New York, I was already modeling.
I'd started a career for myself, and I was pretty
determined to lead life my way.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
New York was never home for you, no.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I stayed initially with my best friend at the time,
who i'd met when I was like seven and she
was ten. Her name is Joan Buck. She was the
daughter of my father's producer on those war movies, and
Cameron Jules Buck. And I stayed with Joan and she
(13:37):
was working for Mademoiselle at the time, so I met
a lot of people through her. I met very good
photographers like Kibo, dant Helmut Newton and David Bailey, who
had actually met in London, and Dick Avidon, who I'd
met in London, who was a friend of my mother's,
And so I started to model. At first, it was
(14:03):
kind of difficult because I didn't have a lot of
self confidence. I knew what I wanted to do, but
it wasn't a natural fit. I remember going into Eileen
Ford and she said, well, obviously you need a nose job,
and then she asked to look at my legs and
it was it was not that comfortable.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yest here.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah. But on the other hand, I had a few champions,
Dick Avadon being one of them, and we did a
really nice layout in Vogue, like a lot of pages
in Ireland, and so I kind of gained a reputation
as an editorial model, not an advertising model. So it
(14:51):
was considered very grand to be an editorial model, except
that one didn't make money, you know, for editorial you
made a few hundred dollars a day, yes, as opposed
to the girls who are out there for Clairels or whatever.
And I was never going to be a claire A girl.
So after about four years where I was in a
(15:14):
relationship with a much older photographer called Bob Richardson and
he was great to work for a lot less nice
to live with, but.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Until you went home.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, you met him.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Wear a shoot for Harper's Bizarre.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
He was a photographer, he was the photographer editorial and
you were how old? I was early twenties, you were eighteen, yeah,
and he was how old?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Forty two? Okay, but he was an artist, and he
was a magician. He'd look at you through the lens
and then he'd just take the camera down and place
it in his lap for a minute and stare at you,
and you felt like you could really provide the goods.
Sometimes after we worked together, I'd be trembling. I'd be
shaking from the impact. There's something about working with people
(16:02):
who are very, very good. It's the biggest turn on
in the world.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Sure, talent is the greatest effidisia.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
It is, And I'd have to say that, you know,
our relationship was very much guided by that. That was
central to our relationship. I don't really want to remember
how we were as a man and a woman. I
much prefer to remember as a photographer and molleagues. Yes,
(16:31):
as colleagues, and as two people who went after something.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Is there a period that ends New York?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Well, my father, of course, was horrified by the fact
that I was going out with a forty two year
old man, and not just any forty two year old man.
Bob had a history of drugs.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And was your father anti drug? Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Seriously, yes, extremely extremely anti drug. And I don't think
any father is all that much in love with the
idea of his seventeen year old girl getting involved with
a drug addict. But the fact about Bob was that
he was one of a group of rather important and
(17:16):
interesting and famous people who went to see a doctor
called doctor Max Jacobson. He had people like Margot Fontaine
and Jack Kennedy and Truman Capoti, Tennessee Williams, a lot
of very interesting people, and he gave them the combination
of drugs some I think very pleasant and mind expanding,
(17:38):
and then he'd hit them with something not quite so good.
He was manipulative. And there was an article written about
Bob Richardson in the New York Times. It talked about
his experience with doctor Max Jacobson. And my father read
this article and his consequence thought, oh, well, maybe this
is not a common street my daughters chosen to be with,
(18:02):
but someone of deeper interest. So he invited Bob and
I to go on a trip to Mexico. It was
an ill fated excursion in that straight out I got
the worst sunburn in my entire life. They thought about,
you know, what I wanted to drink. They thought about,
(18:23):
you know, where we should eat. They fought about a
lot of things. At the end of the that trip,
my father went on an excursion solo to La Pause
to find me a black pearl and came back empty
handed except for a pair of straw hats. Despondent.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
If I remember correctly from the book, this was the
period of lots of jewels and furs.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes, yes, and jewels absolutely, just a cascade of And
then we were leaving to go back to Los Angeles,
and Bob and I had an epic fight, and we
parted at Los Angeles Airport, and I'd separated our clothes
from our bags the night before, and down to the
(19:07):
last minute, I wasn't sure if I could actually make
the cut. Yeah, but I did, and I didn't look back.
I went to live with my dad for the next
four or five months where in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Is he in la as a function purely of the business.
And this is where the business. Where did he love
Southern California.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Actually loathed it like it had had, you know, a
certain sort of despisal for it. They couldn't decide on
a particular style of house, and how you know. Tutor
was followed by Regency was followed by Georgie, and aesthetically
it didn't please him. He felt that it was all
(19:52):
too safe, a predictable bourgeois No.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Had a great line, There's no place on earth where
the homes are more finely appointed than in bel Air,
and the artwork and the tapestries. He said. These moguls
who control these media companies, they have the most elegant taste.
And he wondered what happened to that taste from when
they left their driveway and drove through the gates of
the studio. Where did that taste go?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Well, sometimes they took it to their offices. Some did
and then others not so much. This is home for you, yes,
and it has been for a long time. And something
about it said home to me. When I began to
live here, the Palisades was very beautiful. It was sort
of semi rural. My father had just gotten remarried to
(20:44):
a woman called CEC's Shane. I could ride horses with
CC up in will Rogers. I really liked will Rogers
a lot. Something about being in a city that wasn't concrete,
being in place where you could go out to restaurants
and shops and ella was great in the day. I mean,
(21:06):
it was fun. There was the Luau. There were there
were about seven great restaurants scanned. Yeah, there were some
really wonderful places to go and be. And I think
in the day it was very fun place.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
When did you sad to start of the change?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Ah, the eighties probably just gets too built up. It
got too built up, and Rodeo Drive became very glitzy.
Up until that point, there was a kind of comfort
to the place. And and I longed for beautiful weather
and brown skin. I mean, that was the thing that
you really wished for in school when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And Nicholson, of all people, I said to him, I said,
you could have any home anywhere, and you live here
and I can't do my bad Jack. But he was like,
he said, yeah, he said, this is my town.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Oh he loves it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
This is my town. Yeah, said he just loved it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
He loves it. He doesn't have to leave home. He's
completely happy, has his pictures, he's got his books, his teeth,
his Lakers. Oh, I was so sad about Kobe. I
was as sad for Jack about Kobe as I was
for Kobe. Frankly, the Lakers are almost part of Jack.
