My Lucky Stars

by Shirley Maclaine

  I was witnessing a true artist—a human being capable of removing himself from himself. I wanted to be able to do that. I wondered if becoming dislocated from your central identity was necessary to accomplish such a transition. If so, I knew I didn’t yet have the courage to get out of my own way and allow it to occur.

  IN NICOLAS CAGE (GUARDING TESS), I EXPECTED AN UNKEMPT, brooding, complicated, dark-spirited young man who was part of some cult even I had never heard of. This was the impression I had of him from Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. Instead I found a clean-cut, intent, and very respectful person who took his work and talent seriously and was more than fun off the set.

  I watched him wonder if he could tease me without getting admonished. I was, after all, someone he had been looking at on the screen since he was a baby. I still thought of myself as thirty, of course, but I unhappily saw him relate to me as a motion-picture maven of maturity. I wanted to have fun and let him see that I wasn’t some overrespected, ancient icon.

  He got the message, and I was so grateful that he finally began to handle me with the same sense of unremitting play that he displayed with people his own age. As a matter of fact, I think he eventually saw me as somewhat more playful and less mature than his eighteen-year-old girlfriend! That made me feel so good, happy, and comfortable. The day he said, “You really have a crush on me, don’t you?” I wanted to kiss him, but not for the reasons he might think.

  GENE HACKMAN (POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE) IS AN ACTOR I’ve always found romantically attractive. In fact, I told him so. Some years ago, at a party, he walked into a room and came over to me. There was a captivating sexuality about the way he did it. Sometimes a man’s walk speaks volumes more than his words, and a woman’s words speak more than her actions. I would have changed that if he’d have made the slightest suggestion.

  PAUL NEWMAN (WHAT A WAY TO GO) IS A REALLY PLEASANT, but reticent friend. In real life, I’ve always had the feeling he wished he were somewhere else … racing cars probably. He enjoys speed and defying gravity. I watched him drink nearly a case of beer a day, do hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups, and after a steam bath, look as lean and trim as if he had been on a fast. Paul was a method actor back then with questions like “I need to know whether my character makes love with, his boots on or not.” When I suggested he probably made love to his boots, we got the scene.

  Paul was one of the first actors to display political acumen and courage in his campaign for Gene McCarthy in 1972. He debated Charlton Heston on the evils of nuclear testing and won. He became a stable and well-informed voice for the moderate left of the Democratic party, I admire his social conscience, but more, I have deep respect for his graceful approach to aging, the longevity of his career, and the solidity of his marriage. He is a man who has defied all of the pitfalls of Hollywood.

  RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, NOW LORD ATTENBOROUGH (The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom), is a man of true gentility and style. His talents extend far beyond acting, and when we worked together in 1966, his mind and heart were already occupied with a picture he would ultimately direct, Gandhi. He wanted me to play Margaret Bourke-White. He was obsessed with putting the life of Gandhi on screen and talked continually about it. I wondered if I would ever feel that much committed passion for a project. He was turned down for twenty years by every studio in town, and when he finally got the money to realize his vision, I was too old to play the part. Candice Bergen did it. In Attenborough’s (Dickie as we all called him) work, I saw a way to artfully entertain people while giving them a sociopolitical perspective on life.

  As an Englishman who admits to guilt and responsibility for so much of his country’s past, he is ennobling and not afraid of seeming sentimental in his unabashed liberal point of view. He seems to want to wipe the slate clean and put the past right.

  When I saw Cry Freedom, I wept at his unrelenting courage, and when he failed with A Chorus Line, I learned that he needed to comprehend the authenticity of a given group of people more thoroughly in order for their universality to be felt by an audience.

  How could he as an Englishman ever hope to get into the universe of a gypsy from Manhattan? Even Fosse would have had trouble—which he knew, by the way, because he turned the picture down. But Dickie, bless his soul, saw dancers as a metaphor for all human beings.

  • • •

  MICHAEL CAINE (GAMBIT) WAS A COCKNEY ACTOR; I HAD liked him in The Ipcress File. He tickled me with his dry, sardonic wit, and I asked him if he’d come to America and star with me in Gambit.

  He came all right and cut a swath through the single girls in Hollywood like a rocket with no resistance.

  He’d report for work after a hard night’s play, stagger into his trailer, blast his Beatles records up to hyper-space, and try to get some sleep. Michael was funny about his Hollywood escapades. He was most confused by American panty hose. He couldn’t figure a way to get into them, around them, or through them. I suggested he hang himself with them.

  Michael is the actor who works more than any other in our business. He takes a part and finds a laugh at every corner. I’m so glad he never forgot his humble beginnings because that memory is the reason for the audience’s continued identification with him. I will always feel proprietary about him because I brought him to America.

  WORKING WITH PETER SELLERS ON BEING THERE STRETCHED even my imagination.

