Nobody can accuse Kim Basinger of not speaking her mind. The sexiest mouth in showbiz mouths off about what's Hollywood, and how she plans to build her own entertainment empire in the sticks.
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There are stars who look unbelievably gorgeous on screen but seem positively ordinary when you see them in person. Kim Basinger is not among them. With her riot of blonde hair, luminous skin, and voluptuous figure, she's awesome in the flesh. But another quality, initially eclipsed by her beauty, begins to emerge as you talk with her - a quality that can only be described as a certain recklessness. She seems capable of doing almost anything. Like posing nude in Playboy. Or standing in front of the world's largest television audience and reprimanding the members of the Academy (who after all are her employers) for not nominating Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing as the best picture of the year. And if you think that's a hard act to follow, keep listening. She has plans to become the head of a major film and recording studio in a town she's bought in rural Georgia, near to where she grew up. She's about to release a record album, and take on a second career as a singer. She intends to become everything she's ever dreamed of becoming - because she has a belief system that says it's all possible if you believe in yourself. And no one believes in Kim more than Kim does.
Basinger grew up a shy girl in a large family, and she was full of contradictions: she believed that if she spoke in public she would lose consciousness, and once when she was called upon to read in class, she did faint; yet she was a school cheerleader, and says she's known "ever since she was three" that she wanted to be in show biz. Her father convinced her to enter a local Junior Miss contest - and she won. After becoming the "Breck Shampoo Girl" of 1970, she went to New York, became a big-time model, made a ton of money, and quit to become an actress. She started in television, doing things like "Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold," and got offers to do sit-corns, but she wanted the movies. Her first film was called Hard Country, with Jan-Michael Vincent, which not many people saw. Then she did The Man Who Loved Women with Burt Reynolds, The Natural with Robert Redford, Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery, Fool for Love with Sam Shepard, Blind Date with Bruce Willis, the cause celebre 9 1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke, Nadine with Jeff Bridges, and Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Now she's playing a singer in Neil Simon's The Marrying Man with Alec Baldwin.
Basinger's been married once, to painter and makeup artist Ron Britton, for seven years. Since then she's been linked with Jon Peters, Prince, and is currently involved with Baldwin. A private woman, she doesn't like to discuss the men in her life. She will, however, talk about last year's Academy Awards outburst, her conversations with God, her father-figure gynecologist...and much, much more.
Lawrence Grobel: You haven't done an interview in a long time.
Kim Basinger: This is the first time since way before Batman.
LG: Was that the piece in Vanity Fair?
KB: I don't want to talk about Vanity Fair, because there were so many misquotes. I've got stacks of stuff written about me in the last couple of years, some of it I haven't even been through. There's so much said about people and so much of it is bullshit.
LG: And how do you respond to this bullshit?
KB: It kind of makes me giggle, because it's humorous in a strange way. Sometimes there will be a writer who has written something so outrageous that I want to hire him for my production company, because his imagination has to be dealt with.
LG: So you don't want to kill the writers who misquote or misrepresent you?
KB: Believe me this: at the end of this road it's not, "I will kill you," it's, "You will pay for what you have written, for what you have done to people, you will pay for it, believe me!"
LG: We stand warned. And a bit surprised you're sitting still for this interview.
KB: I'm doing this because I've got albums to sell and I've got a movie [coming out].
LG: Well, at least you're honest about why you're here. So why don't we get the sales pitch over with up front. What was it like making The Marrying Man?
KB: I loved every minute of the musical sequences. I didn't enjoy the rest of it.
LG: Why not?
KB: The Marrying Man had more problems than the Book of Life, okay? There was just no limit to the creative problems and conflicts. That's why I don't want to say a word. There've been a lot of little nasty things thrown around. It's the hardest film I've ever done in my entire life. At the same time, it's been a wonderful experience because I've learned a lot from it. But what I learned is that I had to find out some of the things that I found out about certain people. It's so sad.
LG: Some of those nasty things thrown around had to do with your insulting Neil Simon about the quality of his comedy, and of your not being happy with Alec Baldwin's attractive assistant. Is there anything to that?
KB: I don't want to talk about any of my relationships with any of these people.
LG: Aren't you here to sell this picture?
KB: As far as The Marrying Man, I think it's going to be a surprise to a lot of people. Alec Baldwin is one of the most talented actors, one of the greatest musicians, one of the greatest anything! He really is a wonderful, wonderful talent. And the cast itself is really special.
