Bridget Fonda: Funny Face

Q: What is romantic to you?

A: I heard a story not long ago about the way someone proposed to someone else: he put a ring in a bag of M&M's and came in eating them, and he knew she would, and suddenly there was this ring.

Q: Are you very romantic yourself?

A: Very romantic, yeah.

Q: What in your life has moved you romantically?

A: My mom used to take my brother and me on road trips. We would just drive through parks and go visit friends in different states, eating along the way at various diners. That was romantic. I remember wading in some little offshoot of the Colorado River, finding and keeping a stick that had been chewed on by a beaver. Very romantic. And my father's living on his boat in Hawaii was romantic. My grandfather and his painting.

Q: What about the ring in your own M&M's?

A: You mean romantic love? I like to keep those things private.

Q: Ah, c'mon Bridget. What's Eric Stoltz done to brighten your day?

A: Eric sent me beautiful roses, just tons of flowers, on my birthday once. There's that kind of romance. But then there's the other kind, like the way we met. On the first date I couldn't eat. We went for a drive because I wanted to show him the house where I grew up, and it had been torn down. I cried on our first date, which to me is very romantic.

Q: Do you believe in love at first sight?

A: Yes, but love changes a lot. I love a lot of people, but to love someone whom you want to spend your life with, that's really happened just twice. You don't know if it really is, in fact, love at first sight, or if it's infatuation at first sight.

Q: How about lust at first sight?

A: Well, yeah, there's something sexual there, but it might be something else as well. With me, my heart just goes, I drop a lot of weight, I can't eat. It's that kind of thing.

Q: How'd you meet Eric?

A: In 1986 on the Paramount lot.

Q: What did you like about him when you met?

A: He's such a combination of things. Really smart in his wit. And his eyes.

Q: Is it easier or tougher to be with someone who is also in your business?

A: Easier than dating a civilian. With someone else in the same business you have a common ground. Whereas someone who's not, you go off and do a film and the love scenes alone are difficult to deal with. If Eric started doing a love scene with somebody... I thank God I'm an actress, because then I know... it's hard for me anyway, but I know, well, okay, that's what they do, that's what I do, it's not real. But I cannot imagine if I wasn't an actress and I saw up on the screen the person I love with someone else who's fantastic and beautiful and I have followed her life in the magazines and she's just so exciting. It's hard. So it really helps to be in the same business. And if you have a shared passion for it as well, that's the bonus, because you can be excited about the same things for your life together.

Q: So if it's better to be in the same business as your boyfriend, what about doing love scenes with him, as you did in Bodies, Rest & Motion?

A: There's never any risk of really exposing yourself in a love scene because you don't have any freedom. You're in a room with 60 people! I didn't even know it was going to look like it did. I was with Eric doing the press junket and a couple of women said: "What about the most outrageous oral sex scene, the greatest cunnilingus scene in film history?" And I thought, What? I had no idea! Although I shouldn't say that, because Eric likes to say, "Yes, we were really having sex." He likes to toy.

Q: Do the two of you toy with the idea of marriage?

A: Everybody keeps proposing for us.

Q: Your father has said that he thinks you want to have a baby. Do you?

A: I do. I want to have kids, but I don't want to have them right now. All my friends are having babies and I'm seeing them everywhere. However, when I have a baby I don't want to go right back to work and I'm still absolutely obsessed with work.

Q: What do you dream about at night?

A: My dreams aren't very literal.

Q: What about your nightmares?

A: I have nightmares, but I never wake up screaming. I'm usually driving down a hill in my dream, and I can't control the car. I think it's because I had a '65 Dodge van that would run away with me like a horse, the accelerator would stick and I would have to throw the gears. It was just awful. It would go like it had its own mind. So I have these dreams of driving where there was always something that I just couldn't see, though I never crash.

Q: Let's talk about the making of The Godfather, Part III. Did Al Pacino ever make you laugh during the shoot?