(22:20):
Look like an extra limb. But yes, it was truly
his town, and I fell in love with it as
I fell in love with Jack. There was a kind
of freedom. You could be completely under the radar here
New York. Every time you go outside, people see you,
(22:40):
people recognize you for some reason. I was recognizable quite early,
and I never really liked it, you know, unless I
was ready for it. I'm fine if I put on
the dog and go out, but I'm not fine if
I'm taken unawares. And something about feeling exposed like you
did on the streets of New York. It's still it
(23:02):
still takes me by surprise. And there's a look people
give you in the streets sometimes I'm sure you know it,
which is like it's a look of appreciation, and it's
almost a wink. And they don't want to bother you,
but still you feel like they know me. They know
me too much. They signal you, especially when you think
he looks shitty.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
But everyone's got a camera in their pocket twenty four
hours a day, and they take pictures of you eating,
and they take pictures of me with my children, and
they make your life miserable, miserable.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's a very different thing for me, having been a
model I loved having my picture taken, I really did.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I when you were signed on to it.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, it's a form of addiction, and also the way
a good photographer takes your picture. I'm reminded briefly of
Bill Cunningham, who was essentially a street photographer. But he
would say do you mind, and then and you go no, no,
go ahead. But there was a kind of decorum about it. Now,
(24:04):
not at all.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
And when did you decide to get back on the
horse acting wise?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
When I split with Bob at Lax.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
And what's the next project you take on as an actress?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
The last Tycoon with Ilia Kazan DeNiro with Bob de Niro. Yeah,
but Jack was maybe going to do that and then
decide where? No, actually, yes, just just where did you
meet him? I met him at his house at his
birthday party? I went with Ceci. She said, oh, there's
(24:36):
a party at Jack Nichols. I mean, that's how loose
things were those days.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
And what did he call you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Tutzuts tutz and thens a big which came from the big,
the big, the big fabulous because I used to say
fabulous all the time, so it was the big fabulous
And then it became the.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Big What did he call the car? The Mercedes was
the what bing the bing bing bing cherry. He doesn't
still have that car, does he? No? Six hundred Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It was a great card.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I have a six hundred Mercedes the last year they
made the old model nineteen.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Eighty, Such a beautiful car. What do you do you
call your car name?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
No, but I'm going to now.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Mine, call it mine. That was another nickname Jack had
for me, Mine, which became Minyl. When we were skiing,
I'd be slaloming down the slope and he'd be up
on a on a chair lift, and I'd hear Mina.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Angelica Houston. Another seminal figure of the seventies and eighties
his poet and punk rocker Patti Smith. Like Houston, Smith
is a great artist who had to navigate a complex
relationship with another great artist, in Smith's case, photographer Robert Maplethorpe,
who died of complications from AIDS in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You know, I'm still connected with him. I still think
about him every day. And I mean, of course, you
know we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We did all the
things young people do. But as he felt freer as
an artist in a human being. The next thing that
happened is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We had to whether that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It was difficult, and it took a few years because
neither one of us wanted to part.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You can get a link to my full conversation with
Patty Smith by texting Smith to seven zero one zero one.
That's sm to seven zero one zero one. I'm Alec
(26:49):
Baldwin and this is here's the thing. When Angelica Houston's stepmother,
Ceci brought her to Jack Nicholson's birthday party in nineteen
seventy three, I didn't have imagined what she was setting
in motion. Houston was smitten and spent the night.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
He made me laugh, but he sent me home in
a cab. I showed up the next day in my
evening dress from the night before, and Cecy said, what
are you thinking? I had no idea how I should
be treated. Basically, I was about nineteen or twenty.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Still I was still a baby, ye kid.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, without any idea how I should be treated or
you know, sense of decord. The rules were no, none,
and I remember desperately hoping he'd call me, and when
he did, I said immediately. But if you take me out,
you have to pick me up and you have to
drive me home. And I don't remember this long pause
(27:47):
on the other end of the phone, but he did
just that. Once. He was kind of Once he signed
on yes, once he signed on her, he was pointed
in the right direction. He could be very gallant. Jack
was a wonderful boyfriend, too easily distracted.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Do you find that getting married and settling down is
just like there's no time for that, You're too busy
enjoying this life?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, I can't say that I really enjoyed it all
that much. I spent I spent a lot of time
in tears, a lot of time crying when I was
with Jack, a lot of the time feeling slighted, a
lot of the time, feeling like he didn't get me enough,
or that I wasn't getting enough attention from him. His
(28:34):
attention was very splintered. He reminded me sometimes of a
wonderful dog we used to have called Big Boy together,
who's he was half Labrador, half Golden Retriever, big black dog,
wonderful dog. But he'd get a look in his eye and.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
He was off. And I always knew that I really
wasn't the most important thing in Jack's life.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I was your dad all over again.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, and Jack got a tremendous amount of attention, and
that was hard for me, you know, because also I
knew what it was to get my own kind of attention,
and so it turns into a kind of competition.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
When did that begin? Meaning when did you start to say,
when am I going to make me and my work
the most important thing? When does that start?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
It started pretty early on, and I think, oh, it
was difficult because I didn't really have any background in acting.
I've been around these guys all my life, but I'd
never studied. And I remember going to a class A
good friend of Jack's called Harry Gettis, wonderful guy, took
(29:45):
me to a class at Eric Morris's studio, and I
was just sort of appalled. There was Linda Crystal on
the floor begging for a dime. It was, you know,
it was a whole kind of scene in there, and
I remember were coming out and being just indignant and outraged,
and I knew nothing except that I had an instinct.
(30:08):
So shortly thereafter, I was speaking to a friend of
mine and she said I'd like to introduce you to
someone that I think you might like. She's a teacher
and her name is Peggy Fury. And I walked into
Peggy's studio and I audited maybe for three classes before
(30:31):
she said, all right, you know, let's see what you
do in this exercise. And God, I fell in love.
I fell in love with acting. I fell in love
with her. I fell in love with that class. And
I was in that class for about three or four years,
(30:51):
just doing scenes. She turned on all the lights in me,
you know, and around that time, what about her?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
How did she succeed in doing that?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
First of all, she really listened, and she really watched you,
and she built up a complicity with me. So someone
was really bad.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So it's Bob Bridgerson all over again, but a different medium.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah. And if someone was really bad in the class
or was sort of hashing it up in a scene
or something, she'd kind of sneak a look at me
or like give me a wink or something. She made
me feel like I knew what I was doing. And
sometimes she'd criticize me outright, but she never embarrassed me.
(31:36):
She loved props. Peggy would love it like if you
brought food into class, because then you know you'd eat
the food after the scene. There was something so motherly
and so warm about her. She reminded me of the
way I was with my mother, and I think that
(31:58):
was something that I really needed at the time.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And then women helped you.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, women always men. Actually, that's true. It's true. Although
they challenge you women, it's as gentler approach. And I
think men challenge you it's it's not because they love
you less. It's because they want you to prove yourself
somehow or or at least the men in my life
(32:26):
kind of were more attracted to what was independent in me.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So the first film you do that is a real
movie that you get some attention.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For is Preaty's Honor.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
He was anywhere with Jack then I was with Jack.
So when you're on the set of the film and
it's Jack, it's your boyfriend and your dad. Yeah, and
you're back on a set with your dad after the
last go round, wasn't it was not a party?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And I always remember Jack said to me, I said,
what was it like on the set of Chinatown where
it's this iconic director and you have great movie star
and Polanski is about to become an iconic director. He's
on his way to that. And I said, what was
it like with the three of them together? And I'll
do my bad invitation of your dad too. Jack said that,
(33:16):
he said that Houston called him Romhan. I know you
call him Romahan. And he said Polanski would hold forth
with all this kind of direction, and Houston would turn
them and say, now, Roman, there are really only two directions,
a little more or a little less. And I thought,
what a world to be with these three like titans
(33:39):
or wherever you want to call him. I'm on the
set of the film.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Well, so I remember on China Tom Jack going like,
Roman wants me to wear this fucking pandage on my nose.
He doesn't want to shoot my face, he wants this
bandage on my face. Of course, it's the most iconic
still still in movies practically.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
What was it like for you when you were doing Pizzy?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I felt like ooh when I when I first of all,
the part didn't come to me through either of them.
It came to me from John Foreman, who'd put me
in a movie called The Ice Pirates, which was we
used to call them b movies, but it was. It
was a pretty pretty tragic movie in which I played
(34:25):
made of the most powerful swordswoman in the universe. But
I liked it a lot because I got to play
more type. I wasn't playing a wilting flower. I like
that a lot. I got to decapitate men and stuff.