  It began on Valentine’s Day when we were on location in Asheville, North Carolina. I received five dozen red roses from an anonymous person, but I knew they were from Peter. We adored working together and enjoyed a common interest in metaphysics, numerology, past lives, and astrology. However, Peter could operate on the cusp of reality rather than in the full center of it. For example, the day after I received his roses I thanked him profusely, but he refused to acknowledge that they were from him. Taken aback, I called every possible man in my life to thank him, and found all of them to be honest and apologetic. Peter still refused to acknowledge his sweet gesture. Nor would he ever accept my invitation to lunch or dinner or anything personal for that matter. He did, however, tell me in detail of his love affairs with Sophia Loren and Liza Minnelli. I wondered about his lack of discretion but sometimes found his reenactments very funny.

  A few months after our location, when filming was complete, I ran into a very prominent producer and his wife who asked me with a wink whether I had enjoyed my time with Peter. I didn’t understand the innuendo and simply said our relationship had been a little detached personally but fine.

  “What do you mean, detached?” she pried. “Come on, we know you and Peter had a fling.”

  My mind raced.

  “A fling?” I asked. “He wouldn’t even have a meal off the set with me.”

  The producer shook his head in disbelief. “Oh,” he said. “Peter used to tell me many things about the joys of the love affair he was having with you. In fact, I’ve been in his presence when he was whispering sweet nothings to you on the telephone.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Then he was whispering to a dial tone,” I said. I explained about the roses, the refused lunch and dinner invitations, and his total immersion in the character of Chauncey Gardiner in the film.

  The producer nodded his head knowingly.

  “I see,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “See what?” I asked.

  “Well,” he went on, “Peter had fantasized a reality with you that would have been shattered had there been personal and real contact off the set. He needed the reality of life to be separate from his fantasy.”

  It made sense. Sometime later I ran into Sophia. She told me the same thing had happened with her. “I know the men I’ve slept with,” she said. “And Peter, bless his phantasmagorical mind, was not one of them.”

  The relationship with Liza seemed to be true, however.

  I remember our last day’s shoot together. We were sitting in the backseat mock-up of a limousine. Peter had been to a numerologist the night before.
Looking into my eyes, he told me that the numerologist had warned him that his wife’s numbers didn’t match his own numbers. Peter was clearly most concerned about this information. I didn’t realize then what was really happening in his head.

  Within the next few weeks, he divorced his wife. Later, when I realized the fantasy he’d harbored about me, I felt somewhat responsible.

  Peter was an actor extraordinaire. He inhabited his various characters in such a deep way that, I now believe, they came from his past life experience and inhabited him.

  GEORGE C. SCOTT (THE YELLOW ROLLS-ROYCE) WAS ADDICTED to chess. Perhaps he was using it as inspiration for his character (a gangster)—I don’t know. I couldn’t find out because he never talked. We starred together for a few months and never exchanged more than a “good morning,” if that. He was very much in character, impeccable with his lines, but he talked only to his makeup man, George would wander over to him after every camera setup to complete the chess move he must have decided in his mind during our take.

  George and I have become friendly since our picture together, and he doesn’t even remember that we worked together really, which proves to me once again that a working relationship and a personal one do not necessarily overlap or coincide in any way. An actor’s emotions are not grounded or even sound-minded when he or she is working. It’s as though they belong to the character rather than to the actor. Often actors or actresses can look back at their behavior on a film and deny their actions. Their memories are faulty because they were, in effect, operating from an altered perception of reality.

  I FOUND THE SAME TO BE TRUE WITH ANTHONY HOPKINS. We did a film together called A Change of Seasons. He was insecure about playing comedy. Hopkins couldn’t find a comedy rhythm that satisfied him in the picture and came to me for help.

  I found myself harking back to the lessons of energy I learned from Fosse. I tried to be sensitive to Tony’s needs, fully cognizant of what an extraordinary actor he was (and is).

  We talked for a long time, and when he left my trailer I thought we had found an important level of professional communication. But I must have read something wrong; there was something in him I missed. Perhaps I was “too” helpful in my suggestions for comedy to a brilliant dramatic actor. I was confused and sad to see that Tony retreated and basically didn’t talk to me for five weeks. When we did our scenes together, the director had to interpret what we wished to say to each other. Our relationship became tense and subtly hostile. I didn’t like Tony and he didn’t like me. He thought I was aggressive, opinionated, insensitive, and in general obnoxious. I felt the same way about him.

  We played a husband and wife who had a silent war going on between them as each pursued an extramarital affair, so our real-life behavior was not without merit, yet this way of living inside a character is, as I’ve said, a technique I find difficult to work with or sustain. It feels self-indulgent to me. That is my problem, of course, not that of my partners, who might find it necessary and contributive to work that way. Perhaps it means I don’t commit totally to the project. Whereas some actors are willing to give their lives over in totality, I insist on holding on to my center and my ego so that I know who I am after six o’clock.

  I spoke to Dickie Attenborough about Hopkins, wondering if the problem was something I misunderstood in the English character and culture.

  “No,” he said, “when I directed him in Magic, he was brilliant, but the same thing happened, wouldn’t talk to me for weeks. But he’ll come to you one morning on bended knee and ask your forgiveness. He’s really okay, you know.”

