Still beloved by teens, but yet to carry a major hit, the reformed Christian Slater makes his bid for breathing room with Tony Scott's True Romance.
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Christian Slater is lying through his teeth. "Nah, I don't want to go over to say hi," he says in the crackly foghorn that occasionally cuts through his usual slick delivery. "That would just make me feel self-conscious, you know?" It's Ridley Scott, huddling at the next table with Harvey Keitel, who has Slater swirling the ice in his glass of mineral water and battling his own impulse.
"People always tell me they think I'm 30 pretending to be 22," he explains, avoiding glancing toward Scott, "or the other way around. They expect me to act ballsy. But I'd never just go up to someone whose work I like and disturb a meeting." After a beat, he adds, "Although I did just work with Tony Scott..." Spiky-haired in jeans, sneakers and an Armani shirt with the tails out, Slater summons one of those slit-eyed, you-can't-touch-this looks that prompt meltdown in a pretty fair cross section of moviegoers. "Nah," he concludes. "It's their meeting, you know? It's business."
Slater's sexiness on-screen is a given. Likewise, his promise. Now that he's 23, though, one has to be increasingly suspicious about where he can take his Nicholsonisms, the hipster's cockiness and the smack-eyed leer. Is he the real thing or just a borrower, a four-cent-a-page photocopy icon for an era that confuses Brigitte Bardot with a big-haired, pouty beauty in blue jeans ads, and that reduces Ray Charles to a shill for sugar water? What exactly is Slater--whose screen presence reads: I know plenty--hiding?
Before Scott and Keitel made the scene, I had been witnessing the unveiling of the new Slater. Sober, struggling with monogamy, career-minded, post-cool. All this from a guy who, when we met earlier for a Movieline story (June '91), had only recently led cops on a high-speed, booze-injected West Hollywood car chase that left his Saab soul-kissing a phone pole.
Few would fault Slater for getting more serious about business at this point. It's now-or-never time for vaulting the chasm between teen idoldom and grown-up stardom. Slater's been spoiling for the role in the movie that will channel that rude boy juice into one tumescent, career-minded pop. Out of such turns as playing Sean Connery's sidekick in The Name of the Rose and Jeff Bridges's son in Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Winona Ryder's bad-boy lover in Heathers and Marisa Tomei's sweetheart in last winter's Untamed Heart, Slater can count only Young Guns II and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in the hit column. Now he's up at bat again, playing a guy who talks to Elvis in Tony Scott's True Romance.
Slater lazes back in his chair, glancing sideways to see whether Scott and Keitel will acknowledge him as they leave. Who can blame him for walling up his face when they slip away? Hey, I tell him, maybe they checked him out and thought: I couldn't bother him. It's business. He cracks open a wry grin and serves up his most blase shoulder shrug.
STEPHEN REBELLO: I'm thinking about how everybody used to like movie rebels who tangled with the law. What's a rebel to do in the safe and sober era?
CHRISTIAN SLATER: Lie. [Laughing] No, no, I don't know, really. All I can do is just try and be myself. It's true that the guys we used to idealize seemed so romantic when they were doing stuff like getting arrested. It was really romantic, unless you were that guy.
Q: Since you were that guy, do producers and studio bosses keep an eagle eye on you?
A: Naw, nothing like that. If I wanted to drink, I'd have a drink. Nobody can control anything like that.
Q: How do you keep a lean, hungry edge?
A: [Laughing] Well, I quit smoking for seven weeks. The worst seven weeks of my life. I was crazy. It was hell for everybody around me.
Q: I keep hearing you're a pretty different guy from the one I met a few years back.
A: I remember I made mention to you of being tired, going from project to project to project. People were saying relax, take a breather. So, that's exactly what I did. I took a lot of time off after Mobsters and although I did something I had never done before, which was to direct a play, The Laughter Epidemic, it felt like a vacation. It wasn't to prove I could direct. I just wanted to put something together with some friends for The Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Period.
Q: You impressed me before as somebody who almost needed to give himself hell between projects.
A: Yeah, well, this time it fell good to slow down. I didn't beat myself up or go crazy that I wasn't working. I suppose it comes down to getting to know a little bit more about myself, finding out what I'm about.
Q: What did you find out so far?
A: I think I've reopened a lot of doors that I had closed. I had no idea, for instance, that I had a problem with selfishness. It had to be pointed out to me. I took the time to develop a personal life and I realized my personal life is too important for me to jeopardize anymore for a movie. I've tried to be a little more vulnerable. I mean, I've always been vulnerable, but didn't want to show it. I'm learning that having all the answers and being in control is not necessarily the greatest thing.
