Is Claudia Schiffer too famous as a model to pass for an actress? She hopes Abel Ferrara's The Blackout will make people see her as more than a stick figure.
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Models can't act. We know this, right? It's not just a cliché. Look at Cindy Crawford in Fair Game, Vendela as Mrs. Freeze in Batman & Robin, Naomi Campbell in Miami Rhapsody.
Even Elle Macpherson, who's had some success on-screen, mostly just plays models. Proof, yes? Well, Claudia Schiffer, who has landed her first starring role in Abel Ferrara's The Blackout, believes that a sweeping generalization like "models can't act" is unfair: "Of course there are some models who are not good," she says, "but it has been proven that some models can act. Look at Kim Basinger, Sharon Stone or Andie MacDowell, who were all models--they are really fantastic actresses."
Yeah, but as models, these women were never in the same super-stratosphere as Claudia Schiffer, who has been on more than 500 magazine covers, who earns an estimated $14 million per year, who was described by GQ as the most beautiful woman in the world, who once wore a million-dollar diamond-encrusted bra on the cover of a Victoria's Secret catalog, and who is all over the tabloids with magician David Copperfield.
"Well, Andie MacDowell was very well known as a model," argues Schiffer. "She had quite a name. So..." So why, I ask her, are there so many skeptics willing to pounce on a cover girl who makes the leap to movies? "Well," says Schiffer patiently, "any actor, when they start out, is probably not so good, but no one knows who they are at first." Meaning, if you're already known as a rock, sports or modeling star, you don't get that same blissful period of anonymity? "That's right," says Schiffer. "You're not allowed to make a mistake."
Abel Ferrara, Schiffer's director on The Blackout, is a strange, nasty man who makes strange, nasty films full of violence, sex, drugs and death, many of which are intoxicatingly enjoyable. He's best known for giving us anti-beauty--things you really don't want to see, like Harvey Keitel's wanger in Bad Lieutenant. How did he get the exceedingly beautiful Schiffer to star in his film? He sent her the script, she says, but after that it was all her doing. "I loved it immediately," she recalls. "I said, I have to do this movie. The pushing came from my side."
And what role does she play? "I'm the supportive girlfriend of Matty [Matthew Modine], who's trying to get rid of his demons, which are connected to drugs and alcohol, and also a girl, played by Beatrice Dalle. I'm the one who helps him get it together." So she's the good girl? "Kind of the good girl, yeah, but Matty's kind of not in love with me. He's in love with Beatrice Dalle, who he can't have." In the story, substance abuser Matty is also a movie star, which reminds me of another Ferrara movie, Dangerous Game, in which James Russo plays a substance-abusing movie actor and Madonna plays an untalented movie actress whom Russo ends up shooting. Schiffer says she liked that film, and of Ferrara she says, "I always found him not like anyone else. He's very interesting, very... deep."
Schiffer has not acted since her debut in Macaulay Culkin's Richie Rich, in which she played an aerobics instructor. Why did she wait three years to follow that disappointment up with a film by Abel Ferrara, of all people? "Everyone asks me that, Why Abel Ferrara, why this movie?" says Schiffer. "They say, 'We thought you'd be in an action movie or a romantic movie.' They didn't think I'd ever want to be with such a dark and kind of strange director. But I didn't want to do a commercial movie. I think you learn more from an artistic movie. I didn't realize when I made it that so many people would be shocked."
Schiffer has no plans to quit modeling. On top of that, she's dipping her hand into just about every pot she can reach--she's part owner of The Fashion Café with fellow supermodels Naomi Campbell and Elle Macpherson, she puts out a swimsuit calendar every year, and she has four exercise videos on the market. Is acting just another adventure? "I'm not acting just to say I'm in a movie," she insists. "I'm fortunate enough that I don't have to accept every movie that comes along. I said no to a lot of money to do The Blackout. So a [movie has] to be something really great. Otherwise, what's it gonna do for me?"
Schiffer wears no makeup in The Blackout. And her hair isn't done, and her clothes are, as she puts it, "pretty low key." In other words, no million-dollar bras. "We tried to get away from how people imagine me," she says. "Somebody said they didn't realize it was me in the movie. That's the greatest compliment someone can give you."
One of the most glamorously recognizable faces in the world not getting recognized--and liking it? Seems hard to believe, but Schiffer sounds as if she means it. Or maybe she's just acting.
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Joshua Mooney interviewed Russell Crowe for the September issue of Movieline.