Madeline Stowe: Stowe-ing Away

"So, any great William Hurt stories?"

"Well," says Stowe. "I say this knowing that he rails against anybody for defining him in any way, but William, in his soul, is a truly conflicted, turbulent human being. Not in the way lots of actors seek to be--because they find the notion of torment romantic. He is that, plain and simple. He had a really unusual upbringing. He doesn't forget anything. He has a fascination and love for words that's not just talking for the sake of talking. And when you are as intelligent as he is, and you have a really vast knowledge of all kinds of things, and you have this huge vocabulary in which to set your thoughts, the thinking process does not stop. It makes him tormented. For him thinking is not a cerebral thing; it's an emotional experience. He likes clarity, which is very hard to find in the world right now. He has no patience for things not being verbalized absolutely, and with clarity. And he wants his work to be art, in a world where that's becoming increasingly difficult. He's also very patrician. I used to watch him walk down the long driveway in front of the mansion we were shooting in. He'd be in this long overcoat and a hat, and I just thought, You're totally living in the wrong time and place. He is truly otherworldly. And he has a rage in him that is really scary to a lot of people, but not to me. I adored working with him."

Whew! How's that for a portrait of a costar?

"How about Kenneth Branagh?"

"If art is everything to William, then work is everything to Kenneth. I really liked him a lot. He's tremendously focused, [but] he made me laugh every single day. Did you ever fantasize about your priest?"

"I'm Jewish," I tell her, not mentioning that there's probably nobody else I'd have to point this out to. "But I had this friend when I was little and she used to make me go to church with her because the priest was so handsome and she told me that she was going to marry him. I thought she was telling the truth."

"My sister used to go to church and fantasize about the priests," Stowe says. "You know, when we were kids...we used to play what we called Nasty Barbies, where we'd have Ken jump on Barbie and hump her. I didn't even know what it was, but it was a real turn-on. And you're turned on, and you're next to these other little girls. Does that make you a lesbian? Did you do that?"

I'm not exactly sure what the question is, not to mention how we got here from talking about priests. "I was never a Barbie fan," I say. "But I'll tell you one of my memories from when I was 10 or 11. My best friend and I used to go to my house after school because both my parents worked. I was dying to kiss boys, but no one was volunteering, so she and I would stand in front of the mirror and kiss it. And after we got tired of that, we'd switch places and kiss the spot where the other one had kissed."

"Really?" says Stowe. "Wow. But you never kissed each other?"

"No, but years later, I ran into her and we went for a drink and were talking about the mirror and she says, 'I always wanted to kiss you.'"

"My best friend when I was a kid was a girl named Mary," says Stowe. "She was about a year older than me and I was just in awe of her. I loved her. One day she started talking about lesbians, and I didn't know what that was. And she said, 'Lesbians are when two women grow up, they get to marry each other.' And I went home and said, 'Mom, Mary said when we grow up we can marry each other!' I was elated. It wasn't sexualized in any way, but my mother, needless to say, was speechless."

The people at the next table, who've been following our conversation while busying themselves with french fries, are practically falling off their chairs. "Should we take a ride?" I ask Stowe.

We drive along the ocean through Malibu in Stowe's car going very, very fast, and I ask if we can talk about some of her old movies. "Oh, I love to talk about them," she says. "Remember in Unlawful Entry when my husband [Kurt Russell] and the bad cop [Ray Liotta] are going at it in the end and I'm just squatting on the floor stroking the cat? I mean, really, what the fuck was my character thinking? But, hey, people love that movie, and they don't seem to worry that the woman's actions made no sense. I've had great experiences, though. Working with Michael Mann on The Last of the Mohicans was a joy."

"What about Bad Girls?" I ask, referring to the female Western she did with Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore and Mary Stuart Masterson. The film was such a mess that even though Stowe was by far the best thing in it, that didn't count for much. The mention of this movie sets off a hilarious, off-the-record blow-by-blow of the disaster that gets us most of the way to Santa Barbara.

"OK," I say, fearing we'll end up in San Francisco if I don't get back on the record, "let's talk about what's sexy in movies. This is the sex issue."

"How come I'm always in the sex issue of Movieline?"

"Because you just did a movie where you sleep with three of your costars."

Stowe does a 180-degree turn with almost no braking and now we're headed back to Santa Monica. Even faster.

"I've been thinking about this lately," says Stowe. "And I must say, sex on-screen has been cooling down in direct proportion to how much they show. Everybody is just so busy showing the other person how sexy they are. I mean, it's this look on their face when they're about to kiss and it's like, 'Don't you think I'm sexy? Don't I have that sexy look?' It doesn't seem to be about surrender or abandon anymore--and that's what makes something really sexy, where you're ready to toss everything away and there's something at stake. To me, one of the great sexy moments of all time is that moment between Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis in Witness, where they just look at each other. You don't know if they're going to stay together or what. That was the orgasm, right there."

"Anything recent you liked?"

"Chasing Amy was pretty funny," she says.

"Yeah, although I think the real chemistry was between the two guys."

"True. I thought was really sexy. Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones had unbelievable chemistry between them. He just loved her so much, and that in itself was a turn-on."

"You and Aidan Quinn had great chemistry in Blink."

"Yes, Aidan was really great. They asked him to do that striptease and he was really nervous. But he pulled it off and he was really funny."

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