Q: Are you in a new relationship, or still in the house in the Valley getting closer to the same woman, Nina?
A: Yeah, yeah, she's still part of the deal. I don't really like to talk about it because, you know, it's a part of my life that I would like to try and keep separated from this business. I'm actually looking for another place now.
Q: Fan trouble?
A: [Nodding] Let's put it this way: if I don't have to go somewhere anymore, I usually won't. It was very strange because when I made the decision to start looking for another home, all of a sudden, people started coming by a lot more than ever. It was like God trying to send me a message: "Time to move on." Right across the street from me is an apartment complex with a lot of children. So it's usually pretty sweet stuff, like a 16-year-old girl who might go to school in the neighborhood asking me to sign a picture. Ringing the doorbell. That gets a little disturbing because I'm a late sleeper, too.
Q: So, you've cut down on clubbing? Friends of mine used to see you sometimes at Gaslight.
A: I haven't been to Gaslight in God knows how long--or anywhere else, really. We've been having dinners over at my house and inviting nine or 10 people, like twice a week. I've been finding out how many good friends I have. We sit down and watch old movies. I'm really into Spencer Tracy right now. The movies he made with Katharine Hepburn and Boys Town, which is a little hokey, but the greatest. I only watched half of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because it genuinely scared the hell out of me. But I looked at it going, "Hmmm, I wonder if Jack Nicholson watched this to play The Joker," because there are some very similar traits.
Q: How about finishing this sentence: "The toughest thing about monogamy is..."
A: [Laughing] Just doing it. I mean, it's really tough. I'm doing my best with it, dealing with it, and it is really the only way to go today, truly. That whole sex thing, how it was in the '60s with free love and all, those days are gone, come to a screeching halt. It might have been nice to be around then. But I'm not in this relationship because of the time period we're in but because I really am enjoying it and working towards having something good in my life.
Q: Any regrets about not making a play for a co-star recently?
A: That's too tricky a question. I won't answer it.
Q: Okay, so you've buttoned down some, but have you done anything irresponsible, like trading in that Saab from the high-speed police chase for a Maserati? How about getting tattooed?
A: [Laughing] I'm not driving the Saab today, but I still have it. Let's see, irresponsible... well, I got a place in New York. I really wanted it and I spent a hell of a lot of money to decorate it, I'll tell you. That was a little outrageous. I went a little crazy. Anyway, I'm trying to spend as much time in New York as possible. Oh, yeah, I bought a silver-grey Porsche. But a tattoo? No, not yet. I thought about it, though, for the movie I just did, True Romance, just having a drawing done or something, but that didn't pan out because the guy that was gonna tattoo me ended up having to check into rehab.
Q: What's the dominant emotion among you and your peers these days?
A: Suspicion. You're never really sure what people's agendas might be. If you are somewhat successful in this town, it's rare you're gonna meet people who want the same types of things that you are striving for. You tend to be a little bit more cautious, maybe sometimes even a little more closed off than you might normally be because you don't want to reveal anything. It's tough. One of the great things for me is that the people that I've met, the ones I told you I have coming over for dinner, are real friends, you know? I don't sense any hidden agenda, I sense we're just having a good time. There is great relief in all of that.
Q: What's the most bogus concept about young, happening Hollywood?
A: The whole "young Hollywood" thing doesn't bother me. I mean, I am young and I am in Hollywood. Better that than "washed up" Hollywood. Doing all that out-on-the-town glamour stuff is kinda fun. What's hilarious to me is that somebody would actually take my picture while doing it. That really kills me. But, I mean, come on, do I have a bad time going to see Bonnie Raitt or Frank Sinatra or going to a screening? Unfortunately, that's not the only part of the business--there's also the suspicion and that kind of thing.
Q: Speaking of suspicion, Is it possible to be tight with guys with whom you're competing for roles?
A: There's so many guys--Brad Pitt, Brendan Fraser, River Phoenix, he's wonderful--but there's also so much material out there. I'd love to work with all these guys. In fact Brad is in True Romance, only in two scenes, but he's great. Maybe a little bit of the competition plays into it because we are in the same category, the same realm, the same business. I guess part of me wishes I could just put all that stuff behind me. I learned a little lesson about four years ago. I was up for this movie and it was looking really good, you know? Well, there was this other up-and-coming actor up for it, too. This is just egotistical on my part, but I sort of said to myself, "If he gets it, I will get out of the business forever." It just didn't make any sense to me that this guy should get the role over me. Of course, he did get it and I felt like an incredible loser. I figured maybe I'd take back that threat about retiring.