LG: One of the big surprises is your singing. Do you think you'll open people's eyes, a la Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys?
KB: I don't know how people are going to accept [my singing], but it was the most revealing thing I've ever done for myself. And it's a true gift to my father, because he grew up in the Big Band era. I sent him a tape of the soundtrack and he said, "I've waited for this for 30 years."
LG: It was your father who literally pushed you into the public eye when you were a teenager. How terrified were you of appearing in public?
KB: I was very, very shy. When I was at school I had a terrible problem-I could never read out loud in front of anybody without passing out. My mother had to call my teachers and say, "Please don't call on her in class." They really protected me. Then in the fifth grade I was called upon to read and I actually fainted. I remember standing up there and the kids laughing.
LG: You didn't like school, then?
KB: I just absolutely, totally hated school. It was like a prison to me. I just could not stand that structured, absolute disciplined way of having to deal with life. I was gone.
LG: Are we talking here about an unhappy childhood with a heavy fantasy life?
KB: Absolutely. But it wasn't really fantasy to me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: I wanted to be in show business; I wanted to sing. I just knew it was all going to happen. I wanted everything yesterday.
LG: How young were you when you knew all of this?
KB: Three years old. I remember when my daddy took me to register for school. We stayed about four hours and I remember asking him, "You mean we have to go back there again on Monday?" I thought that was it, that was school, now let's get on with it. My father looked at me and said, "You have to go back there for the whole year." Like every day!
LG: Isn't there anything about school you remember with fondness?
KB: One of the greatest memories of my life was the way the black girls danced in the bathroom and in the halls, so alive and free-spirited. I grew up on soul music. I was a dancing little creep. A lot of people say to me, "Are you country? Do you like country?" I never grew up with country music in my life. I never heard of country music until I moved to New York. I learned about black music.
LG: How were your grades?
KB: I almost didn't pass anything. It's pretty hard to fail study hall, you've [just] got to show up. I was put in the D class with some of these guys who I ended up loving, they were just hanging on the outskirts of life. There were the hoodlums, there were the absolute extinctions - they made paper airplanes, they played games. And I was a cheerleader.
LG: Sounds like an idea for a TV show.
KB: I've got this going in my production company right now, as a pilot. And I'm going to handpick these kids.
LG: What did your parents think of you as a kid?
KB: My parents thought I was crazy. But I never was a rebel, I just did things my own way. I've just always believed you can get anything you want in this life, anything you want. Don't tell me it cannot be done. There's no such word as impossibility. So they thought, on that note, I'm a crazy woman, crazy little girl, crazy. Because people are so socially structured to follow a pattern.
LG: And your pattern was...?
KB: [Figuring out] how I was going to get out of there!
LG: And what did you wish for once you got out?
KB: For clarity, so I wouldn't get bored after I got all the things that I wanted. Clarity keeps you from boredom. See, fame and fortune really look great from afar, but after you've accomplished that you say, God, give me something else, give me clarity, because power games are power games....
LG: All of which you would eventually learn. But when you were still in school, weren't there more important things...boyfriends, for instance?
KB: My boyfriend was the idea of getting out. That was his name. Getting Out. Bye-Bye was his name.
LG: You've said that you had a childhood where you saw too much. What did you mean?
KB: My parents were very, very young and had their own sets of problems. They had five kids and we had two that were with us, so we had seven kids. If you put me under the scrutinizing eye of a psychologist he would say, "This child was never allowed to be a child, because she was too involved with her mother's and her father's and everybody's problems in the house."
LG: And then along came the Athens Junior Miss Contest.
KB: My father knew what a singer he thought I was and also how much I loved music. I could imitate anybody as a kid. But I said, "Daddy, I don't know whether I can do this. I might get up there and die." And he said, "I promise you, you get up there and you won't die." Then he got this woman to be my accompanist during all the rehearsals. I did My Fair Lady, the whole cockney accent, then segued right into "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." That night when I did it, all I cared about was, God, please help me make it through without dying. And after I did it there was no applause, just silence. Because here I was a senior in high school and I never talked at all. Then they stood up and started clapping. I didn't care about the applause, I wanted to find the curtain to get off the stage, because I was back into reality. I thought, "Am I dead? Is it over?" But I'll be honest with you: with all I've accomplished in my life - and I've just scratched the surface, I'm just starting to do everything, I have so much more to do and I know I'll accomplish everything I want to - nothing will be as exciting as the night that I finished singing at the Junior Miss contest and did not die.