  I appreciated that conversation, and just as he predicted, about halfway through the film Tony came to me with tears in his eyes and apologized. I accepted, apologized myself for not understanding, and we were fine. He said he didn’t know why he broke communication and I believed him. Tony’s personality was so multidimensional that sometimes he must have gotten lost in his various moods. I didn’t understand that completely because I’m not capable of giving my own dimensionality full range as an actor. I’m not as good an actor as Hopkins. Perhaps that is why I was so judgmental of his acting approach. But to me, personal, real-life communication was the top priority, I didn’t feel that the end justified the means. The process of the experience was supposed to be where the learning lay. But I couldn’t figure out what I was meant to learn from what was happening.

  I’d glance over at Hopkins, sitting in a chair, eyes closed, deep within himself, either preparing for a scene or literally existing somewhere else. He had not talked to me for weeks. The crew shouted orders around him, the makeup person touched up his face, hair and wardrobe people fiddled with strands and lint, and Tony never moved. He was focused within on something beyond my comprehension, and as much as it irritated me, I was awed by it. I wanted to understand what was going on, but even with his apology I felt shut out. When the film ended and we parted, so much was unresolved for me. I wondered if he felt the same way. There was nothing I could do to force an understanding. I’d have to accept things as they were.

  Then, years later, I saw Tony’s frightening performance as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, I thought back to our experience together. His capacity to scale the ranges of human behavior was unparalleled. I dreamed of him that night. The next day we were on the same plane together. We acknowledged each other but didn’t talk. Two days later, we were placed next to each other at an awards luncheon in California. We posed for pictures together, whispering that the photographers had no idea how phony our smiles were.

  We spoke in general terms about movies, acting, our film together, a few old times … but we said nothing that addressed our problems together, nothing of substance. I still felt unsatisfied, but I was glad we were finally getting along. He was elusive yet pleasant and so was I.

  A few years after that, I was at a party in Hollywood. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tony moving around graciously and happily from guest to guest. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I knew I needed to speak to him … to tell him how extraordinary his work had been in Remains of the Day and Shadowlands.

  Without thinking, I walked up to him, touched his arm, and told him how much I admired not only his recent work on the screen but his blazing honesty in the interviews he had been giving. He had talked so candidly about his drinking days and the discomfort he realized he had caused others. I congratulated him also on the freedom he seemed to have achieved in his soul, which left him open to portray his screen and stage characters with no inhibiting restrictions or blockages. His eyes filled with gratitude and appreciation. He took my hands. “Yes,” he said, “I’m different now than I was during the time with you.” His expression was deep yet filled with a kind of reverent joy.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You’ve found something. Do you mind my asking what it is?”

  He reared his head back and laughed. The laugh was completely unaffected, as though no agenda was hidden underneath it. I remembered seeing the Dalai Lama laugh like that. I couldn’t understand the total freedom in that musical sound and sparkling smile. It was the “laugh of the charismatic” that I had read about. The laugh that surpasses all logical reason and seems to come from some divine source.

  “Look,” said Tony, taking one of my hands in his. “You know how I have suffered from my insecurities and anxieties, anger, rage, and so on.” I nodded.

  “And,” he went on, “I stopped drinking and joined AA and got into the twelve-step program. I seemed to search futilely for what they called my higher power, but I couldn’t find it. I was miserable, continually upset with myself and everyone else, even though I had a support system and I was sober.”

  Tony hesitated. “You won’t think I’m crazy?” he asked.

  “Me?” I answered. “You’re asking me if I’ll think an experience of yours is crazy? Hardly.”

  He relaxed and proceeded to tell me about an experience he had had during a five-day break from shooting on location in Colorado. He had gotte
n in his car and driven north. He said he didn’t know where he was going and didn’t care.

  Soon he found himself at Bear Lake. He sat beside the lake, wondering what life was ail about, when suddenly he looked up.

  “It was incredible,” he said. “There were two hawks flying overhead. Suddenly they weren’t moving. They stopped in midair. In fact, time stopped. Nothing moved.”

  As he spoke he seemed to be reliving the experience so intently that I could see the lake, the hawks, the sky, the stop-frame of time.

  “Then,” he said, “it happened. A feeling of complete knowingness came over me. I was everything around me. Everything around me was me. I understood emotionally and spiritually for the first time what it was like to feel one with everything. It lasted no longer than a few seconds, but it was so profoundly moving that I knew my life was altered forever.”

  Tony looked into my eyes, wondering at my reaction, I felt my eyes fill with tears. “I wish that would happen to me,” I said. “I understand it intellectually, but I’ve never experienced it emotionally.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know you’ve been searching for that. Maybe you’re searching too hard.”

  He was right. My search could be so relentless that I might walk right by what I had found.

  “Did it stay with you?” I asked.

  Tony laughed that laugh again. “At first,” he said, “I thought, Well, I’ve had a mystical experience, that’s all. It’ll be over in a few hours. But no. First I broke down and sobbed, then I laughed for an hour, then I cried again. I was everything and I felt everything. Then a voice inside of me said, ‘Now get on with it. You’ve found this. Get on with your life.’ I guess I got on with it, and now I laugh most of the time.”