The Look: Theresa Russell

Russell has taken center stage in all five films she's done for Roeg--films as disturbing and intriguing as they are unknown to the public. Where else would she be able to climb that far out on the edge--by herself? "I find that area mysterious and fascinating," Russell tells me. "The darker side of the psyche and the libido." I ask her about Physical Evidence, a bad Burt Reynolds cop movie in which she seemed (to me anyway) ill-at-ease in the guise of a strait-laced district attorney. "Everyone was doing a different film on that one," she says with a laugh. "I knew that the second week into it." When Physical Evidence, along with the Sondra Locke-directed cop thriller Impulse--films which had commercial potential--bombed at the box office, Russell took herself out to the edge again, and into the waiting arms of Ken Russell.

In Whore, Russell is onscreen almost the entire film, talking matter-of-factly to the camera as she goes about turning tricks, running from her psychotic pimp, getting gang-raped by a van full of teenagers. "It's probably the most unerotic film Ken's ever done," Russell correctly notes (although it can probably be said that if Ken Russell's your idea of eroticism, you're in trouble to begin with). For her part, Russell, whose angelic features and svelte body are a matter of cinematic record, allows herself to be shot as unglamorously as possible--unusually hefty for this outing, Russell crams her character Liz into leather mini-skirts a couple of sizes too small, and pours on the tacky makeup (yellow eye-liner for starters). In one remarkable shot, she sports a chain-link bondage outfit, and Ken Russell's camera trails her up a flight of stairs, nailing her from the worst possible angle. Watching (it's hard not to), I was embarrassed for Theresa Russell for a second, until I noticed the half-smile on her face. She knows what the outfit looks like, after all--she strapped it on. The smile belongs to Liz (she's heading up the steps to flog a sexy grandpa in his bathroom, and she gets a kick out of his still-viable kinkiness) but I think it's Russell's too. Russell says she and the director came to terms early on about the level of exploitation in the film, and that he didn't go too far--at least not in her book.

Theresa Russell's persona says loud and clear that it's a fine thing to have a strong sexual identity on screen. Hollywood, predictably, can't quite fathom this, and is content to offer her one disturbed sex kitten role after another. If Hollywood doesn't understand Russell, it doesn't understand sex any better and--I've got to be honest, it's no simple thing to sit here and talk about all this with her. I feel the way the Marilyn Monroe character Theresa played in Insignificance felt as she discussed the Theory of Relativity with Einstein-- out of my league, and yet strangely confident. But we were speaking of sex, and the movies: "It's ridiculous," says Russell. "There's the obligatory sex scene in a film, and the real fashionable position is the gal on top. Is that the only way people fuck these days? We must be doing something wrong if I'm not on top the whole time." Russell's on top in one scene in Whore. Except she's facing the other way. And she's got most of her clothes on. She and the guy are in the back seat of a car, in a parking garage. She's mouthing memorized lines from a porno film, and smoking a cigarette. And the guy dies after he comes. And then her pimp steals his wallet. So much for Hollywood romance.

"I guess Ken is saying that there's a little bit of whore in all of us," says Theresa. "Not necessarily selling your body--maybe your soul." One thing is certain about Theresa Russell. She hasn't sold her soul to the movies. She would no doubt be happy with a mega-hit film, but she doesn't exactly exhaust herself with efforts to land one (or maybe she's not quite certain how it's done). Her competition for lead roles includes the likes of Kathleen Turner, whom Russell resembles, yet by spending much of her time at home in London, Russell can hardly expect to maintain a high-visibility profile. "By the time things get down to where I am," she says, "there's not a lot to choose from in the Hollywood mainstream. Also, I don't really give a shit that much. I try to do both sides of the coin-- artistic and Hollywood--but it's always hit and miss anyway." Russell's next film is a good example of her balancing act. In director Steve Soderbergh's Kafka, she stars opposite Jeremy Irons as "a very enigmatic woman." Because it's the follow-up to Soderbergh's hit sex, lies, and videotape, the film will garner plenty of attention, but it's hardly mainstream fare.

The recent success of films like Ghost and Pretty Woman is a factor in the slow re-emergence of more women-centered projects coming out of the big studios, which Russell hopes will lead to better projects for all actresses. "In the '30s and '40s, the studios backed their female stars. With all this liberation, you'd think they still would. If today's studios put their machine behind creating female vehicles, then the people would go see them. I guarantee it. After all, 50 percent of the population is women--and men are fascinated with women." Even the enigmatic ones. Especially the enigmatic ones.

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Joshua Mooney is the Associate Editor of Movieline.

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