So that was that worked for me pretty well in
that movie. And as I left this set one night,
Oh and my love my love interest was John mctousac.
(34:48):
I used to climb him like a tree. He was
funder for football Player the twos. But anyway, as I
was leaving the set one night, John gave me a
book Pretty's and said, I'd like you to read this,
tell me what you think. So I read it overnight.
I said to him the next day, that's wonderful. It's
such a good book. And he said, dumb. So what
(35:11):
do you think of Mayrose? And I said, wow, that's
a great part. He said, yeah, what do you think
about you playing Mayrose and Jack to play Charlie Partana
and your father to direct. And I.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Don't do that to.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Me, John, God, that's terrible. Don't do that to me.
It's a nightmare, a nightmare. And then he said, well,
we have to go and recruit them, and I went,
you can recruit them. I'm not going to recruit them.
I'm nothing, not a finger, And then cut to a
couple of weeks later, John is on my doorstep to
(35:51):
pick me up to go to Mexico to talk to
my dad about doing Preatzy's honor, and I said, I'm
not going with you. Yes you are, I went, no,
I'm not. He left alone, furious with me, came back.
He'd been to Mexico. Jack was already in Mexico visiting
with Dad. He'd somehow gotten Jack out there. They'd been
(36:14):
watching the Female gymnass in the Olympics for the better
part of the weekend, and Jack had misunderstood. He thought
the movie was a straight movie. He hadn't read it
as a comedy, But as soon as Dad had explained
to him that it was a comedy, he felt good
about it, and that was it. He was on board.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
When did they find out you were.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
On I'm not sure that they knew quite yet. I
might not have.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
How was your father different when he directed you in
that film than when he directed you in the first
Did he treat you differently?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well? Yeah, because he saw that I knew.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Happy.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
He saw that I was happy in my part. There's
nothing worse than a disgrundled actress, as I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And then the film comes out end and.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Good time for you, very good time, very good.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Did you feel?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I felt?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Honestly, how did.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
You feel vindicated?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
You did?
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I did? I felt. First of all, it was great
playing the Wrong Girl because it was a movie about
or at least my movie, because it was the movie
within The movie for me was about being the wrong girl,
and so I got to play all of my insecurities.
(37:34):
I got to demonstrate every single insecurity that I had
in a totally confident way. So it was fantastic for me.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Do things change in terms of what you're going to do,
who you're going to work with, the script and the
usual bullshit, the scripts that are sent to you, the
directors that are bringing up the changes after that, it changes.
Nothing changes your life like an oscar.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Nothing changes here. And also you get offered a bunch
of stuff that you're really wrong for.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He want you to play Superwoman exactly. Yeahman, in every
way Supergirl.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
We want you to be the blonde part. Yeah, but
I got to play another great part. I got to
be Lily Dillon and the Grifters, a real blonde part.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
How did Jack and your father react when you want?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I think they were a bit flabbergasted. Actually, I remember
I didn't go backstage because I was in such a delirium.
I ran back into the audience and.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
You didn't go do the press lap back. No.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I ran off stage before anyone could steer me in
the right direction. And I went back to my seat
and Jack was crying, and I thought, what's he crying about?
And then I said, my dad was crying. Foreman was crying.
He was probably crying because I forgot to thank him.
But I couldn't believe it. It's like, how come they're
all and done?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Who's another director that you worked with who you felt
that really tense?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Oh? The wonderful Nick Rogue. Really I loved working with Nick.
He was so subversive and so fun and naughty and smart.
I did a movie with him called The Witches, and
it's ostensibly for children, it's actually a very sophisticated movie.
(39:22):
It's about Hitler. It's this strange group of women who
come together in a hotel in Cornwall and they all
turn into witches and they turn little boys into mice,
and it's really a very good movie. I have to
say it was certainly one of my best experiences.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I grew up and watched a lot of television for
a very specific period of my life. I watched f
Troop in Gilligan's Island, and The Munsters, and The Adams
Family and Cantid Camera, and I watched and when as
soon as the Aaron Spelling era was launched, I never
turned on the last broadcast TV show I watched with
any regularity, as I used to watch Mary Hartman. Mary
(40:04):
Hartman was the last show I watched. So if you
told me that someone was going to take The Adams
Family and make it into a film that I thought
was really, really funny, I'd say, you're out of your
fucking mind. And yet it's two of the funniest movies
I've ever seen in my life. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, I'd have to say Barry was fabulous, But there
was the genius Scott Rudin. And I think Scott. Scott
is so passionate about the work. He's an amazing producer
and he I remember him being there day and night
(40:44):
for every scene.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
For people who don't know, Son and Philip was a
great cinematographer before he directed. Yeah, directed films. I needed
a good producer.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Probably, Oh, unbelievable. And I think occasionally they fought, but
we never knew about it. They were set. Yeah, they
were absolutely unified, and I'd get into a really bad
mood because I had I had lifts on my eyes
and lifts on my neck and corsets and nails, and
(41:13):
you know, it was the.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Most like a four hour makeup job to.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Four hour makeup job, and it took another two hours
to prep me before I went on set, and it
was just brutal. You couldn't sit down in the dress.
It was a nightmare. And every once in a while
you'd have to wait for thing to work, you know,
and it were like, come on six hours later, you
guys have to be kidding me. And they become and
(41:38):
apologized in the sweetest way.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah. I did Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers,
and they said, now remember that Mike comes in and
we get him in makeup, and once he's done in makeup,
and we have we've pre lit his sets and we've
rehearsed the scenes and they go and they said, we're
so frantic about the time we have Mike available because
he's only going to work so many hours in his contry.
Then we got to take all this shit off of him.
(42:02):
They said, please, don't be offended. But whatever scene you're
in the middle of, and you're gonna be in mid
and when we they walk you talk to us that
Mike is ready. We're going to just stop everything and
leave you dead. We're going to leave you by the
side of the road.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Well that's what it was like, except for Mike, and
this occasion was the thing, a hairy thing.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
When I came to New York in seventy nine, I
came to New York and somebody who I admired, I
mean to the ends of the earth was Raoul.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I loved h What a prince o, the loveliest, sweetest
contact man, talented, used to sing opera to the children
between takes. I mean, he'd do anything special.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Were some of the other leading men that you really
really thought that this was really a great battery.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
That's a difficult question. I have to go to Jack,
you know, of course, just because the great ones provide
and it's not necessarily because you notice how great they're being.
It's just that they're there for you. Jack did a
thing in Preatsy's where I come out of the wedding
scene and my father's been a real asshole to me,
(43:15):
and and I'm crying and Jack offers me his handkerchief. Now,
you know, an audience doesn't really know what that means
at that time, but he gave me the opportunity to
blow my nose really loud. You know, it's a comedy,
that's what it is. It's somebody who you can work
(43:35):
off with, who you have that kind of repartee. I
had it with Cusack and the Grifters.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
It's it's it's nice when you play, when you play
with someone that hits the ball.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Back, Oh, absolutely bad.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
And Cusack, who is kind of an enigma to me.
He falls into that category of these preternaturally talented men,
young leading men and brilliant actor while he was young. Yeah,
you know, it's a great thing to be able to
put the Rubik's cube together while you still have the
shine on you of the youth and beauty. And he's
(44:10):
a very very talented guy who then all of a
sudden he doesn't look like he really wants to work
very much.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I'm not saying you would be missing. It's interesting to
me how he did a row of great films and
then it's kind of like he couldn't It was almost
like he couldn't find anything he liked.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, he burned out a bit. I mean, he was
amazing in that movie. I was completely mesmerized by him.
