Billy Baldwin: William Tells

Q: Both of you?

A: Well, I put them on her. We did it together. Not to say that I wouldn't look fabulous in them.

Q: Were you nervous?

A: I was having too much fun to be nervous. Quite a few people told me they literally got sick when they pro-posed. It was one of those moments for me, though, where everything else kind of stopped.

Q: Did she ever stop spinning and trying on gowns and give you an answer?

A: Well, I had ordered caviar and, when it came, there was a box on the tray that said "Billy" on it, I thought it was a gift from the hotel and all of a sudden Chynna said, "Oh my God, that's right!" Turned out. she'd said to my assistant, months earlier. "I know we're going to get engaged soon and I know it's going to be a surprise so I want there to be a gift for Billy." So she went out and bought this watch months ago and gave it to my assistant. [Baldwin takes off his watch and hands it over.] Read the back.

Q: "Yes!"

A: Isn't that great?

Q: My head's going to explode. This is the most romantic story I've ever heard. Where did you meet Chynna?

A: I met her in the airport lounge at the L.A. airport before we boarded a plane.

Q: Who talked to whom?

A: I went up to her and Carnie and Wendy and said, "Hi, my name is Billy and I'm a fan of your music and congratulations on how well things are going."

Q: "And here's my phone number"?

A: No. I got on the plane and faked having to go to the bathroom a few times so I could walk by them and chat.

Q: And the rest is history.

A: We're going to be together four years next week.

Q: Of course, Chynna and I were finished by the time you met.

A: You had her before me. I heard you broke her heart.

Q: There were three and she wanted me to pick. I love all my "W.P." girls equally.

A: She probably caught you cheating on her with Carnie.

Q: Sort of. Carnie invited my friend and me up to her hotel room and we had soup, french fries, and diet Cokes from room service.

A: That sounds like Carnie, being in Japan and instead of ordering something indigenous like sushi, she orders fries from room service.

Q: Has Chynna written songs about you?

A: Yeah. It's nice. It's scary. I mean, it's not like "Rosanna'7 about Rosanna Arquette.

Q: There's no song called "Billy"?

A: No. Well, actually, for my birthday once, she called up my friends and my family and got hundreds of photographs and had them transferred to video and she wrote songs to accompany it. So when I plugged in the tape, the first picture that came on was of my godparents holding me at my christening and I looked at her like, "I know that picture." And the next picture that came on was of my father in college and when that picture came on, I was down for the count, crying hysterically until the end of the video--to the point where she thought she'd done something wrong and wanted to stop the tape. But it was just that so much effort went into it, and it meant so much to me, and, yes, there was a song she wrote for it called "Billy" that was really good.

Q: Let's discuss Sliver. What's the deal with all the different endings?

A: I think Bob Evans put some of the sex scenes back on the inter-national version and it made for a better version of the film, because I get a lot of Europeans telling me they just flipped for it, though I never know for sure what movie they saw.

Q: Originally you were the killer. Didn't it compromise your integrity to shoot a new ending where Tom Berenger was the killer, when your performance had been based on the knowledge that you were?

A: To be honest with you, yeah. When it all went down I was really upset and I called my people and said. "What do I do?" They said, "Look, you're young, you're early in your career, it's just not in your best interest to ..." You know...

Q: To balk?

A: The bottom line is. I had a contractual agreement to do a certain script and I didn't have to do that if I didn't want to. I have no sour grapes about it.

Q: Clear up the frontal nudity controversy for me. My understanding is that there never were really any such shots of you, that the male frontal nudes that were talked about in the press were really just an extra playing one of the neighbors glimpsed on the surveillance cameras.

A: Right. The press was talking to [director] Phillip Noyce and he said, "Put it this way. Billy's a lot more nude than Sharon is," which was true, I was more nude. But when he said, "Billy's more nude than Sharon" and then was asked, "Oh yeah, any frontal nudity?" Phillip said, "Yes"--but it wasn't me, it was for one of the video surveillance things. He was just causing trouble.

Q: Would you ever drop your Skivvies for a part?

A: If it was really necessary then I'd consider it. I mean. I've seen actors do it in plays.

Q: I'd think that would be better because once you're off-stage, it's over. You won't have people freeze-framing you on laser disc into the millennium.

A: But it's harder to walk out into a theater filled with 1200 people.

Q: Which of your films are you the most proud of?

A: I prefer the work that I've made a significant contribution to. I'd say I like Three of Hearts, Internal Affairs and Backdraft better than the others.

Q: In the Backdraft scene where you come out of the fire feeling nauseous, what did you use for vomit?

A: Cold Campbell's mushroom soup, and I had to hold it there. "Hold on. Billy, we've got a little technical problem." It's like I had a fuckin' bunch of oysters in my mouth.

Q: Did you do any research for your role as a male prostitute in Three of Hearts?

A: Yeah. I talked to this former Mr. America bodybuilder who started his own escort service and he introduced me to some of the guys who did it. I was curious to get into the head of these people. Some of them were NYU students working their way through college and they can go out on a Saturday night and make enough to pay their bills. Another thing I thought was interesting was what it must be like for one of those guys to be with an older woman, how strange and difficult it must be on the one hand, but on the other, how empowering it would be, I mean, just imagine a 55-year-old woman whose husband is cheating on her, or he's like fat and doesn't fuck her anymore, or he's dead. And here this woman finds, between her legs, this young fuckin' gorgeous guy with this great body who's going to, you know, fuck her to within an inch of her life.

Q: If you could be a woman for one day, what would you want to experience?

A: Please, what do you think?

Q: Well, you could go for something enlightening like child-birth, or go for the cheap thrill and get laid.

A: That's not a cheap thrill, I don't mean to sound so obvious--I mean that in a very curious way. I guess it's the curiosity of knowing what it feels like for you, and you wonder. Does it feel totally different for her? Because it's pretty weird to try and describe what the feeling of an orgasm is; I've never heard a guy and a girl describe it similarly. But it'd be tough for me to be a woman because I think if I were, I'd be one of those women who was one of the boys, very sexually active and promiscuous.

Q: And if you could be Chynna Phillips for one day, what would you want to experience?

A: If I could be Chynna, [laughter] I'd fuck Billy Baldwin.

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Dennis Hensley interviewed Kelly Lynch for the Jan./Feb. Movieline.

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