by George Wayne
GW:
What roles are you getting these days?
CH:
I’ll soon be playing Brigham Young, who is to Mormons the Moses of his day. I am also in a film with Sam Neill called In the Mouth of Madness.
GW:
You seem to be in tremendous physical shape for a senior citizen. What’s your regime?
CH:
I get up at 5:30 a.m. I read the paper, I have my toast and coffee, get in the pool, and I am out by 7:00. Then I play an hour of tennis.
GW:
Are you a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society?
CH:
Certainly not.
GW:
But your politics are extremely conservative.
CH:
My politics aren’t far from the politics of the Democratic Party in the days of Jack Kennedy, for whom I campaigned.
GW:
What are your thoughts on President Clinton?
CH:
Let’s not get into that.
GW:
Okay. Is drinking malt whiskey your only vice?
CH:
Yeah, well, I’m trying to stop that; as you grow older you have to quit all kinds of things you enjoy.
GW:
For me there is not a more glorious image than that of a young Charlton Heston in a suit of chain mail. What role is your all-time favorite?
CH:
It would either be Macbeth or Marc Antony. The great roles are always Shakespearean.
GW:
Which of your leading ladies was it hardest having screen sex with?
CH:
I don’t see any advantage in saying negative things about any of them, but I turned down a picture with Marilyn Monroe because it was just going to be too difficult.
GW:
Would you be up for a role in the sequel to Planet of the Apes?
CH:
Oliver Stone says he wants to remake it, but I don’t think I’d like to do that makeup again.
GW:
What recent films have you liked?
CH:
Many, but I’ll tell you about one film I don’t like: The Piano.
GW:
Holly Hunter didn’t impress you?
CH:
Well, first of all, we never were told why she was mute. And one must always remember that playing someone mute is a surefire road to an Academy Award nomination.
GW:
You must deal with awestruck strangers every day of your life.
CH:
I am grateful that people like my work. They’re very nice to me and I appreciate it. You have to recognize that what they are admiring in my case—I’ve played some extraordinary men. So it’s hard not to think well of Moses and John the Baptist and those guys. Of course, that is not really me, but I try to be the kind of public man that does not deflate that reputation. But it’s hard living up to Moses.
IVANA TRUMP
OCTOBER 1993
Ivana Trump, or “Godmama Ivana” as I would come to dub her over the years, grew to be a great friend and a patron of GW. But my first introduction to the grand and fabulous Ivana Trump was not in the shape or fashion I could ever have anticipated. My first introduction to Ivana Trump was back in the Big Eighties when she had her lawyers fire off a letter threatening to sue George Wayne because he had placed Ivana on his Worst-Dressed List. It’s true! Ivana Trump wanted to sue GW. I said something silly like “Ivana has tacky style and needs a fashion overhaul” or something like that and she threatened to sue me! I still have the letter from her attorneys! Next to my file with the ones from Leonardo DiCaprio and Claudia Schiffer, who also were miffed at something GW said but quickly backed down when they clearly had a baseless case. But Ivana came to warm up to GW and soon came to be christened with the moniker “Godmama Ivana.” She remains one of the most amazing people in my life. For a while there I was weekly invited to Ivana’s mansion off Fifth Avenue for gossip and Veuve Clicquot champagne before we hit the town together. Her children, Ivanka and Eric, would pop in to give her a kiss good night as we were chauffeured all over uptown and downtown—the hot spots. A lot of the time we would do dinners at Nello or Serafina, which she still loves to this day. But I will never forget my very first dinner party with Ivana. I mean how could you forget a hostess who decides to go ahead with a festive dinner party on the very same night that the forty-first president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, alerted the nation in a live press conference that he was sending America to war by invading Kuwait? Queen Bee Ivana did not care in the least and she went ahead with her fabulous dinner party, which was in the kitchen of the Plaza Hotel, which her husband Donald Trump then owned and where Ivana ruled as its grande dame. I will never forget that night—that eight-course meal in the executive kitchen with her young chef Kerry Simon and Ivana dressed to the nines with that fabulous helmet hair and Christian Lacroix couture frock and the jewels she turned out in! It was vintage Ivana!
GW:
Is it difficult being a single mother nurturing three children?
IT:
Not really, because my kids are really fabulous. They are not spoilt—they could have been, but they are not. They are my best friends.
GW:
You don’t spoil your kids?
IT:
Absolutely not. I teach them my values: not to cheat, steal, or lie, and not to take drugs and alcohol.
GW:
When will Ivana take a third husband?