I was mesmerized by Anette Benning too. I have to
say when I went in to read, Martin Scorsese and
Stephen were producing the film as well as Stephen was
directing it, and it was my instinct that I should
(44:45):
be a blonde. But I didn't put on a wig
to go for the meeting. I thought that was a
bit on the nose. So I just wore a very
suggestive dress and you know, went in and within the
first ten minutes Stephen said, what if you were a blonde?
And I thought, he gets it, He gets it, He
gets me cool.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Did your dad, because of his great, great career, did
he have film that he was really the most proud of, Like,
what did he feel was his best work?
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Well? I think he had a special regard for Treasure
of Sarah Andre because of his dad, because he brought
his dad to an Academy award. And I think it's
like the best performance in movies. Frankly, if you haven't
seen that movie in a while and you you relook
at that movie, it's magical, that performance. And I think
(45:43):
his direction to his father was speak fast, honest, men,
speak fast.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'd sit there with my friends whenever we were huddled
around in the wee hours we since the party was over,
and you knew that men were going to fall asleep.
I turned them. I'd say, what's three times thirty five
thousand dollars about you? One hundred and five thousand dollars?
You fall asleep before I do, I'd say, beauguard around
the fabulous one of the greatest movies ever made. You
(46:12):
directed one movie? Correct?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Three?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
What was the first one you directed?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
It was called Bastard out of Carolina.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
What was it that propelled you to want to get
behind the camera take on that job?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Well, I'd always wanted to direct, and it so happened
that the director fell out of the movie and I
was offered it over a weekend literally, and my agent
knew that I was interested in directing something. We didn't
quite know what it would be, and I read the
script and I really liked it.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Did you enjoy the process?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I loved it?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
You did? Oh?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I loved it?
Speaker 1 (46:46):
What about it?
Speaker 2 (46:49):
The first morning I went to my trailer and my
heart was beating, and I was waiting and waiting and
waiting for the knock on my door to call me
to set. I didn't even understand that the director. I
think that I have known a little better with John
Houston as a father. But that's how excited and out
(47:11):
of my mind I was. The part I love best
was working with the kids. Jennam alone was a brilliant
little actress and fun.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Are you going to direct another movie? You think?
Speaker 2 (47:22):
You know if I found the right thing in a way.
You know I'm lazy and that I wanted to find me.
But things do. I think when synergy works, that's how
it works.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Oh God, bless you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Actress icon Angelica Houston. She has written a captivating memoir
in two parts, A Story Lately Told and Watched Me.
The first half covers her childhood and teenage years in
Ireland and England, while the second half is a romp
through her day is on the modeling circuit and in Hollywood.
(48:03):
Both are told with emotional depth and graceful humor, and
I can't recommend them highly enough. I'm Alec Baldwin and
this is here's the thing
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Angelica Houston is a remarkable actress who has lived a
remarkable life. She has an oscar for her emotionally complex
and very funny performance in Pretty's Honor as the Black
Sheep mob daughter may Rose, Pretzyn and Amaya.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I've got a reputation to live up on the family scan.
Everybody be disappointed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
If I started her pitch perfect. Mortitia in the Adams
Family will be loved for generations.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh, I'll be fine. I'm just like any modern woman
trying to have it all, loving husband of family. It's
just I wish I had more time to seek out
the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But to fully understand the context of our conversation today,
you'll also need a line from a movie. Here Houston
had nothing to do with Annie Hall. We're gonna meet
Jak and Angelic and have a drink there, and if
you'd like to come, we'd love to have you in.
We can just sit and talk. That was Paul Simon
ad libbing to Diane Keaton in nineteen seventy six, trying
(01:16):
to conjure the most unpretentious but exclusive party in all
the world. Jack and Angelica will be there, no last
names needed. Jack is Jack Nicholson, of course, Houston's boyfriend
for almost twenty years, starting in the early seventies, and
for all that time, nobody embodied the nonchalant glamour of
(01:37):
the Hollywood New Wave more than they did. Angelica Houston
is the daughter of Prima Ballerina Enrica Soma and John Houston,
one of the greatest filmmakers who's ever lived, the director
of the Maltese Falcon, the treasurer of the Sierra Madre,
the African Queen, and Pretty's honor for which his daughter
(01:59):
won that Oscar. Angelica didn't spend a lot of time
on set with her dad growing up, but she does
remember being with him in the studios smoky Darkwood offices
in the final days of a Hollywood inhabited by the
fast talking, sharply dressed producers and agents of the Golden Age.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
They were the remnants of the old School. They were serious.
There was a definite regard for the auteur. The agents
worked for the auteurs, and these guys commanded respect. Even
Irving Lazare, who was the book agent who was commonly
known as Swifty, and it was about four feet tall
(02:42):
and looked like a gnome. Yeah, but there was there
was a kind of grandeur to it. I remember being
around them, and they were affectionate towards me. I was.
I was my dad's daughter, so I was. I was
sort of tolerated.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, maybe more than tolerated.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, no, toted.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, you did the one film with your dad first,
which was what year was that?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That was called Walk with Love and Death, and that
was in nineteen sixty eight. I was sixteen years old.
I knew nothing except that I wanted to be a
movie actress and why movie actresses were beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
They and they got the attention of the men in Hollywood, well.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Even before the men in Hollywood, you know, because I
didn't grow up in Hollywood. I grew up in Ireland,
i know. And I went to school in England, and
I had a really fantastic mother who showed me not
just movies, but showed me theater and took me to
plays and operas.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And where was she from?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
She was Italian, but she was raised in New York
and she'd been a balanchine dancer, and she had a
very eccentric, wonderful father.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
What do he do?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
He was a restauranteur called Tony Selma, and he used
to stand on his head and sing opera for his Cleontel.
It was called Tony's Wife.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well part of town seven fifties, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
And the Rockefellers went there, and people loved him a lot.
He was like no one I've ever met. He was
an eccentric but wonderful. But my mother took me everywhere.
I saw not only Maria Callis singing Tosca, but I
also saw Iicontina Turner when I was like fifteen years
old at the Revolution. Yeah, I saw it all. I
(04:33):
saw Sir John Gilgod, I saw Dame Margaret Rutherford, I
saw Laurence Olivier, I saw Donnie LaRue. I saw the
best that England had to offer. Your parents met where
they met in Los Angeles many years.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Before, and she'd come out here for what to work.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
She'd been offered a contract by Selznik because she was
very beautiful and her face was on the cover of
Life magazine. As a young beller, she roomed with Audrey Hepburn.
She was part of that whole movement of young women
very beautiful, who are being groomed for stardom? And then
she met my father. She'd actually met him at Tony's restaurant.
(05:14):
My grandfather always insisted she write an essay if she
was allowed to go to the theater or to see
a ballet. So some years before my father was about
to go off to war, and he'd promised her that
he would take her to the ballet and she wouldn't
have to write an essay about it. But then he'd
reneeed on his promise because he was sent off to war.
(05:35):
So at least that's how he.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Did.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
He was a director already and the film, that's right.
He did several movies. He did Let There Be Light
in the Battle of San Piedro, seminole documentaries for that time.
He had a bit of a fight with the War
Department later on because they considered them a bit too graphic,
a bit too honest, say.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And when he came back from the war. Because what
I'm trying to track here is Ireland, England, La, Why
did you grow up in Ireland? Was that his idea?
