The Flint Beneath the Shimmer

And so she should be, since she has shown unusual dexterity in that minefield-strewn genre, the romantic comedy, a form in which Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts have distinguished themselves, while others like Geena Davis and Debra Winger have gotten rudely tarnished. Is MacDowell comfortable sparkling in a niche market once cornered by the magnificent likes of Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert?

"I told my agent the other day that I want desperately to play a woman who is sexy and strong and powerful," she asserts. 'To play someone like that doesn't necessarily mean we have to go back to the great roles women had in the '40s and '50s. For an actress to be sexy and strong, the project doesn't have to be--shouldn't have to be--a period piece. So far, though, I'm not finding scripts. Either nobody's writing them or somebody else is getting all the pleasure. So, to answer your question, I feel I have so much more to offer."

I mention some of the movie assignments I've heard MacDowell was up for; Flashdance, Ghost, The Silence of the Lambs, Fatal Attraction, The Last of the Mohicans, Indecent Proposal. What did she think of some of those decidedly non- romantic -comedy roles? MacDowell doesn't want to offend anybody by directly confirming or denying involve-ment with these projects, but she will him at her own sensibilities by commenting on the roles. "I had a hard time with The Silence of the Lambs," she admits. "Because of the subject matter. Those kinds of movies disturb me. I get lost in them, they terrify me, and I don't want those images in my head. Jodie Foster did a beautiful job and won the Academy Award for it. It was a very challenging role and to miss the opportunity to have someone as talented as Jonathan Demme directing you is a great loss for an actress." A toss MacDowell is willing to incur, obviously. What movie can MacDowell point to as something that's akin to her sensibility?

"I thought Meryl in The Bridges of Madison County was really something," she answers, beaming. "I never really liked that book and I had some problems with the story, but I loved things in the movie, like when they pulled back the camera and the two of them were just in the kitchen with their bodies in such close proximity. You felt that you were witnessing something complex and multilayered, I'll tell you something else. One great, great recent loss was [the death of director] Krzysztof Kieslowski. The way he saw women in Red, White and Blue was just amazing. He could have done the kind of movie I want to do. When I was making The Object of Beauty in London, he came over and spoke to me in a restaurant. He saw potential in me to do work. I felt a wonderful connection."

I'm wondering whether it is true, as I've heard, that MacDowell has refused certain roles out of deference to her family, particularly husband Paul Qualley, who, since retiring from modeling for such clients as the Gap, has become a builder and gentleman rancher. "Her family life is what drives her," MacDowell's Multiplicity director Harold Ramis told me. "She's like one of those Greek fishermen who go away for six months to earn enough money to keep their families. Being the big bread winner, she knows she can build a certain security for her family if she piles up enough money doing these lead roles while she's still young and beautiful enough. But she's specific about what she'll do and what she's right for."

No kidding, MacDowell confides to me that a friend advised against her doing Four Weddings because it contained so many repetitions of the "f" word--a word Mac-Dowell calls her "least favorite in the world, because it's so overused in this business and shows such a lack of intelligence from the person who uses it." Indeed, out of respect for her spouse, she even declines to dish with me about the great kissers with whom she's worked. Will her standards limit her movie menu to strictly vanilla? "As long as a role has intelligence and integrity to it and Paul knows that it's something that will challenge me as an actress, I don't think he would keep me from doing it," she says. "But we've had some tensions. I met with Adrian Lyne on a couple of things, because he and I shot a commercial together even before he did Flashdance. I kept deliberating whether I wanted to go in to read for 9½ Weeks because it was just this side of sleazy. Now, after seeing Thelma & Louise, I said to my husband, 'Damn, I would have loved to have done Geena Davis's role." He got very upset because it was also very sexual, hut I loved that. The roles that I would like to have done that are very sexual give him the willies. He used to be bugged by the fact that I'm enamored of things Jessica Lange has done. It kind of intimidates him. But I think we're actually in a better place now than we have been in a long time."

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