A: Al was fantastic. He would come up to me and say, "Bridget, have you gotten anything, any pages? What's going on, do you know anything?" I'd say, "No I don't, do you?" and he'd say, "No, I don't. By the way, how was your Christmas?"

Q: Was much of your role in that film edited out?

A: There was only one scene that was cut because it was leading to a scene that was never shot between myself and Al. The way it was explained to me was that the story was already very convoluted and there was no way that they were going to put this scene in. See, the whole time I was in Italy making The Godfather, Part III, Francis Coppola was trying to figure out the story. He'd say, "I have an idea about what to do with your character." One idea was that I would be tied to a jukebox and thrown off a cliff! That was my favorite. I would giggle about those things with Don Novello and George Hamilton, who I had a wonderful time with.

Q: Before Coppola replaced Winona Ryder with his daughter Sofia, were you ever considered for that part?

A: I read for that part originally. Personally, I loved Sofia. There's a softness in her.

Q: Was it a softness in you that writer/director David Hare saw when he wanted you for Strapless? Or was it that sexy--Hare once said obscene--dance you did with a Confederate flag in Shag?

A: I never thought it was obscene. Actually, when I look at it now I can't believe that I did that. I had no idea when I was doing it what it would look like. On the page all it said was: "She does a little dance." So I made it up. It was playful when I was doing it. But it is kind of sexual.

Q: How playful was it to work with Roger Corman in Frankenstein Unbound?

A: He's pretty twisted, but he's a very smart man, a wonderful dinner conversationalist, who happens to make movies like A Bucket of Blood. Which I love! It was a chance to work with somebody who is really a cult filmmaker.

Q: And you got to do a lobotomized version of Mary Shelley to boot.

A: I felt like such a fool. There I was, reading all this stuff on Mary Shelley, falling completely in love with her, and then I got on the set and realized this has nothing to do with Mary Shelley. She's just there looking kind of cute. But I should have known going in. I was an idiot to think that I was going to get a chance to do Mary Shelley justice.

Q: How much of a perfectionist are you?

A: I am a perfectionist. I don't know why. I have a fear of doing anything wrong, and I make a lot of mistakes. Maybe it's from watching films that are so beautiful, films that last, where every moment is constructed perfectly. That's why I feel in acting you don't ever want to blow a moment. Which creates a lot of pressure and can stifle you. So I put a lot pressure on myself. I have to let go.

Q: What frustrates you most about yourself?

A: My inability for my body to do what my mind imagines, in all areas, athletically or creatively. My hand-eye coordination; my imagination. I wish I had the ability to remember everything. I wish I had a photographic memory. Every person I know has an "If only." It's a wish list.

Q: What is on your "If only" list?

A: Oh boy, I have a lot. If only I could just have my hair be its natural color in a film. If only it could be healthy instead of all this dyeing. If only I had a little curl to it. If only my hands weren't getting so dry. If only I had oilier skin. If only I had smaller feet--I wear a size eight. If only I had better toes. If only I was somebody better and smarter. I feel like I've been given some rudimentary tools and I wish I knew how to use them better.

Q: Who's your favorite writer?

A: Lewis Carroll and William Faulkner. I can quote you all of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." I like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, George Bernard Shaw. I'm a big fan of Cornell Woolrich and some of Ray Bradbury. There was a story Bradbury wrote about a place where the sun only comes out once every hundred years and these schoolboys lock this kid in the closet on that day when everything blooms. It was so perfect, it said so much about mankind.

Q: Would you like to act with your father and your aunt?

A: Yes I would, very much.

Q: Anything in development?

A: Things have been discussed.

Q: Which do you prefer, New York or Los Angeles?

A: Portland. I grew up in L.A. and I lived eight years in New York. You kinda need both. If I wasn't in the business I'd live in a totally different place.

Q: Any other parting wishes?

A: I always leave interviews feeling terribly dissatisfied. I wish I was better at it.

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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Robert Evans for the August and September issues of Movieline.

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