LG: Did you move away right after high school?
KB: Oh, I left. I absolutely left. I just My daddy took me to the airport and I was gone.
LG: How did you wind up living with Eileen Ford, one of the top modeling agents in New York?
KB: Well, I'd won the Athens Junior Miss contest, which was sponsored by Breck, and I went to New York as a Breck Girl and I had to meet all the Vogue and Mademoiselle and Glamour and Seventeen editors. I had wanted to meet Eileen Ford and she asked me to come and stay with her and work with her agency.
LG: Did you like modeling?
KB: No, not at all. I was probably the worst model that ever lived. I made a lot of money though, mostly for magazines and commercials.
LG: What did you do with all that money?
KB: Put it all in my pocketbook. I didn't even have a bank account. I walked around with $25,000 checks. I went to buy a TV one day in this hardware store and I gave the guy this $25,000 check. He said, "You're walking around with a check with your name on the back of it, endorsed?" He led me to the Bank of America. Thank God for people like that!
LG: Did you have any really bad experiences as a model?
KB: Yeah, but I won a lot of battles and I won the war. Modeling was just a road to get to another place. You'd walk into these big rooms with all these girls speaking English and they'd start talking in French and Spanish and Italian and I thought, please help me God, this is just not where I want to be. I wanted to be an actress. I've never been comfortable with a mirror. One day I just left it, like I do everything.
LG: Where'd you go?
KB: In a Jeep. I had a boyfriend and we came out to California. I gave up modeling that day I left.
LG: Did you find an agent when you got to L.A.?
KB: My boyfriend had an agent and I met him and I fell in love with the agent and he fell in love with me. I used to go with him and sit on the lot at Twentieth Century Fox or whatever. He would come out to the car and say, "You are perfect for this role, perfect, now get in here." I'd say, "I'm not walking in there, I don't know what to do."
LG: But you learned.
KB: When I first came out here, it was so funny, my boyfriend went in to audition for something and I got the part. That's when it all started. I got a pilot on television.
LG: Had you ever studied acting?
KB: In New York I studied voice at the Vocal Arts Foundation. Somebody wanted me to be an opera singer but I was totally into soul music, black music. I studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse for a while, but that was basically a bore. It was totally to get confidence, that's all it was. Basically you have it or you don't. I don't think you learn that.
LG: A lot of actors would disagree with you: Brando, Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman, they all studied acting.
KB: Well, to each his own.
LG: Brando believes that everybody acts, no matter what their profession.
KB: That's exactly right. Everybody's playing a part. Life's a Milton Bradley game.
LG: And the part you were initially asked to play was in television. What did you learn there?
KB: I was asked continually to do episodic television, a sitcom, an hour's drama. I learned so quickly, it was the fastest education any kid could ever get. And I learned that I didn't want to do that.
LG: Didn't you also turn down "Charlie's Angels"?
KB: I could have been the Angels' little sister. But it was a mess. I did one segment-"Angels in Chains"-and it became a classic "Charlie's Angels." But I just knew I wanted to do film and I wanted to sing. Real simple.
LG: Simple for you, perhaps. Or was it? Your first film was Hard Country.
KB: A good experience because it was a real lesson in what was to come and things I had to learn. The distribution was crummy. When you do your first feature film, if you feel like you did a pretty good job you want everybody in the world to see it, and hardly anybody saw it. So I learned about disappointment.
LG: You also met Ron Britton, whom you would marry, at that time. Was it love at first sight?
KB: I don't really want to talk about that. That was just a friendship and it's over and that's that.
LG: That's a pretty abrupt wrap on a seven-year marriage.
KB: He was a public figure in his own right, he was an artist, but we were basically friends and it segued into a marriage that it should never have been. It's terrible to turn around and say you never knew someone, but you don't. We never really had a marriage the way I know marriage, when two people really jointly love each other and they grow and they work and they care and they are everything. It was not my idea to do this.
LG: Did you find it too confining?
KB: I didn't find it confining because I never lived like I was married. Not to say that I lived like I was unmarried and went out with other men, that was not the point.
LG: Did you feel like you were being let out of a cage after your divorce?
KB: Oh absolutely. The real me never existed inside that union. It was a sad situation. I'm not saying poor little me - that's what happened. It was a choice and a bad choice.