He wanted you guys to live over there.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, he was part of the committee for the First
Amendment McCarthy was hard at it, beating all the writers
out of Hollywood. My father and Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper,
Lauren McCall, a bunch of them formed a committee for
the First Amendment, which was basically that you know, you
(06:31):
could stand on your rights as an individual as a
citizen not have to answer questions from the committee. And
I think the whole thing left Dad with a really
bad taste in his mouth. He was making a movie
called African Queen when I was born, and then afterwards.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
When where did your mother deliver.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
You cedars of Lebanon in Cinta, Monica.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Where did they shoot in Africa?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes, in the Belgian Congo.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Hepburn and Bogart and your father went to the Belgian Congo.
This is back in the day when women would deliver
babies and the father was on the road.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Your dad was making African Queen when you were delivered.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes, he was, and the call was making meals, you know,
I think, cooking up bugs for dinner and stuff. When
he returned. He then went practically immediately into Moulin Rouge
in Paris, and my mother was sort of chasing him
across the continent and left me behind. I was like
(07:29):
three months old, and finally came back and collected my
brother and I and brought us to France, where we
lived in Deauville for a while, and Saint chanelus why
to be nearer to.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Him like a base for you, a European base exactly.
But when you say she was chasing him around, was he?
I mean, listen, I'm going to I'll get this out
of the way up front, Okay, I want to. He
was such a great director. He's one of the greatest
directors that ever lived. Was John Houston incorporated a tough thing.
To keep God those fires going? Did he always have
to be shooting and going and working?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He was on Yeah, he was on the march my father.
He was working on the next picture while shooting the
last People. He loved to shoot, and he loved locations,
and he loved hotels, hotels, challenges, women, consequent cigars, a
certain amount of liquor. He liked the chase. He was
(08:24):
a sportsman, a daredevil, and I think extremely enticing to
women in general. So I think my mother was attempting
to keep up, which of course was hopeless. It was
hard to tame him, Yes, indeed, I think, but she
tried well, I don't know that she tried to tame him,
but I think she tried to keep up, to keep.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Up with him. Your parents get divorced when you're how old?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
My mother died when I was sixteen years old in
a car crash, and they hadn't divorced.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Where did this happen? The accident?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
She was killed traveling to Venice.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Where were you?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I was in London at school.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What was she like? What was your mom like?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
My mother was incredibly beautiful. She was very sensitive. She
had an Italian background, even though she was a New
York Italian. She was a good girl. She pleased her father.
She wrote him long letters when she was on the
road in the ballet. She was still in the court
(09:28):
of Ballet when she was in her teens and almost
until she married my father. She'd come to Los Angeles
just in the previous couple of years, and she'd gotten
immediately pregnant with my brother. She had incredible taste. I
don't know where she got it from, but she knew
about things. Yeah, she was a great decorator. She was
(09:52):
a wonderful hostess, but she was earthy as well as
just beautiful and aeradite. She had a full laugh and
she had great wit, and I think it was hard
for her because in a way, you know, she wasn't
like those beautiful adjuncts to the gentleman. She was very
(10:14):
specifically herself.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
When your mom dies when you're sixteen, which is very
a significant age, what happens to you in terms of
your mom, I'm assuming was around.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
More, yeah, and I was living with my mother. I
may have been seventeen, actually going to school in London.
I'd done this movie with my dad where we were
a very very bad relationship point. During that movie, I'd
said all my life, I want to be an actress.
I want to be an actress, and finally he'd launched me.
(10:50):
This was a huge thing that he'd done for me.
I think, against everyone's better judgment, And to tell you
the truth, I never liked the part. I never liked
the film. I didn't really have any regard for it.
And who was I to feel that way? And who
(11:11):
was I not to be grateful? So this was a
really bad moment between my father and I. And it
was after I came back from making that movie barely
speaking to him, which that's not a good relationship for
a director actress.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I've been.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It's an ugly thing. But anyway. I then took a
job understudying Maryanne Faithful in Tony Richardson's Hamlet, which in London, Yeah,
at the Roundhouse. Nicol Williamson was playing Hamlet. I rather
enjoyed that because mary Anne was in delicate health and
she often didn't go on, so I had I had
(11:53):
some good opportunities to go on. And Shakespeare is like
a protective shield. He's like a hazmat suit. You can't
be bad. I don't think with lines chance a lot better,
you know. And I remember lines in A Walk with
Love and Death like go shoot a cow not. I
reacted so badly to the script. I was barely able
(12:16):
to do it, you know. But now having been given
a little bit of a chance to go on and
flex my muscles, I was really liking, you know, treading
the boards. It was at that time that my mother died.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
You were doing that show.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I was doing that show. And when she died, the
show was on its way to New York, and I
grabbed a seat on board and went to New York.
And I don't even remember my father's having an objection.
I think he was so sort of bewildered by by
(12:55):
my powers of escape. And by the time he caught
up with me in New York, I was already modeling.
I'd started a career for myself, and I was pretty
determined to lead life my way.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
New York was never home for you, no.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I stayed initially with my best friend at the time,
who i'd met when I was like seven and she
was ten. Her name is Joan Buck. She was the
daughter of my father's producer on those war movies, and
Cameron Jules Buck. And I stayed with Joan and she
(13:37):
was working for Mademoiselle at the time, so I met
a lot of people through her. I met very good
photographers like Kibo, dant Helmut Newton and David Bailey, who
had actually met in London, and Dick Avidon, who I'd
met in London, who was a friend of my mother's,
And so I started to model. At first, it was
(14:03):
kind of difficult because I didn't have a lot of
self confidence. I knew what I wanted to do, but
it wasn't a natural fit. I remember going into Eileen
Ford and she said, well, obviously you need a nose job,
and then she asked to look at my legs and
it was it was not that comfortable.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yest here.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah. But on the other hand, I had a few champions,
Dick Avadon being one of them, and we did a
really nice layout in Vogue, like a lot of pages
in Ireland, and so I kind of gained a reputation
as an editorial model, not an advertising model. So it
(14:51):
was considered very grand to be an editorial model, except
that one didn't make money, you know, for editorial you
made a few hundred dollars a day, yes, as opposed
to the girls who are out there for Clairels or whatever.
And I was never going to be a claire A girl.
So after about four years where I was in a
(15:14):
relationship with a much older photographer called Bob Richardson and
he was great to work for a lot less nice
to live with, but.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Until you went home.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, you met him.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Wear a shoot for Harper's Bizarre.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
He was a photographer, he was the photographer editorial and
you were how old? I was early twenties, you were eighteen, yeah,
and he was how old?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Forty two? Okay, but he was an artist, and he
was a magician. He'd look at you through the lens
and then he'd just take the camera down and place
it in his lap for a minute and stare at you,
and you felt like you could really provide the goods.
Sometimes after we worked together, I'd be trembling. I'd be
shaking from the impact. There's something about working with people
(16:02):
who are very, very good. It's the biggest turn on
in the world.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Sure, talent is the greatest effidisia.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
It is, And I'd have to say that, you know,
our relationship was very much guided by that. That was
central to our relationship. I don't really want to remember
how we were as a man and a woman. I
much prefer to remember as a photographer and molleagues. Yes,
(16:31):
as colleagues, and as two people who went after something.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Is there a period that ends New York?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Well, my father, of course, was horrified by the fact
that I was going out with a forty two year
old man, and not just any forty two year old man.