IT:
I don’t know. I just got a divorce, and I’ve been through hell. I don’t need a man now for starting a family. I’m secure, and I am making my own life. I for sure don’t need a man for prestige or career.
GW:
Where did you meet your boyfriend Riccardo Mazzucchelli?
IT:
We met two years ago in London.
GW:
Is he a better lover than Donald?
IT:
Oh, you know, that’s very personal.
GW:
I heard he likes to cook you pasta.
IT:
Riccardo is a fabulous chef. I’m pretty good in the chicken paprika and goulash and all those European dishes with which you don’t lose weight; I guarantee you Riccardo is excellent on pasta.
GW:
Is Ivana a feminist?
IT:
No. I have always been following the man. I was brought up like that, but in a good sense, to look to the man for decision-making and leadership. I am not a feminist, but I feel that I am equal definitely.
GW:
I suppose you haven’t worn polyester ever since you emigrated from Czechoslovakia?
IT:
Well, I wear my polyester wet suit for scuba diving, but don’t say I haven’t worn polyester since I left Czechoslovakia—sure I do.
GW:
You have a new book, and you’ve been appearing on the Home Shopping Network. Tell me about that.
IT:
The book is a sequel to my first book and is called Free to Love. I have just given my publishers my third book, which is a how-to book called On My Own. I’ve gotten over a million letters from women asking me for advice. It gave me the idea to go and answer them. [On TV] I’m selling my signature line of cosmetics—and something called mini-lift.
GW:
Why do you think people won’t admit they’ve had plastic surgery?
IT:
I have no idea. It is not wrong or right. If you have a nose which you’ve hated all your life and you want to change it, great. If it doesn’t matter to you, that’s all right, too.
GW:
Is Ivana a woman of the nineties?
IT:
I think that you should be the judge of that. I’m contemporary. I’m the woman who wants it all.
GW:
When all was said and done Donald did finally admit that you are a “special woman.”
IT:
Well, we are very good frie
nds.
GW:
Does Ivana wear fur?
IT:
Not much, because it is being resented now. If it is a little chinchilla or a leopard or a jaguar which is endangered, that I can understand. But when you have the mink, which is grown like chicken or turkey, they are not endangered, and it wants to be worn, then I think that’s great.
GW:
Finish this sentence: Ivana be . . .
IT:
. . . a happy person.
GW:
I love you, Ivana.
KATHLEEN TURNER
APRIL 2002
Kathleen Turner was a rather shocking sight to behold the day I interviewed her. Let’s just say the Hollywood siren was looking nothing like the sultry Hollywood beauty we had grown accustomed to seeing on the big screen. She was appearing on Broadway in The Graduate, and all I kept thinking was, What is her leading man going to do when he sees the blister on his costar’s lip?
GW:
I was reading somewhere where someone called your London Mrs. Robinson a one-note performance.
KT:
Oh, rubbish. The reviews were extraordinarily wonderful. We never had an empty seat. We broke all West End records.
GW:
It should be easy trying to seduce Jason Biggs.
KT:
I haven’t been having any trouble so far.
GW:
Once upon a time your movie career was on a roll: Body Heat, Romancing The Stone, Prizzi’s Honor, The Jewel of the Nile. By the time Peggy Sue Got Married came around you were probably the most famous actress in the world.
KT:
Oh, I was the biggest box-office woman in the world then!
GW:
And then kaput! Your career went off a precipice.
KT:
Oh, you know, I really don’t understand why you talk like that! Unless you are trying to be provocative.
GW:
Let’s just face the facts, Katherine.
KT:
Kathleen! The facts are that I have continued to work nonstop.
GW:
In the nineties as compared to the eighties?
KT:
After Serial Mom—
GW:
Which—sorry—was your Mommie Dearest.
KT:
Oh, you’re wrong. Certainly in Europe it was a hugely successful film. Right after Serial Mom, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. For several years that was my major battle. I did films that were not too demanding physically. They’d told me I was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I said, “I don’t think so.” When I started to get more mobility, I came back to theater, mostly. It’s time I got back in front of the camera, but, frankly, I love the theater.
GW:
You and Betty Bacall should do a movie together, if only so we could hear the badinage between those two magical voices.
KT:
We have such fun with our low voices every time we meet. It’s like, “Good evening, Miss Bacall.” “Good evening, Miss Turner.”
GW:
Do you get recognized more by your voice than by your face?
KT:
It’s great when you want to get a reservation at a restaurant. I’ll call up and say, “Hello, this is Kathleen Turner,” and they say, “Yes, it is.”
GW:
When are you going to quit the cigarettes?