Q: What other actors' fingerprints are likely to be on scripts that you see?
A: Pretty much the guys I just mentioned. I will do whatever it takes to get a role if a director's got a project I think I am right for, or at least would like to be considered for. I feel like I deserve at least a meeting. But if the director's dead set on his ideas of who he wants, I certainly don't want to end up playing the game of going into a meeting and trying to convince him that the actor he wants isn't right and that it should be me. With A Few Good Men, Rob Reiner had it in his mind that Tom Cruise was it, which was completely appropriate. But it would really suck to be put in the position where a director has this other guy in mind for the role and then he sees you, and he now says, "Okay I want you," when I'm friends with the other guy.
Q: How would you handle that?
A: I wouldn't be able to do that film. I know me. My conscience is too... I can't get away with it.
Q: If Rob Reiner had called you and you knew that he wanted Tom Cruise for A Few Good Men, but he saw you and he went, "Well, now, wait a minute..."
A: Tom Cruise is one of a kind.
Q: Granted, but would you have pursued A Few Good Men?
A: Yeah. I'm not friends with Tom Cruise. But I would never go into a meeting and fuck a friend out of a job or try to convince a director that I'm better than he is or more right than he is. That's not in me. I wouldn't want the director going, "I want you to come in because I really want you but we haven't gotten rid of the other person yet." That's just too ugly and it's too "Hollywood." I was just faced with that kind of decision. I got away, and that was the right decision because I can sleep at night.
Q: What's the big misconception directors have about you?
A: They don't know what to make of me. I'm different in different situations. I just went in to meet with a director to play a sophisticated-type person. I wore the suit, the tie, my hair was just right. He didn't have to use much of his imagination. He spent most of his time on a cellular phone. It's like, "Wait a minute, you agreed to take this time with me. Let's take it."
Q: Someone said that you're not big on testing or reading for roles.
A: Depends. If Tom Cruise had passed on A Few Good Men, an actor would have had to be crazy to tell Rob Reiner, "Forget reading for you, you should just judge from my work." For other projects, like if the guy is a complete schmuck who's never done anything before and says, "I want you to come in and read," I might go, "Well, fuck you, I want you to come in and show me how you direct." Then, of course, it could turn out to be a brilliant project and I'd feel like a schmuck. But, hey, you take that chance, roll the dice.
Q: So how does it sit with you that, in the minds of most studio heads, there's Tom Cruise and then there's the rest of you?
A: I guess you have to be bankable, but I really don't feel like that has ever been a major factor for me. The films I have received the most notoriety from are little movies that might not do very well at the box office, but, over time, they collect a certain amount of respectability. Certain things Tom Cruise has passed on I think are brilliant. I mean, Untamed Heart is Tom Sierchio's first script, and there is really good material out there.
Q: And lots of not so good material, like Kuffs and Mobsters. Who advises you, anyway?
A: My mother for one. My agent. But I can't point the finger and blame anybody else. Those movies were completely my choice.
Q: Then how about completing the sentence, "I wish someone had told me before I made Kuffs that..."?
A: [Laughing] To be quite honest, a lot of people did tell me that this was not a good movie, not the right thing for me to do. My agent did exactly like I told him I wanted: let's go from Robin Hood to Mobsters to Kuffs, one right after the other.
Q: What did you see in it?
A: I really loved the idea of talking to the camera. I thought, "This is an interesting character we can take a trip with and watch grow up." Which is something that I've had to do. I knew that the script was incredibly weak. I wanted to try and make it into something else. But there were so many other factors involved that were so beyond my control, that I really just had to... I mean, even the poster where I was there with the gun... you know, these different little things they do to try and get a hook to sell it. I should've just been hooked off the stage.
Q: And Mobsters?
A: When I saw it, I was like, "Well, it's sure not The Godfather, is it?" I mean, it was just a gangster movie, not any of these things that we were led to believe it was going to be. I don't think it's so embarrassing I have to bury my head like an ostrich, you know? One of the things that I come away with from Untamed Heart is that I can have it in my library and look back in maybe 20 years, you know, and go, "Jeez, I'm really proud I did that movie." I guarantee you Kuffs and Mobsters will not be in my library.
Q: How do you deal with career disappointments?
A: In my own way: I get the video and smash it.
Q: Does True Romance shape up as a keeper or a smasher?
A: It's an incredible cast, a great director, Tony Scott, and one of the best scripts I've read because it's insane. Right up that alley that I love.