Bob had a history of drugs.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And was your father anti drug? Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Seriously, yes, extremely extremely anti drug. And I don't think
any father is all that much in love with the
idea of his seventeen year old girl getting involved with
a drug addict. But the fact about Bob was that
he was one of a group of rather important and
(17:16):
interesting and famous people who went to see a doctor
called doctor Max Jacobson. He had people like Margot Fontaine
and Jack Kennedy and Truman Capoti, Tennessee Williams, a lot
of very interesting people, and he gave them the combination
of drugs some I think very pleasant and mind expanding,
(17:38):
and then he'd hit them with something not quite so good.
He was manipulative. And there was an article written about
Bob Richardson in the New York Times. It talked about
his experience with doctor Max Jacobson. And my father read
this article and his consequence thought, oh, well, maybe this
is not a common street my daughters chosen to be with,
(18:02):
but someone of deeper interest. So he invited Bob and
I to go on a trip to Mexico. It was
an ill fated excursion in that straight out I got
the worst sunburn in my entire life. They thought about,
you know, what I wanted to drink. They thought about,
(18:23):
you know, where we should eat. They fought about a
lot of things. At the end of the that trip,
my father went on an excursion solo to La Pause
to find me a black pearl and came back empty
handed except for a pair of straw hats. Despondent.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
If I remember correctly from the book, this was the
period of lots of jewels and furs.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes, yes, and jewels absolutely, just a cascade of And
then we were leaving to go back to Los Angeles,
and Bob and I had an epic fight, and we
parted at Los Angeles Airport, and I'd separated our clothes
from our bags the night before, and down to the
(19:07):
last minute, I wasn't sure if I could actually make
the cut. Yeah, but I did, and I didn't look back.
I went to live with my dad for the next
four or five months where in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Is he in la as a function purely of the business.
And this is where the business. Where did he love
Southern California.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Actually loathed it like it had had, you know, a
certain sort of despisal for it. They couldn't decide on
a particular style of house, and how you know. Tutor
was followed by Regency was followed by Georgie, and aesthetically
it didn't please him. He felt that it was all
(19:52):
too safe, a predictable bourgeois No.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Had a great line, There's no place on earth where
the homes are more finely appointed than in bel Air,
and the artwork and the tapestries. He said. These moguls
who control these media companies, they have the most elegant taste.
And he wondered what happened to that taste from when
they left their driveway and drove through the gates of
the studio. Where did that taste go?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Well, sometimes they took it to their offices. Some did
and then others not so much. This is home for you, yes,
and it has been for a long time. And something
about it said home to me. When I began to
live here, the Palisades was very beautiful. It was sort
of semi rural. My father had just gotten remarried to
(20:44):
a woman called CEC's Shane. I could ride horses with
CC up in will Rogers. I really liked will Rogers
a lot. Something about being in a city that wasn't concrete,
being in place where you could go out to restaurants
and shops and ella was great in the day. I mean,
(21:06):
it was fun. There was the Luau. There were there
were about seven great restaurants scanned. Yeah, there were some
really wonderful places to go and be. And I think
in the day it was very fun place.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
When did you sad to start of the change?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Ah, the eighties probably just gets too built up. It
got too built up, and Rodeo Drive became very glitzy.
Up until that point, there was a kind of comfort
to the place. And and I longed for beautiful weather
and brown skin. I mean, that was the thing that
you really wished for in school when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And Nicholson, of all people, I said to him, I said,
you could have any home anywhere, and you live here
and I can't do my bad Jack. But he was like,
he said, yeah, he said, this is my town.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Oh he loves it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
This is my town. Yeah, said he just loved it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
He loves it. He doesn't have to leave home. He's
completely happy, has his pictures, he's got his books, his teeth,
his Lakers. Oh, I was so sad about Kobe. I
was as sad for Jack about Kobe as I was
for Kobe. Frankly, the Lakers are almost part of Jack.
(22:20):
Look like an extra limb. But yes, it was truly
his town, and I fell in love with it as
I fell in love with Jack. There was a kind
of freedom. You could be completely under the radar here
New York. Every time you go outside, people see you,
(22:40):
people recognize you for some reason. I was recognizable quite early,
and I never really liked it, you know, unless I
was ready for it. I'm fine if I put on
the dog and go out, but I'm not fine if
I'm taken unawares. And something about feeling exposed like you
did on the streets of New York. It's still it
(23:02):
still takes me by surprise. And there's a look people
give you in the streets sometimes I'm sure you know it,
which is like it's a look of appreciation, and it's
almost a wink. And they don't want to bother you,
but still you feel like they know me. They know
me too much. They signal you, especially when you think
he looks shitty.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
But everyone's got a camera in their pocket twenty four
hours a day, and they take pictures of you eating,
and they take pictures of me with my children, and
they make your life miserable, miserable.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's a very different thing for me, having been a
model I loved having my picture taken, I really did.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I when you were signed on to it.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, it's a form of addiction, and also the way
a good photographer takes your picture. I'm reminded briefly of
Bill Cunningham, who was essentially a street photographer. But he
would say do you mind, and then and you go no, no,
go ahead. But there was a kind of decorum about it. Now,
(24:04):
not at all.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
And when did you decide to get back on the
horse acting wise?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
When I split with Bob at Lax.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
And what's the next project you take on as an actress?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
The last Tycoon with Ilia Kazan DeNiro with Bob de Niro. Yeah,
but Jack was maybe going to do that and then
decide where? No, actually, yes, just just where did you
meet him? I met him at his house at his
birthday party? I went with Ceci. She said, oh, there's
(24:36):
a party at Jack Nichols. I mean, that's how loose
things were those days.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
And what did he call you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Tutzuts tutz and thens a big which came from the big,
the big, the big fabulous because I used to say
fabulous all the time, so it was the big fabulous
And then it became the.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Big What did he call the car? The Mercedes was
the what bing the bing bing bing cherry. He doesn't
still have that car, does he? No? Six hundred Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It was a great card.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I have a six hundred Mercedes the last year they
made the old model nineteen.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Eighty, Such a beautiful car. What do you do you
call your car name?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
No, but I'm going to now.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Mine, call it mine. That was another nickname Jack had
for me, Mine, which became Minyl. When we were skiing,
I'd be slaloming down the slope and he'd be up
on a on a chair lift, and I'd hear Mina.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Angelica Houston. Another seminal figure of the seventies and eighties
his poet and punk rocker Patti Smith. Like Houston, Smith
is a great artist who had to navigate a complex
relationship with another great artist, in Smith's case, photographer Robert Maplethorpe,
who died of complications from AIDS in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You know, I'm still connected with him. I still think
about him every day. And I mean, of course, you
know we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We did all the
things young people do. But as he felt freer as
an artist in a human being. The next thing that
happened is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We had to whether that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It was difficult, and it took a few years because
neither one of us wanted to part.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You can get a link to my full conversation with
Patty Smith by texting Smith to seven zero one zero one.