LG: Are you friends with your ex-husband?
KB: No. I don't know him at all. I never knew him.
LG: During this time you made your first successful movie, the James Bond picture Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery. How bad an experience was it?
KB: Up until then it was the worst experience I'd had because it took such a long time to shoot. The director and myself didn't get along. It was not only creative differences. I'm not here to call people names, [but] it was a very tough situation and even Sean Connery will tell you it's one of the worst. Well, he took everybody to court. He's quite a character. It was a bad experience.
LG: Do you find the movie business in general one bad experience after another?
KB: Not really. I've had some creative problems with certain people in certain areas. I've experienced deceit and absolute treachery. I've learned there are some big powers in this town - I don't want to say who - that hire people that they can keep down, because they're such little people themselves. A lot of them are not creative people, they have no interest in anything but themselves and in power and money. They hire little people so they can keep them squashed down in the corner and beat them up, just beat them to pieces. And then they hire a lot of actors and actresses who, no matter how big a name they have, can be beaten to hell. The psychological makeup of a lot of actors is that they are weak people. They are weak because they are childlike and you can control them. It's all about control.
LG: You sound cynical.
KB: No, I'm not cynical at all. I think that's just cancerous, cynicism. I just need to hold all the knowledge I'm learning. And what I've learned in this last year is devastating to me as a child and as a woman. I am a very highly creative and experienced person. I know what my abilities are and people will know what my abilities are, and they can judge for themselves. After that, certain things will be undeniable. I actually feel sorry for the people who I found out about. It's going to be a terrible truth for them on the way down.
LG: Are you talking mostly about studio executives?
KB: Actors and actresses are the only ones with an ounce of creativity in them. Bad directors, bad production people, it's really sad what people don't know about Hollywood. After we finish this interview I'll take you aside and tell you some things you won't believe about some of these people.
LG: Will this be part of that book you could write called Tricks in Hollywood?
KB: The title of my book has always been Between Action and Cut. Because that's all I care about. That's the only part of this business that I condone. But it's so sad how many people in this town have no training, they just have rich daddies or rich mommies. It's that old Hollywood story. The money and the power that's been handed down. How pathetic!
LG: So who are the people you like to work with?
KB: I love truly talented people who aren't bullshitters. I enjoyed immensely working with Robert Benton because of his integrity and because he's so absolutely and ultimately talented.
LG: How about Robert Altman?
KB: Loved him. Altman's a big rebel bear. He might scratch you, you might have little ins and outs, but Altman either likes you or he doesn't. It's real simple with him, and he's not a bullshitter.
LG: Did you get along with Jack Nicholson when you made Batman?
KB: Oh, I loved Nicholson. I'm not a fan of anybody's but I think he's done some wonderful performances. He's not afraid to do anything, so that's cool with me. But it was hard, it was tough. Jack and all the producers made money. Peters-Guber, they made money. And Warner Bros., of course, made money. But none of the rest of us made anything. We got raped, everybody did. It was a rape deal, it really was.
LG: You and Jon Peters were rumored to have been an item at the time. You called Jon a catalyst who shook up something inside of you. Can you talk about him?
KB: Jon is very street-wise, he makes things happen. He was a friend. He's also a chance-taker and I like that. He's willing to take you on. I looked at Jon Peters and I said, "There is something lacking from this script." If you knew the truth about Batman you would faint. So I said, "We've got to make this into a love story." And we spent hours and hours looking at film and me showing him film about things that should be. We had a lot of problems on Batman and I'd go home at night and write over the weekend. Jack Nicholson just came in and wanted to work every day, he wasn't about to be part of the writing team on this. He was thinking about The Two Jakes. And Michael Keaton had done four films in a row and he was exhausted out of his mind. I got to know [director] Tim Burton pretty well, and Tim didn't want to write this. He had enough problems. The magnitude of this film was unbelievable. But I saw a lot that was missing from Batman. I saw the reconstruction work that should be done. I've rewritten a lot of the stuff I've done in movies, so I just rewrote a lot of this crap, period.
LG: Did you consider asking for a writing credit?
KB: No, I didn't. I learned a lot from Batman. I learned about being screwed and I learned about how not to ever get screwed again. I have got seventeen projects in the works in my own production company, most of which I have written myself. I don't need somebody patting me on the back about credit. I just want to see things done. And I want to see the right people getting the right money.