Q: Which alley is that?
A: To describe it is really tough. My character, Clarence Worley, is this guy whose big obsessions are Sonny Chiba movies and Elvis Presley. He meets and falls madly in love with this girl who tells him about her past and turns out to be a prostitute. He's a weird guy who seeks advice from imaginary people, namely from Elvis Presley. And Val Kilmer plays Elvis and he's great. It's just an insane movie that builds from an out-there premise and gets completely outrageous.
Q: Outrageous? Or outrageous and good?
A: I haven't seen the movie.
Q: Do you see this as another step toward crossing you over from teen fave to adulthood?
A: It's a tricky question. I am concerned that the work that I am doing is appreciated by people who've followed me, because I'm not completely doing this work just for me. I wanted to be an actor because I want to perform for people. So, if the teen thing all went away, it might be a little bit depressing. But I think that the fans I've had through the years are growing up. Fortunately, I think I am too. Hopefully, we can all grow up together and just have one big party in the end where I can meet everybody.
Q: A friend of mine says that when she makes a movie, everybody becomes one big, dysfunctional family by the end of the shoot.
A: With each experience, it's different. True Romance felt like a dysfunctional family. I think it has a lot to do with the script and the character I'm playing. Maybe I tend to sometimes get into it maybe a little bit too much. I have blinders on to the outside world while I'm working. And I do everything I possibly can for the movie. If it's a movie that's a bit darker and heavier, then I tend to get darker and heavier. I lose sight of anything else around me. I'm a bit more selfish in my personal life.
Q: I'm wondering about some of the roles you've passed on or that passed on you.
A: I try not to even think about it. Edward Scissorhands wasn't a movie that I could have gotten, or was even considered for, but you see that type of movie and it's like, "Wow, that would've been an interesting role to do." Or young Indiana Jones would have been a kick in the pants, the greatest. I remember I went in for Say Anything. . . , but I had a different interpretation than the director. I wasn't in a simple frame of mind then. Anyway, John Cusack nailed it perfectly.
Q: Having been in the business since you were a kid doing shows on Broadway, I wonder whether you've ever been sexually harassed, whether somebody's made an...
A: Indecent proposal?
Q: To mention a movie that you and Tom Cruise reportedly both turned down.
A: [Laughing] So you're asking something like having to sleep my way to the top?
Q: Precisely.
A: First, about Indecent Proposal, the movie, there's a time where I read the script and I met Adrian Lyne and thought he was a really cool guy but I wasn't that hot on the idea. I thought [the idea] was a little strange and Honeymoon in Vegas covered it pretty well. Anyway, real-life sleazy experiences ... I've never really had to sell myself short.
Q: I heard you were up for Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Hudsucker Proxy.
A: [Laughing] "Why didn't you do this movie, why didn't you do that movie?" I should have, man. I'm sorry. My God! The [Coen brothers] one is hard for me to comment on. I didn't do as much research as I probably should have on that particular film. I sort of screwed that one up. That was probably an error on my part. C'est la vie. I definitely thought Dracula was an interesting idea, but if I wasn't going to be considered for the role of Dracula, I wasn't interested in playing any other role. If you're not going to play Dracula in Dracula, why bother? I'd already been Robin Hood's brother.
Q: Were you surprised that Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was such a hit, considering the chaos during the shooting?
A: A little surprised, because there were moments where I felt like the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. I had a really good time and liked all the people I worked with, but I also saw what a nightmare it was for some people.
Q: One hears your part got chopped because you looked young and hot and stole some of your scenes. If the Kevins--Reynolds and Costner--phoned you to do another movie, would you?
A: Absolutely. Kevin Reynolds is a great guy--truly, genuinely nice guy. I don't sense any hidden agenda from Kevin Costner. I think during Robin Hood, he was probably going through the same sort of lessons that I was going through. He had just finished Dances With Wolves, was in the middle of editing that, signed up to do this movie, and was legitimately exhausted. So, his patience was a little less than it might've been.
Q: But didn't he find the patience and time to help reedit Robin Hood and take some of you out of it?
A: That movie was shot in tiny little snippets. We'd start one scene on Monday, shoot something else in-between, and finish that scene on Friday. There are little snippets of things that it would have been cool to have in the movie because they were a little more heroic, a little more interesting and daring. And made Will Scarlet a little stronger. It's tough to really say.
Q: He said, staring off pointedly.
A: [Laughing] No, no, I genuinely don't know. If they want to take something out of the movie, I always think that it is in the best interest of the film. I never really look at anything as though they're doing it to be spiteful towards me or anything like that.