KT:
I don’t know. I guess I am going to have to someday. This character smokes, so it’s not going to be now.
GW:
What about your Tallulah Bankhead project?
KT:
We did fourteen cities since last year and it went very well. But the script still needs work. When all this is done, I will go back to Tallulah because I really loved it. She is so flamboyant and so outrageous.
GW:
How would you describe your approach to your craft?
KT:
I don’t think of myself as a method actor. A good script will give you all the information you need. Your job is to decide the thoughts to be conveyed, and the emotions to be felt—and to hit every one of those notes.
GW:
Thank you, Miss Turner, for being such a good sport.
FARRAH FAWCETT
OCTOBER 2000
In the late winter of 1998, Farrah Fawcett, America’s iconic sweetheart, seemed to be losing her mind. She’d been displaying the symptoms of a classic Hollywood celebrity meltdown with a series of erratic and bizarre public appearances. So it was rather surprising in February of that year to receive an invitation to join Farrah and Robert Duvall at a very private screening of The Apostle, a film in which both were starring. I remember going to the screener that Sunday evening in February at the Universal Screening Room in New York City and even by 8 p.m. that night—as the likes of Matt Damon, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Naomi Campbell, Michael Stipe, Billy Bob Thornton, Laura Dern, Sheryl Crow, and Ed Harris all made it from the theater to the penthouse for dinner—there was still no sign of Farrah.
The high-end Hollywood wattage had clearly all shown up that evening to see one person and she was nowhere to be found. Then, suddenly, out of seemingly thin air, the very thin image of a woman swathed in a sparkly beige dress appeared. Farrah Fawcett had finally arrived, three hours later than scheduled. She was charming, reed thin, and shaking like a leaf. And the flute of champagne never left her right hand for the entire night. Her dress, she would later tell me, was from the design house of Krizia. Farrah flitted all over the room that night. She never paused in one place for too long for anyone to approach and attempt to have a proper conversation. She was very attentive to her young son Redmond who she had dragged along to this late-night revelry.
As one would expect, that image of Farrah stayed in my mind. Even almost two years after, when I sat to interview yet another Hollywood legend for Vanity Fair. . . .
GW:
Has it become more difficult for you to deal with the attention of late? Especially the last four years, which have not been the greatest?
FF:
I think, looking back at it now, it was more difficult than I had allowed myself to feel. One thing that helped me, that I learned long ago to follow, is that you can’t believe everything they write about you, and you can’t think that everybody else believes it, or you will be devastated. It’s bad enough to have to deal with making your parents uncomfortable with ludicrous things written about you. A long time ago I learned not to place so much importance on the bad—it causes you not to place much importance on the good.
GW:
So you would say that your behavior has not been strange at all?
FF:
No, I wouldn’t say that, but my press has been stranger. I think I always act a little strange. I am more outspoken. I think I take a lot of risks. But do I think my behavior is bizarre, extreme, or strange to the point of harming myself or others? Absolutely not.
GW:
What’s your relationship with your family? Your parents in Texas can’t help but read the stories about Farrah being a druggie.
FF:
Sometimes they get a call, and my father will pick up the phone, and they’ll say, “Did you know that your daughter has gone to rehab?” And my dad would say no. And they’d say, “Yes, she had to be admitted because she tried to slit her wrists.” And the thing is, I would be standing next to him. I’ve never been in drug rehab!
GW:
Have you ever done drugs?
FF:
No. I am not a druggie. When I hear stories that I have been sitting in a parking lot doing crack cocaine—I don’t even know what crack cocaine is. I don’t even know what methamphetamines is. I wouldn’t know heroin if I saw it. I know what cocaine looks like, and I certainly know what marijuana is, but I don’t even know what Ecstasy is.
GW:
What is the acting role you are most proud of to date?
FF:
I want to say The Bur
ning Bed, because it was such a turning point in my life. Before that it was very difficult for me to get serious roles. I was sort of boxed in by my looks and previous choices and roles.
GW:
The role for which you will be most remembered is as Jill Munroe on Charlie’s Angels. You were only on the show for one year, but of all Charlie’s Angels, Farrah is still the one.
FF:
That’s right, everyone says that. I don’t know if it was because that was around the time my poster came out, and there was such an impact with the poster. And then there was my hair, and that affected so much culturally.
GW:
That red bathing suit—did you know that one website called it “the poster that stained a thousand sheets”?
FF:
I remember when I was first asked that question about that poster—“You know how many people have masturbated to that?” And I went, “No, it never occurred to me.”
GW:
Where is that red bathing suit?