LG: Speaking of money, you and some partners plunked down a considerable amount to buy Braselton, the town near Athens, Georgia, where you grew up. What possessed you to do that?
KB: I know I have to develop this area. It just came to me as clear as anything. I said, "I'll buy it." Then I looked up at God when I was there and I said, "God, you know what I did?" And this voice went, "Yes, we know." And I said, "Okay, are you going to help me?" "Absolutely." So I said, "Fine." So I bought this town to develop to build a major studio there. I've got a big job ahead of me.
LG: Is it going to be anything like Dolly Parton's Dollywood?
KB: This is not Dollywood at all. No offense to Dolly. This is going to be a major, major playground. We hope to bring in a major musical park. It's going to be a huge surprise. Also I hope to build a music recording studio, seven or eight recording studios. This is the area to do it because it's so fast-growing, right on I-85 where the trucks can get off. God's little 2,800 acres. And I'm about to buy a bunch more land so it's going to be bigger.
LG: So you know what you want to do with your money.
KB: I know exactly what to do with money, because I do not have any interest in it. But I know people and I know things that need it desperately. I'm not trying to sound like Mother Teresa, I'm just saying if I had power over all the money there was, I'd know where I'd put it. I am not a things person.
LG: You posed in the nude for Playboy in 1983. What did your parents think of that particular career move?
KB: They didn't like it, just like anybody else. I'd never done anything like that in my life. I was just totally frustrated and Playboy had asked me to do that so many times. And then I needed a worldwide exposure - ha ha - I needed a film. And that served as a silent film for me throughout the world. Playboy gave me carte blanche: you pick the pictures, you do the writing, you do anything you want. It had nothing to do with money, believe me. It was just meant to happen. I don't regret it.
LG: Was it hard to do?
KB: I'm basically a shy girl. I like to underplay things. So at the time I had to reckon with the fact that it was just nudity. Now what is nudity? We're all born into this world naked. So I went through all this stuff in my head. Then finally I just said, what is it, man? I am what I am, I take a shower every day, and that's the end of that.
LG: Did it make you feel sexier than you are?
KB: Sexiness has nothing to do with all that, really. You don't play for sex, you don't pretend to be sexy, you either are or you aren't.
LG: Who's the sexiest actor on film?
KB: I am very strange who I'm attracted to and who I am not. There are guys in the movies that are sexy, very sexy. And then I pull into a gas station in Iowa and see some guy and I'll say, "You want to make more money than you're making here?"
LG: How about the sexiest actress?
KB: God, I never thought about that. That's a very hard question.
LG: Who came to mind when I asked it?
KB: Marilyn Monroe. She exuded more with a kiss from her hand to a bunch of soldiers than most women do in a whole lifetime.
LG: Do you think Monroe's beauty destroyed her in the end?
KB: I don't want to think that. I think she got out of hand. She had it all. She spent her whole life running from the legend and running back into the arms of the legend. It's as clear to me as a clock. And when you run so hard someone's always caught you before, like the arms of your own legend have always caught you. And one day the arms aren't there. That's what killed her. The legend wasn't there to catch her the last time around.
LG: Have you ever felt particularly close to Monroe in any way?
KB: When I came to this town I didn't know anybody. I needed a gynecologist and I remember reading a People magazine and a doctor was mentioned there. Can you imagine getting a doctor from this? This is why I believe that for certain points in your life God just leads you to certain things. So I saw this gentleman, he was an old man, now dead. To make a long story short, we got to be very, very close friends for the last years of his life. And he was Marilyn's doctor up until she died. He was the one who pulled her through the pregnancy and the loss of her children. He told me, "I want you to be careful in whatever you do and whatever you go through. This is a very hard place, these people aren't sweet, they aren't nice people." He didn't talk about Marilyn much. He said, "I always warned Marilyn about drugs and alcohol - that's what messed her up. I tried a million times."
LG: And have you heeded his warning?
KB: Oh, I've tried things, we've all tried things, but I was never, ever a heavy user in anything. After a while you just see so much demise and it's boring.
LG: One thing that's definitely not boring to you is kissing. You've been quoted as saying it's the chanciest thing you can do.
KB: It's the most intimate thing. It's the tell-tale thing of anything, sexually. Tons of people have sex and there are all kinds of ways to have sex, sex, sex...but really to have to face-to-face...mouths are neat things, mouths are sweet, even on babies, mouths are beautiful. I have great respect for every part of the body, believe me! This is a funny conversation! But other parts of the body just don't seem so intimate as that. And so revealing...and so free.
