Jennifer Beals: Shy as a Fox

"While I was waiting to get the part," Beals continues, "I devised this plan. I prayed to the Shoe God, because I decided that the Shoe God was very powerful. And I told the Shoe God that if I got the part, I would get shoes for all of my girlfriends ... wait a minute, maybe you shouldn't write about this, I'm going to sound demented."

"You think there's a possibility that I'm not going to write about this cockamamy story involving a Shoe God?"

"Well. I just assured him that if I got this part, I would go out and buy any pair of shoes that my friends wanted. And every time I'd pass a shoe store, I would raise my hands and say, 'All Hail the Shoe God." I know that's sick. And then Jennifer Jason Leigh said that she had a special candle ... I stayed at her house a couple nights when I was in this process. She said she had a special candle that she used to get the part in The Hudsucker Proxy. She gave me this candle, and I memorized this whole ritual around this friggin' candle. I was doing the thing with the candle, praying to the Shoe God. It was pathological."'

"Sounds completely sane to me. Although the Beverly Center must have been a nightmare."

"You bet. There must be two dozen shoe stores in there. Once I got the part, I came through with the shoes."

"For whom?"

"Let's see, Jennifer [Jason Leigh], I owed her big time, because of the candle. My agent at the time got shoes, I still owe shoes to Gwyneth [Paltrow]. Some of my friends wanted me to get the part because they had their eye on a pair of Manolo Blahniks."

"So the Shoe God came through and you got the part..."

"The day I was waiting to hear, Alex and I were sick to our stomachs. Alex was even more nervous than I. He has this little mobile phone and I said, 'We gotta get out of our car, because I just feel sick.' And he said, 'I do too, let's go for a walk.' And we were walking around with this phone, and every time the phone would ring we would just go into convulsions, and of course it would be somebody else. But yes, in the end, because of the friggin' candle or the Shoe God or whatever, I did get that part."

"I read this piece in VIBE that referred to Denzel as the Black Gable..."

"No," says Beals, "the Dark Gable. Isn't that fabulous?"

"I watched some of your movies this week," I say.

"Poor baby," says Beals without sarcasm.

"One of the people from Movieline called and read me the titles of your films and we were howling with laughter. I mean, of course there was Flashdance, In the Soup, Vampire's Kiss and The Bride, but there was also Blood and Concrete, Cinderella, Club Extinction, Day of Atonement, Split Decisions and, my all-time favorite name for a movie, Terror Stalks the Class Reunion."

"You should have called me," she says. "I would have told you what to see."

"What would you have suggested?"

"I would have said to see In the Soup, Vampire's Kiss and, of course, Flashdance is important."

"Do you still get recognized from Flashdance?"

"Oh, absolutely, I went to Haiti with my friend Phil Parmet, who was the cinematographer on In the Soup. We both do photojournalism, and we knew this would be a fabulous opportunity. We got in to see this guy who was under house arrest, this guy who had committed these terrible atrocities--one could only imagine what havoc he had caused. And I'm snapping away, really thrilled to be getting these shots, when the guy looks at me and says, 'Wait, aren't you the girl from Flashdance?" And I said that I was, and he called down his wife and kids to meet me. He was overwhelmed with excitement. It was so sick."

"Are you a good photographer?"

"I think I'm OK, and getting better. I own Garry Winogrand's cam-era, and I shoot all the time. I think it helps with my shyness, because when you're shooting, people are looking at you, but they're not really seeing you. I like that part."

"You just did another dance movie, Let It Be Me. Is this going to be another Flashdance?"

"I did it because I wanted to work with Campbell Scott again. I loved the idea of the film. We're not. supposed to be professional dancers, we're learning ballroom dance. No, it's not the same kind of movie as Flashdance. It was hard for me to do because I was also filming Four Rooms in L.A. while we were shooting Let It Be Me in New York. Plus, I had gained all this weight for Devil in a Blue Dress because it takes place in the '40s and I wanted to be a little bit more womanly. You don't want to look like some kind of dilapidated pony. My face gets really, really gaunt, and I look like Mister Ed after a while. But for Let It Be Me I had to get back into shape. I'd work on that film from Monday to Friday, take a plane to L.A., work all weekend, and then take the red-eye back to New York. Plus. I had to learn the samba, the mambo, these really hard dance numbers."

"Were you good?"

"Well, I'm no Ginger Rogers ..."

"Four Rooms has different segments, directed by Quentin Tarantino, Alex Rockwell, Allison Anders and Robert Rodriguez. What was that like?"

"I'm in Alex's room and Quentin's. And I did a little bit for Allison. All the stories are different, and all their styles are different. The premise is that we're in this old hotel, and it's New Year's Eve. In Alex's room, I've been tied to the bed by my husband. We love each other, it's a comedy. It's not some kind of wife-abuse story."

"No," I say, "I thought of it in a good way."

"It's New Year's Eve, you know, so of course he's got his wife tied to the bed. What else is new? Quentin's room is a den of machismo. Quentin's my God now, by the way, because he's directing an episode of 'ER.' which is the best thing I've ever watched on television."

"Let me ask you about..."

Beals groans. "Do we have to talk about me?" she pleads.

"Well," I venture, "we could just shut up and go play poker." I'll admit it: I mean this as a joke. But 20 minutes later, Beals and I are barreling down the freeway to the Hollywood Park Casino. Which turns out to be full of very intense looking people playing poker. When we walk in, an older man looks up from his hand and spots Beals. "Hey," he yells, "aren't you that girl from Flashdance?" My face turns beet red, but Beals turns to him with a beatific smile. "That's me," she says.

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Martha Frankel interviewed Leonardo DiCaprio for the March Movieline.

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