That's sm to seven zero one zero one. I'm Alec
(26:49):
Baldwin and this is here's the thing. When Angelica Houston's stepmother,
Ceci brought her to Jack Nicholson's birthday party in nineteen
seventy three, I didn't have imagined what she was setting
in motion. Houston was smitten and spent the night.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
He made me laugh, but he sent me home in
a cab. I showed up the next day in my
evening dress from the night before, and Cecy said, what
are you thinking? I had no idea how I should
be treated. Basically, I was about nineteen or twenty.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Still I was still a baby, ye kid.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, without any idea how I should be treated or
you know, sense of decord. The rules were no, none,
and I remember desperately hoping he'd call me, and when
he did, I said immediately. But if you take me out,
you have to pick me up and you have to
drive me home. And I don't remember this long pause
(27:47):
on the other end of the phone, but he did
just that. Once. He was kind of Once he signed
on yes, once he signed on her, he was pointed
in the right direction. He could be very gallant. Jack
was a wonderful boyfriend, too easily distracted.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Do you find that getting married and settling down is
just like there's no time for that, You're too busy
enjoying this life?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, I can't say that I really enjoyed it all
that much. I spent I spent a lot of time
in tears, a lot of time crying when I was
with Jack, a lot of the time feeling slighted, a
lot of the time, feeling like he didn't get me enough,
or that I wasn't getting enough attention from him. His
(28:34):
attention was very splintered. He reminded me sometimes of a
wonderful dog we used to have called Big Boy together,
who's he was half Labrador, half Golden Retriever, big black dog,
wonderful dog. But he'd get a look in his eye and.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
He was off. And I always knew that I really
wasn't the most important thing in Jack's life.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I was your dad all over again.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, and Jack got a tremendous amount of attention, and
that was hard for me, you know, because also I
knew what it was to get my own kind of attention,
and so it turns into a kind of competition.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
When did that begin? Meaning when did you start to say,
when am I going to make me and my work
the most important thing? When does that start?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
It started pretty early on, and I think, oh, it
was difficult because I didn't really have any background in acting.
I've been around these guys all my life, but I'd
never studied. And I remember going to a class A
good friend of Jack's called Harry Gettis, wonderful guy, took
(29:45):
me to a class at Eric Morris's studio, and I
was just sort of appalled. There was Linda Crystal on
the floor begging for a dime. It was, you know,
it was a whole kind of scene in there, and
I remember were coming out and being just indignant and outraged,
and I knew nothing except that I had an instinct.
(30:08):
So shortly thereafter, I was speaking to a friend of
mine and she said I'd like to introduce you to
someone that I think you might like. She's a teacher
and her name is Peggy Fury. And I walked into
Peggy's studio and I audited maybe for three classes before
(30:31):
she said, all right, you know, let's see what you
do in this exercise. And God, I fell in love.
I fell in love with acting. I fell in love
with her. I fell in love with that class. And
I was in that class for about three or four years,
(30:51):
just doing scenes. She turned on all the lights in me,
you know, and around that time, what about her?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
How did she succeed in doing that?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
First of all, she really listened, and she really watched you,
and she built up a complicity with me. So someone
was really bad.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So it's Bob Bridgerson all over again, but a different medium.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah. And if someone was really bad in the class
or was sort of hashing it up in a scene
or something, she'd kind of sneak a look at me
or like give me a wink or something. She made
me feel like I knew what I was doing. And
sometimes she'd criticize me outright, but she never embarrassed me.
(31:36):
She loved props. Peggy would love it like if you
brought food into class, because then you know you'd eat
the food after the scene. There was something so motherly
and so warm about her. She reminded me of the
way I was with my mother, and I think that
(31:58):
was something that I really needed at the time.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And then women helped you.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, women always men. Actually, that's true. It's true. Although
they challenge you women, it's as gentler approach. And I
think men challenge you it's it's not because they love
you less. It's because they want you to prove yourself
somehow or or at least the men in my life
(32:26):
kind of were more attracted to what was independent in me.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So the first film you do that is a real
movie that you get some attention.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For is Preaty's Honor.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
He was anywhere with Jack then I was with Jack.
So when you're on the set of the film and
it's Jack, it's your boyfriend and your dad. Yeah, and
you're back on a set with your dad after the
last go round, wasn't it was not a party?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And I always remember Jack said to me, I said,
what was it like on the set of Chinatown where
it's this iconic director and you have great movie star
and Polanski is about to become an iconic director. He's
on his way to that. And I said, what was
it like with the three of them together? And I'll
do my bad invitation of your dad too. Jack said that,
(33:16):
he said that Houston called him Romhan. I know you
call him Romahan. And he said Polanski would hold forth
with all this kind of direction, and Houston would turn
them and say, now, Roman, there are really only two directions,
a little more or a little less. And I thought,
what a world to be with these three like titans
(33:39):
or wherever you want to call him. I'm on the
set of the film.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Well, so I remember on China Tom Jack going like,
Roman wants me to wear this fucking pandage on my nose.
He doesn't want to shoot my face, he wants this
bandage on my face. Of course, it's the most iconic
still still in movies practically.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
What was it like for you when you were doing Pizzy?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I felt like ooh when I when I first of all,
the part didn't come to me through either of them.
It came to me from John Foreman, who'd put me
in a movie called The Ice Pirates, which was we
used to call them b movies, but it was. It
was a pretty pretty tragic movie in which I played
(34:25):
made of the most powerful swordswoman in the universe. But
I liked it a lot because I got to play
more type. I wasn't playing a wilting flower. I like
that a lot. I got to decapitate men and stuff.
So that was that worked for me pretty well in
that movie. And as I left this set one night,
Oh and my love my love interest was John mctousac.
(34:48):
I used to climb him like a tree. He was
funder for football Player the twos. But anyway, as I
was leaving the set one night, John gave me a
book Pretty's and said, I'd like you to read this,
tell me what you think. So I read it overnight.
I said to him the next day, that's wonderful. It's
such a good book. And he said, dumb. So what
(35:11):
do you think of Mayrose? And I said, wow, that's
a great part. He said, yeah, what do you think
about you playing Mayrose and Jack to play Charlie Partana
and your father to direct. And I.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Don't do that to.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Me, John, God, that's terrible. Don't do that to me.
It's a nightmare, a nightmare. And then he said, well,
we have to go and recruit them, and I went,
you can recruit them. I'm not going to recruit them.
I'm nothing, not a finger, And then cut to a
couple of weeks later, John is on my doorstep to
(35:51):
pick me up to go to Mexico to talk to
my dad about doing Preatzy's honor, and I said, I'm
not going with you. Yes you are, I went, no,
I'm not. He left alone, furious with me, came back.
He'd been to Mexico. Jack was already in Mexico visiting
with Dad. He'd somehow gotten Jack out there. They'd been
(36:14):
watching the Female gymnass in the Olympics for the better
part of the weekend, and Jack had misunderstood. He thought
the movie was a straight movie. He hadn't read it
as a comedy, But as soon as Dad had explained
to him that it was a comedy, he felt good
about it, and that was it. He was on board.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
When did they find out you were.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
On I'm not sure that they knew quite yet. I
might not have.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
How was your father different when he directed you in
that film than when he directed you in the first
Did he treat you differently?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well? Yeah, because he saw that I knew.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Happy.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
He saw that I was happy in my part. There's
nothing worse than a disgrundled actress, as I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And then the film comes out end and.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Good time for you, very good time, very good.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Did you feel?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I felt?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Honestly, how did.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
You feel vindicated?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
You did?
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I did? I felt. First of all, it was great
playing the Wrong Girl because it was a movie about
or at least my movie, because it was the movie
within The movie for me was about being the wrong girl,
and so I got to play all of my insecurities.
(37:34):
I got to demonstrate every single insecurity that I had
in a totally confident way. So it was fantastic for me.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Do things change in terms of what you're going to do,
who you're going to work with, the script and the
usual bullshit, the scripts that are sent to you, the
directors that are bringing up the changes after that, it changes.
Nothing changes your life like an oscar.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Nothing changes here. And also you get offered a bunch
of stuff that you're really wrong for.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He want you to play Superwoman exactly. Yeahman, in every
way Supergirl.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
We want you to be the blonde part. Yeah, but
I got to play another great part. I got to
be Lily Dillon and the Grifters, a real blonde part.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
How did Jack and your father react when you want?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I think they were a bit flabbergasted. Actually, I remember
I didn't go backstage because I was in such a delirium.