LG: Have you ever kissed someone whom you felt so connected with, that your tongues seemed two pieces of one puzzle, and your mouths fit as if they were a single unit?
KB: Yes, absolutely! YES!!! YES!!! [laughing] Boy, I'd like to be a fly on the wall to watch you ask that question to other people you've interviewed. And that's the end of that question.
LG: I've never asked that question before.
KB: Well, that's my answer: YES!!!
**LG: If a UFO landed and offered to take you away, would you go? **
KB: Definitely. Absolutely.
LG: Do you believe they are out there?
KB: Absolutely.
LG: So Close Encounters must be among your favorite films?
KB: Being There is my favorite film of all time. That and Amadeus and The Little Mermaid.
LG: What about your own favorite films?
KB: I have favorites. 9 1/2 Weeks and Nadine, because they did special things for me.
LG: 9 1/2 Weeks did special things to a lot of us. I hear the outtakes make the final cut seem tame.
KB: It went as far as anybody would take it but I've got the 14 hours on tape. What everybody else saw is sort of the MTV version.
LG: Was that film like a psychological rollercoaster for you?
KB: Oh man, beyond. Also we were wiped out, Mickey and I, physically, emotionally. I'm an actress, so when they say "Action" I put on the high heels and I go to work, and when I get in my trailer it's over for me. But 9 1/2 Weeks followed me around all the time, because I was so emotionally attached to it.
LG: There's talk about a sequel.
KB: Let there be talk.
LG: There was also talk about your appearance at the Oscars last year, when you reprimanded the Academy for ignoring Spike Lee and his Do the Right Thing. What made you do it?
KB: Never wanted to do it, never intended on doing it. I don't know what happened to me. I'd seen Do the Right Thing three times and I'm affected by certain films. I don't put anybody up in the high sheets of God's clouds for any reason, but I saw Do the Right Thing and the one thing that I really condone is the truth. Whatever truth is, let it come out. I don't care if you're going to get tarred and feathered. They can kill you but they can't eat you. So on top of my horrifying, terrifying, out-of-my-mind fear, this was the biggest audience we were ever going to have on the face of the map. This is like getting up in front of one billion people. The room is pretty big, as Billy Crystal would say. So I said let's let the truth get out more than it's been getting out lately. I saw all of these nominated films and I saw that Spike Lee, who I hadn't even met, had done the truest film of all. Take Driving Miss Daisy - I saw something that I've seen ever since I was a child, the depiction of something about the South that has always irritated me, okay? This is something I couldn't stand. I wasn't standing up for blacks or whites or any color, I was just saying, "Guys, you all are liars, you are leaving out another truth here." I didn't mean for it to be a shocking thing.
LG: Nonetheless, you did raise some eyebrows. What reaction did you receive?
KB: When I came off stage there wasn't a word. I just ran back and stripped off that gown, because it was taking up four seats in the audience, and I had to sit through the rest of this. And I'd see people looking at me. I passed Dan Aykroyd and he was shocked. When I sat down I looked to the left of me and in that whole auditorium who would be sitting at the end of my row but Spike Lee and he passed a note all the way down to me saying thank you. A lot of people wouldn't get near me after the Oscars. I walked across to this Governor's Ball and walked out and went home back to the hotel. No parties, no Spago, I just couldn't do anything else political. But I don't care what people think.
LG: Do you care what they think about some of the revealing dresses you wear at public occasions?
KB: To each his own. I mostly dress for me. I find myself, too, dressing for fans, because they have fun. And I love humor in this life. What does this word movie star mean, anyway? It's not medical student. It's movie star, right? So I go, God man, let's have fun in here. It's a game here, it's a party. I love clothes and I design stuff, so...get ready, it hasn't even started yet!
LG: With all that you're learning, do you have any regrets?
KB: I have no regrets, no nothing. So I'm the luckiest girl in the world. Every day in my life something extremely interesting happens. This is not a boring life I live, man.
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Lawrence Grobel is the author of The Hustons, and he interviewed Charlie Sheen for our August cover story.
Photos by: Alberto Tolot, Sidney Baldwin
Styled by: Derric Lowe for LA Moine
Hair by: Enzo Angileri/Cloutier
Makeup by: Steven Abrams