Forest Whitaker: Deep Forest

Given Whitaker's reputation for working with big (and, at times, legendarily difficult) female stars, I can't help but ask how working with Bullock compared with handling the likes of, say, Whitney Houston. "I'd work again with Whitney in a second," he insists. "In fact, I'd love to find something right away for us to do together. I never had a problem with her. Whitney and Sandy are very different, but I'd work again with either of them anytime."

Since part of the rediscovery Sandra Bullock's character goes through in Hope Floats is romantic, how does Bullock spark with Harry Connick Jr., who plays the underachieving house painter that such actors as Matt Dillon, Dermot Mulroney and Dylan McDermott, not to mention Billy Ray Cyrus, purportedly wanted to play? "We saw a lot of people for the role," Whitaker acknowledges, refusing to confirm or deny the usual suspects. "Harry can be really goofy so that one second you're laughing at him, then, all of a sudden, he flips some switch and can be really sexy like the Marlboro man. I felt he was the one from the beginning, and when Sandy and he did their screen test, the heat between them was so obvious, that was it."

Speaking of heat, what's with the rumors of friction between Whitaker and the studio powers that be, particularly over the film's bittersweet finale? "I hardly ever lose my temper," he comments. "But I do sometimes have to say, 'Get off my back, I'm trying to make the movie.' I didn't want to make a movie where Sandy's character meets a guy who 'saves' her. To the studio's credit, they let me try it the way I wanted it, and thank God, the first preview audience saved my ending. We also have this scene where Sandy and Gena finally connect emotionally, but don't hug. I had this thing about never letting them hug, because in life not everyone always gets to resolve relationships with a hug. Preview audiences weren't with me on that one. They were like, It they love each other, why don't they hug?' Well, because I asked them not to, that's why."

With the completion of Hope Floats, Whitaker will be returning temporarily to the other side of the camera, first with Ashley Judd in a Mona Lisa-tike thriller called Velvet Underground, and then in a movie directed by Jim Jarmusch. But he's a director for the duration, with upcoming plans that include the pilot for a TV series on which his new company has gotten the green light. He'll also be closely supervising his semi-autobiographical children's animated TV series The Village, voiced by Boyz II Men. Then it'll be another feature film. "I'm really intrigued by Fox's movie Anna and the King, which is a non-musical The King and I with Chow Yun-Fat," he notes. "But the one genre I'm really trying to convince them to let me do is a musical. I mean, I saw Evita, and Cinderella on TV, and told my agents: 'That's what I want to do.' I love pieces that are operatic, almost mythic."

Whether Oscar-bait or deluxe popcorn fare comes next for Whitaker, he insists he's happier than ever and hasn't been tempted to climb a ladder in years. Summoned to the dubbing theater to decide on such matters as whether to tone down one of Sandra Bullock's more raucous laughs or amp up one of Connick's sexier lines, he philosophizes, "For a long time, I thought it was going to take a lot to make me happy. Now, though, I'm relatively at peace. I love acting and directing when I'm doing them, yet there's no sense of 'I must,' because I could do neither of them and still be happy. If I can just tell some stories, maybe uplift some people by telling them, I'll be more than OK."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Christina Ricci for the April '98 issue of Movieline.

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