I ran back into the audience and.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
You didn't go do the press lap back. No.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I ran off stage before anyone could steer me in
the right direction. And I went back to my seat
and Jack was crying, and I thought, what's he crying about?
And then I said, my dad was crying. Foreman was crying.
He was probably crying because I forgot to thank him.
But I couldn't believe it. It's like, how come they're
all and done?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Who's another director that you worked with who you felt
that really tense?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Oh? The wonderful Nick Rogue. Really I loved working with Nick.
He was so subversive and so fun and naughty and smart.
I did a movie with him called The Witches, and
it's ostensibly for children, it's actually a very sophisticated movie.
(39:22):
It's about Hitler. It's this strange group of women who
come together in a hotel in Cornwall and they all
turn into witches and they turn little boys into mice,
and it's really a very good movie. I have to
say it was certainly one of my best experiences.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I grew up and watched a lot of television for
a very specific period of my life. I watched f
Troop in Gilligan's Island, and The Munsters, and The Adams
Family and Cantid Camera, and I watched and when as
soon as the Aaron Spelling era was launched, I never
turned on the last broadcast TV show I watched with
any regularity, as I used to watch Mary Hartman. Mary
(40:04):
Hartman was the last show I watched. So if you
told me that someone was going to take The Adams
Family and make it into a film that I thought
was really, really funny, I'd say, you're out of your
fucking mind. And yet it's two of the funniest movies
I've ever seen in my life. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, I'd have to say Barry was fabulous, But there
was the genius Scott Rudin. And I think Scott. Scott
is so passionate about the work. He's an amazing producer
and he I remember him being there day and night
(40:44):
for every scene.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
For people who don't know, Son and Philip was a
great cinematographer before he directed. Yeah, directed films. I needed
a good producer.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Probably, Oh, unbelievable. And I think occasionally they fought, but
we never knew about it. They were set. Yeah, they
were absolutely unified, and I'd get into a really bad
mood because I had I had lifts on my eyes
and lifts on my neck and corsets and nails, and
(41:13):
you know, it was the.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Most like a four hour makeup job to.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Four hour makeup job, and it took another two hours
to prep me before I went on set, and it
was just brutal. You couldn't sit down in the dress.
It was a nightmare. And every once in a while
you'd have to wait for thing to work, you know,
and it were like, come on six hours later, you
guys have to be kidding me. And they become and
(41:38):
apologized in the sweetest way.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah. I did Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers,
and they said, now remember that Mike comes in and
we get him in makeup, and once he's done in makeup,
and we have we've pre lit his sets and we've
rehearsed the scenes and they go and they said, we're
so frantic about the time we have Mike available because
he's only going to work so many hours in his contry.
Then we got to take all this shit off of him.
(42:02):
They said, please, don't be offended. But whatever scene you're
in the middle of, and you're gonna be in mid
and when we they walk you talk to us that
Mike is ready. We're going to just stop everything and
leave you dead. We're going to leave you by the
side of the road.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Well that's what it was like, except for Mike, and
this occasion was the thing, a hairy thing.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
When I came to New York in seventy nine, I
came to New York and somebody who I admired, I
mean to the ends of the earth was Raoul.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I loved h What a prince o, the loveliest, sweetest
contact man, talented, used to sing opera to the children
between takes. I mean, he'd do anything special.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Were some of the other leading men that you really
really thought that this was really a great battery.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
That's a difficult question. I have to go to Jack,
you know, of course, just because the great ones provide
and it's not necessarily because you notice how great they're being.
It's just that they're there for you. Jack did a
thing in Preatsy's where I come out of the wedding
scene and my father's been a real asshole to me,
(43:15):
and and I'm crying and Jack offers me his handkerchief. Now,
you know, an audience doesn't really know what that means
at that time, but he gave me the opportunity to
blow my nose really loud. You know, it's a comedy,
that's what it is. It's somebody who you can work
(43:35):
off with, who you have that kind of repartee. I
had it with Cusack and the Grifters.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
It's it's it's nice when you play, when you play
with someone that hits the ball.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Back, Oh, absolutely bad.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
And Cusack, who is kind of an enigma to me.
He falls into that category of these preternaturally talented men,
young leading men and brilliant actor while he was young. Yeah,
you know, it's a great thing to be able to
put the Rubik's cube together while you still have the
shine on you of the youth and beauty. And he's
(44:10):
a very very talented guy who then all of a
sudden he doesn't look like he really wants to work
very much.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I'm not saying you would be missing. It's interesting to
me how he did a row of great films and
then it's kind of like he couldn't It was almost
like he couldn't find anything he liked.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, he burned out a bit. I mean, he was
amazing in that movie. I was completely mesmerized by him.
I was mesmerized by Anette Benning too. I have to
say when I went in to read, Martin Scorsese and
Stephen were producing the film as well as Stephen was
directing it, and it was my instinct that I should
(44:45):
be a blonde. But I didn't put on a wig
to go for the meeting. I thought that was a
bit on the nose. So I just wore a very
suggestive dress and you know, went in and within the
first ten minutes Stephen said, what if you were a blonde?
And I thought, he gets it, He gets it, He
gets me cool.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Did your dad, because of his great, great career, did
he have film that he was really the most proud of, Like,
what did he feel was his best work?
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Well? I think he had a special regard for Treasure
of Sarah Andre because of his dad, because he brought
his dad to an Academy award. And I think it's
like the best performance in movies. Frankly, if you haven't
seen that movie in a while and you you relook
at that movie, it's magical, that performance. And I think
(45:43):
his direction to his father was speak fast, honest, men,
speak fast.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'd sit there with my friends whenever we were huddled
around in the wee hours we since the party was over,
and you knew that men were going to fall asleep.
I turned them. I'd say, what's three times thirty five
thousand dollars about you? One hundred and five thousand dollars?
You fall asleep before I do, I'd say, beauguard around
the fabulous one of the greatest movies ever made. You
(46:12):
directed one movie? Correct?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Three?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
What was the first one you directed?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
It was called Bastard out of Carolina.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
What was it that propelled you to want to get
behind the camera take on that job?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Well, I'd always wanted to direct, and it so happened
that the director fell out of the movie and I
was offered it over a weekend literally, and my agent
knew that I was interested in directing something. We didn't
quite know what it would be, and I read the
script and I really liked it.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Did you enjoy the process?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I loved it?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
You did? Oh?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I loved it?
Speaker 1 (46:46):
What about it?
Speaker 2 (46:49):
The first morning I went to my trailer and my
heart was beating, and I was waiting and waiting and
waiting for the knock on my door to call me
to set. I didn't even understand that the director. I
think that I have known a little better with John
Houston as a father. But that's how excited and out
(47:11):
of my mind I was. The part I love best
was working with the kids. Jennam alone was a brilliant
little actress and fun.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Are you going to direct another movie? You think?
Speaker 2 (47:22):
You know if I found the right thing in a way.
You know I'm lazy and that I wanted to find me.
But things do. I think when synergy works, that's how
it works.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Oh God, bless you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Actress icon Angelica Houston. She has written a captivating memoir
in two parts, A Story Lately Told and Watched Me.
The first half covers her childhood and teenage years in
Ireland and England, while the second half is a romp
through her day is on the modeling circuit and in Hollywood.
(48:03):
Both are told with emotional depth and graceful humor, and
I can't recommend them highly enough. I'm Alec Baldwin and
this is here's the thing
Host
Alec Baldwin
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