Q: Whatever happened on that movie, its box office sure helped you with studios and investors.
A: Right, because it's not just Hollywood anymore. Studios and movie companies want somebody that's bankable worldwide, that they know they can make money on. Some of the best actors, people that I love and that I've enjoyed working with and would love to work with again, the studio might have a problem with because they don't do well in Japan. That kills me.
Q: Let's talk career agenda. What's yours?
A: To be able to look back and be proud of movies I've done. I've been taking my time now between projects looking for stuff that has a little bit more substance, that isn't surface. Some of the films that I've done in the past really were surface. Taking the time off I did, I found out a lot of different things. I enjoyed my own company. I didn't beat myself up or go crazy that I wasn't working. I was able to spend more time with my family, my brother. It felt good to slow things down. Fortunately, I had the experience behind me to know what it was like to just appreciate a whole 'nother way of doing things, meeting people, taking time and getting to know people, finding out a little bit about what I'm about. I found out I was trying to remove myself from the vulnerable qualities. Because I've always been very shy in my own life, I've looked for characters that were not like that at all but were more boisterous, outrageous, ballsy.
Q: Is the effort you put into the films you do always appreciated?
A: With one particular film, I came in with 40 new pages and said, "You've got to insert these into the script or it's not going to work." A little presumptuous on my part, huh? Naturally, they weren't as thrilled with the idea as I was. I probably could've handled that a little bit smoother, maybe just hand in a page at a time.
Q: Which movie was that?
A: [Laughing] Oh, I would never say, but it's probably easy to assume. It just won't come out of my mouth.
Q: Do you get nervous before a movie?
A: There's a little bit of fear about getting to know people. I just try and relax, go with it and be as easygoing as possible. I just did The People's Choice Awards thing and that's where I'm the most nervous. I know I did theater and all that, but there, you could never really see the audience. At one of those awards things, you're up there and can see everybody in the audience that you look up to and they are all watching you. Those types of events really scare the hell out of me.
Q: It would seem to me it might have been scarier to do Untamed Heart with a couple of screen-grabbers like Rosie Perez and Marisa Tomei.
A: If I hadn't really gotten into the character, I probably would've tried to be a scene-stealer, tried to out-act them. That would've completely ruined the whole feeling of the movie. Somehow, I was just able to relax. Tony Bill sort of let us find our own way, so instead of worrying about being upstaged or anything, I tried to just be there without all those other unnecessary feelings of being "less than" that all stem from insecurity and fear. It turned out to be one of the best, simplest experiences I ever had: everybody just trying to make a decent, nice little movie.
Q: That so few people saw.
A: I really didn't expect them to. But it's the type of film I really want to do. I'm actually happy with how it did the opening week. One of the great things was being able to set up a screening for like 20 or 30 friends and family to sit down and enjoy the movie. People were crying. That made me feel great! Over time, I think this movie will have a stronger appeal than it does today.
Q: You did a cameo for director Marc Rocco in Where the Day Takes You and I hear you're going to do his next movie.
A: I don't know that it's definitely a guaranteed thing, so it's difficult to talk about, but it's a movie called Murder in the First that I want to do more than anything. It's almost a To Kill a Mockingbird or Judgment at Nuremberg type movie that takes place in 1938 about a young lawyer and a convict. Other than that, I have an office at my house and an assistant who works for me, reading all the time. He's trying to get me to read more, get more active in that. I'm definitely trying to get more active in my career and taking a more active role in the decisions.
Q: Finish the sentence, "If I did a Woody Allen movie, I'd like to play. . ."
A: The marriage counselor.
Q: "If I did a Gus Van Sant movie, I'd like to play. . ."
A: A sick, demented school teacher.
Q: "If I did a Peter Weir movie, I'd like to play. . ."
A: An upright, pure school teacher.
Q: Ten years from now, if you were to come across the "Christian Slater" entry in an encyclopedia of film stars, what would you hope it would say?
A: Hopefully, that people could see a progression in my performances because that's how it's always felt to me. The movies I've made at a certain time of my life were exactly right for the stage of my life, the frame of mind I was in at the time. Each character I've had to play has been me at that time in my life.
Q: What's the biggest career bummer you could perpetrate on yourself at this point?
A: To once again put myself in a situation where I might be financially overextended so I have to work. That would really bum me out because I don't want to sell myself short and just do a film for the sake of doing a film. I'm in this business because it's fun and it's enjoyable. I just want to do things that I can be proud of, you know?
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Sharon Stone for Movieline's June cover story.