Samantha Mathis: Hot as a Pistol

Samantha Mathis loses her cool over John Travolta, and waxes rhapsodic about working with guns.

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Samantha Mathis comes to meet me at the penthouse in The Argyle Hotel and just keeps walking around and laughing. "Are you having a party or something?" she says, taking in the enormous terrace. "What are you expecting, a herd of people to come over? This is so great."

I first met Mathis when she was 19, during the filming of Pump Up the Volume, Allan Moyle's teen-angst movie that paired Mathis with Christian Slater, and also provided her first topless scene. Even as a kid, she was poised and self-possessed. Now she's an adult, but she still looks like a kid with no make-up, no jewelry and her hair up in bobby pins. "I'm sort of an adult," she says. "I'm 25. but I can't say the word 'woman' and feel it has anything to do with me."

Since I've last seen her, she's had roles in This is My Life, Super Mario Bros., The Music of Chance, Little Women, How to Make an American Quilt and The American President. I say, "So things are going pretty good for you, huh?"

"Knock wood, knock wood, knock wood," she replies, looking around for some. "You cannot even imagine what's been happening. First, I got to go to the White House to do research for The American President. I spent a day there. The Japanese Prime Minister had arrived, so I followed him and Bill Clinton around. I never actually met Bill, I was just like the weird girl in the corner who he didn't know who I was."

"So what does his staff call him?"

"Everyone calls him 'Mr. President.' I guess that's the rule or something. Anyway, that was way beyond cool. Then I did this movie in England, Jack and Sarah, with Richard E. Grant. . ."

"What do they call him? Richard E.?"

"Just plain Richard, I'm not sure why he uses the E. But that was great, too, because I got to spend three months in London, which I loved. It's a sweet story about a guy who loses his wife and has a baby to take care of, and he hires me as the nanny. It was really a great opportunity."

"Did you have to work with a baby? Because some people say that's a nightmare..."

"It was very funny, because the baby grows up a little during the movie. For the infant, they had these twins, and they were so little that they didn't care who held them. If they got hungry, they'd cry, and then we'd switch to the other one. But the one-year-old totally knew who Mom and Dad were, so I had to really create a bond with this baby. I spent my off time going to the house where the baby lived, and taking it in a stroller to the park, and praying that I wasn't going to kill it or drop it or something. I'd pick her up from naps, put her in a bath, feed her, and I created this whole relationship with her."

"And then you just left her and now her whole life'll be fucked up."

"You think?" Mathis says, twirling her hair. "I'm kidding," I assure her.

"Good. OK, then I went straight into Broken Arrow, which was directed by John Woo and stars Christian Slater and John Travolta. I had a week to get ready, and then there I was, in Arizona, shooting a gun. It was wild. This is the first time I had to learn about guns, and I have to say, I really liked it. Once you learn what you're doing and you realize it's not some random tiling that can go off and kill someone, it was quite a rush. You definitely feel powerful. We had machine guns and shotguns and rifles, it was the best." Mathis is actually flushed.

"Calm down," I beg her.

"I know, it got me nuts. Anyway, it was great coming back to work with Christian. And John Travolta, well, I have to tell you... the summer that Grease came out, I must've been 11 or 12, my friend Tiffany and I went to see it in the theater 23 limes. And I'm not exaggerating. We were mental over that movie. I knew every single line. So I was in awe, and I didn't know what to say to him. I just kept thinking, I've gotta have my moment with him. And it never seemed the right time, until one day I went, to hell with it, I've just gotta lose my cool. And I just told him how I felt about him, how I felt about Grease, and he went down that road with me for a good half hour while I went on and on. So I adore him. And I got to do things on this movie that I never dreamed of. I ran along the top of a moving train with helicopters buzzing around my head. I went down the Colorado River. I got to shoot guns..."

"Is it like Speed?" ask.

"It has the same producers and they kept talking about Speed. And I'll tell you something funny. When I got the film, someone said, 'Wow, with this movie, you could be the next Sandra Bullock.' What they didn't know is that Sandy and I have been friends for years -- we did a movie called The Thing Called Love together. So I called her up, and I said, 'Hey Sandy, guess what? I'm the new you!' And we laughed for 10 minutes."

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Martha Frankel interviewed Greg Kinnear for the December '95 Movieline.