Robin Wright: The Wright Stuff?

So, how does the private Penn stack up, say, as a daddy? "Would you be surprised if you saw the three of us?" Wright asks, smiling, shifting in her chair. "Completely. He's a rarity as a father. He's so there. He responds to [parenthood] more than anything in life. It's a scary thing to love something so much in life, like when you have a baby. To see a man feel that about a little girl, not a little boy, is an amazing thing. It's all about purity, honesty and that cliche: 'unconditional love.' It's amazing, really. I always knew he was that way, though. He was that way with his dogs."

Wright bursts out laughing when I ask if there are any plans afoot for another on-screen collaboration with Penn, who says he has renounced acting for directing. "It might be good for us," she says. "It would teach us patience. But people want fast food at the movies. They don't want to go through the emotional stuff, which is the whole point of seeing a movie. We've bred uneducated, unthinking people by force-feeding them. Depth seems to be equivalent to depression, somehow." Depression, as in, say, The Indian Runner, Penn's ambitiously offbeat, wayward directorial debut? "Sean and I always knew that the movie was not meant for the masses," Wright observes of the film, which has yet to attract even a small cult. "Sean made what he believed and felt and, whoever sees it and responds to it, right on. And on that level, it did great."

Wright glows when she describes the rush of playing "a rebel against convention" in her own new film, The Playboys. But even though her dukes arc slightly down by now, she still won't comment on any of the movie's resonance to her personal life. She will talk about the experience of replacing Annette Bening, whom the Samuel Goldwyn Company is reportedly suing for at least $1 million for departing the project, allegedly without explanation. "I felt funny in the beginning," Wright allows, "not so much out of insecurity, but I didn't want the company to feel like, 'Well, we couldn't get her, so ....' I only wanted what they wanted: the best person for the part and the best movie we can make." But was there a shakedown? "Well, the first week was--" she allows, shaking her downturned palm to suggest a 5.5 disturbance on the Richter scale, then continuing, "Maybe it was me being too sensitive. Finally, I decided: Just do your job. Go with it. I hadn't worked in two years. I'd just had a baby and had a lot of stuff to let go of--good stuff, new energy. I was like a fireball ready to explode."

Combustion might have been just what the company was after between Wright and her co-star, Aidan Quinn, an actor she admires "because I look to do movies with people who are truth-seekers. No matter what we were doing, I felt [Aidan] and I were on the same wave." This sounds a little more sanguine than various rumors that circulated during production. Sources say that she and Quinn had little opportunity to cut a groove, what with Wright constantly dashing to her trailer to breast-feed her then two-month-old. Further, Wright apparently let it be known that she was not always delighted with the course the movie was taking.

Which is when the Mrs. Sean Penn charges kicked in. "All I had to say about the 'Mrs. Sean Penn' stuff was"here she pastes on a robotic, California babe smile'"Hi, how are you doing?' Can't win for losing, you know? I'll just have to take it one movie at a time. People are shocked when you establish yourself as having a certain personality. If you start speaking out, you're brazen. Debra Winger knew how to handle this stuff. She was 'no holds barred'; people accepted her that way, and she had a likability on top of it." Is it a Winger-like career she's after? "I don't know if I admire Debra Winger's career," she volleys back. "I admire her as an actress."

As Wright gathers her things together to ready herself for her meeting on La Femme Nikita, a role for which such names as Julia Roberts and Kim Basinger were once bandied about, Wright admits that yes, she's conflicted about whether she really wants a big, commercial movie role "that everybody and her daughter is up for, for which I probably don't have a chance in the world." Until she decides about the direction she wants her career to take--or has it decided for her--pretty much all she can do is just wait and see how it goes. With a shrug, she concludes, "I'm not looking for the whipped cream, just my part of the crust." Too bad she makes it sound like an either/or deal. Wright is just the woman to lace some of that appealing crustiness into the cream.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Drew Barrymore for our March cover story.

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