Bridget Fonda: Funny Face

Q: How much are you like your father?

A: We have the same sense of humor and we are both sort of cynical idealists.

Q: Didn't you once describe him as Peter Pan?

A: He is Peter Pan, but he has a sophistication, as well as a youthfulness that he will always have. And which I hope to always have, which I thank him for.

Q: After Easy Rider, your father, along with Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, became a symbol of the youth culture of the '60s, which had a lot to do with sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Did you ever turn on with your dad?

A: You're getting into very personal territory. I don't like to talk about something that I

don't know if the other person would talk about. I would never want to talk about my father's drug taking. My warning signals are up, these are the areas that I get burned in. Something personal that involves someone else who I don't want to hurt.

Q: Then let's leave him out of it and stay focused on you.

A: I wasn't given drugs when I was a kid, nothing like that. They were really responsible in that way, but I was always aware of it. It was never a big secret.

Q: Did you ever feel when you were a young teen that you wanted to try smoking grass?

A: Yeah, I did. I went out and did it with kids in the neighborhood. Maybe because it wasn't a big mystery I didn't really ever have anything to prove about it, so I never had a drug problem.

Q: When you were growing up you must have seen a lot of Fonda movies. Do you have particular favorites?

A: The Hired Hand, which my dad did, struck a note in me, as well as the character he played in Lilith. And, of course, Easy Rider. I get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of Jane's Coming Home. With my grandfather, I loved The Lady Eve, The Ox-Bow Incident, Fort Apache, Once Upon a Time in the West and The Grapes of Wrath.

Q: Did you ever talk to your grandfather about acting?

A: Never. I wish I had, but what would I have said? I didn't know anything.

Q: Let's talk about your aunt Jane. There doesn't seem to be an article written about you that doesn't mention how you have tried to distance yourself from her.

A: Which is not true! I have never taken pains to distance myself from her in any way. I guess it's because Jane's famous and a lot of people have a lot of mixed feelings about her. I have spent time with her, though I don't see her much because she's got a life, and I have a life.

Q: If you had the opportunity to interview her, what kind of questions would you ask?

A: I would ask her a lot about acting. She knows so much and I would want to learn all the things that she knows. She's more advanced than I am. Her commitment has been an inspiration to me. It comes out in the quality of her work and the way that she cares enough to take chances.

Q: Now that she's married to Ted Turner, is acting behind her?

A: You want me to guess if she'll come back? I imagine that she would, because it's something that you're so passionate about and you're so good at you could never leave for too long. Jane has done some work that makes it harder and harder to find things that would take her the next step up instead of a couple of steps sideways or a step backward. When you've done something extraordinary like Coming Home, it's very difficult to find other such extraordinary parts.

Q: Do you feel you've made any important pictures?

A: Like Coming Home! No. My idea of important is something that changes you. It seems like I'm still feeling around for something that'll grab me.

Q: There's a quote of yours which attracted media attention: You said you hated aerobics and political protests. The press felt you were taking a direct jab at Jane.

A: I never said that I hated political protests, but it's true about aerobics.

Q: Is that because you have a hole in your heart?

A: I have a hole in my heart, which is a fairly common heart murmur, but it doesn't stop me from doing anything. It basically means that I have to take antibiotics when I have my teeth cleaned or any kind of surgery because there's a possibility that the bacteria will lodge itself within that hole. So in that way it's serious, but you only have to be medicated.

Q: How did you find out about it?

A: I have a third heartbeat. It's like boom, boom, shhh. The doctors knew it from the time I was very small. I went to UCLA every four years and had heart tests.

Q: Did that give you a sense of your own fragility?

A: No, because I was always told that it wouldn't stop me from doing anything that I wanted to do.

Q: So it didn't bother you when you saw your aunt Jane over Christmas a few years ago and she criticized your not having tone in your thigh muscles?

A: Oh dear. And I actually came here saying I'm not going to talk about my family. Yes, we have conversations about that, but we have conversations about everything--about life, about eating, about acting. She always asks me, "Why do you work so much?"

Q: Did you like the way you looked as a teenager, or do you think you have a funny face?

A: Funny face. Not like funny ha-ha, but I don't look like the models.

Q: Is it true that you once considered enlarging your lips with collagen injections?

A: I did for this one part that I was considering about someone who was supposed to be voluptuous, but it fell apart. It was something that I toyed with, but I didn't do it because I'm too scared.

Q: In Singles you played a character who wanted her breasts enlarged. Is that something you ever considered yourself?

A: Oh yes. My first boyfriend had some dirty magazines and you'd see these huge breasts and I felt, gee, is that what they like to look at? In that case, I'm not enough in that area. I'm not anti-plastic surgery at all, but right now, it's amazing what I can do with padding.

Q: What was it like making your first movie, Aria, since you neither spoke nor wore any clothes throughout most of it?

A: I was coming right out of college and I was reading the great playwrights and thinking about things that don't happen in everyday life. Aria just sounded so interesting to me. It was very nice to be able to go into something so out there. I was really excited about it because it's very abstract. And it was interesting for me to not have any dialogue and to be that bold.

Q: The nudity didn't bother you?

A: I liked that it was different.

Q: But you weren't all that crazy about the response, were you? Were you criticized for doing something "pornographic"?

A: The realization that not everybody looks at nudity the same way that I do made me audience-aware, which I wasn't before. For me, nudity is a part of life. I was very comfortable with it. It's a human being stripped. It wasn't exploitative in my mind. Maybe a part of my feeling that nudity is okay was when I was 10 I visited my grandmother in

Mexico and took a life drawing class there, drawing nudes.

Q: When you were a kid, did you feel free with your body?

A: Oh yeah, I ran around naked when I was a kid.

Q: Even after you had breasts?

A: No, [you] get embarrassed.

Q: How do you feel about still photographs taken from movie screen images of

you nude showing up in magazines?

A: Stills can be very dangerous because it isolates a moment, takes it completely out of context, and makes it absolutely about that one image.

Q: Has it happened to you?

A: Yes, it has. It's horrifying to me because it reduces you and your work and it completely annihilates that character that you were playing. I don't allow stills when I'm doing a nude scene in a movie.

Q: Do you ever get weird letters from people who have seen you undressed in a film?

A: Not as weird as some of my friends have gotten, but I get letters like: "We're auctioning things from movie stars, can you send us something, preferably lingerie?" That's strange to me.

Q: Does it make you wary of appearing nude in the future?

A: Yes, it does. There have been many times where I felt, I don't want to be the nude girl in this movie. Not the only one. But there's also another side of me that says, Well, I wouldn't do this not naked because of that. Playing Mandy Rice-Davies, for example, in Scandal --I'm playing a girl who takes off her clothes. If I refuse to take off my clothes why am I doing the role?

Q: L.A. Times critic Peter Rainer wrote that you have everything it takes except that single defining catapulting role. Do you feel that too?

A: That role. I don't know, that's strange. What if that role is the role that defines you so well that no one can see you in any other way after that?

Q: You may not yet have the role of your lifetime but are there films you've seen which you wish you could have been a part of?

A: I worship a film called Black Narcissus. Also, Ball of Fire is a film that I love. It's wonderfully written, funny and romantic.

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