Thanks to the fame and fortune Seinfeld gave her, Julia Louis-Dreyfus can afford to be selective as she eyes her movie options. And for her first post-_Seinfeld_ film, she's chosen to play... an ant.
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"C'mon, admit it," Julia Louis-Dreyfus implores. "I have a big head, right? It's too big for my body--you were probably thinking that yourself, weren't you?"
Trust me, I wasn't. But now that she mentions it, her head is a little big. But beautiful, what with that cascading hair and those great teeth and that killer smile.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has brought up this big head business to illustrate why she is the perfect actress to play an ant in the new computer-animated film, A Bug's Life, which is being done by the people who made Toy Story.
"My father always said that everybody has an animal that they look like," continues Louis-Dreyfus, sitting in the back of an L.A. restaurant sipping iced tea. "You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out everybody's animal. I think that mine is an ant. You can see it, right? My head is flat and wide and I wouldn't look that strange with little antennae sticking up." She sticks her two index fingers above her head and wiggles them seductively.
I'm tempted to tell her that this sounds like the beginning of a Seinfeld episode, but I only saw Seinfeld a couple of times in its nine years, so beyond the fact that Louis-Dreyfus played the sarcastic, sometimes demented Elaine Benes, I don't know anything about what's made her famous.
"That's refreshing," Louis-Dreyfus says without any sarcasm when I explain this. "Because I've been playing this character for so long, people think they know me. But I'm not Elaine, really I'm not--although I'll probably go to my grave denying it. Elaine's single; I'm married. Elaine's neurotic; I'm, well, less neurotic. Elaine's a pain in the ass; I am never, ever a pain in the ass."
At this, Louis-Dreyfus lets loose with one of her laughs, and a woman who looks to be in her late 70s comes ambling over to us from another table. She holds two fingers up in the air as if she's smoking an imaginary cigarette. We both stare at her. She moves the two fingers to her mouth and blows Louis-Dreyfus a kiss. "I just want to say thank you for all the good times," she croaks out. "Hope to see you around." Then she turns around and walks away.
Louis-Dreyfus looks genuinely taken aback. "That was sweet, huh?" she asks, and actually dabs a napkin near her eyes as she takes a sip of tea.
"As long as we're talking about your head," I say, "can we talk about the blow job you gave Richard Benjamin in Deconstructing Harry?"
Louis-Dreyfus spits her tea back into her glass. The look on her face is one of pure shock.
"Well," I say in defense of myself, "it was truly one of the sickest, most offensive sex scenes I've ever seen. And believe me, I'm not easily offended. I'm not sure what was so vile about it--that you were having sex with your sister's husband, that the husband was Richard Benjamin, or that your blind grandmother walks in on it..."
"Are you asking me to figure it out?" Louis-Dreyfus asks incredulously.
"Nah, I figure it was just the combination of all three of those things. I just want to know how Woody Allen got you to do it."
"I get this call that Woody wants me to do this cameo in his next movie. And oh, that's exciting. But it's during my Seinfeld season, and so I don't think it's going to work. And then he figures out when my hiatus break is, and reschedules it to accommodate me, and would I please consider? Wow, it's a Woody Allen movie! I mean, how could I not do it? I remember that before I got the script I said to [my husband] Brad, 'Well, at least I won't have to hmmm-hmmm-hmmm.' If you know what I mean." Louis-Dreyfus's eyes arch so high that she can only be talking about sex, "And then I get the pages, and sure enough, I have to hmmm-hmmm-hmmm. I remember when I read the pages, I didn't believe what I was reading."
"I think the thing that was so shocking," I say, "is that Woody had always played such a schlub, a seducer of women on an intellectual level. But in Deconstructing Harry, he was really pissed off, and his anger was directed right at women. He didn't hold back."
"No, not at all," agrees Louis-Dreyfus. "And he played a bad man. My first reaction was, No, I'm not going to do it. I mean, how could I do this? A lot of what was on those pages didn't make it into the film, thank God. Because it was basically just dirty talk. I called and I talked to Woody, and I may have said something like, 'I've got to tell you, I read this and I wonder if you've gone nuts.' Now bear in mind that I did not have the rest of the script, and I didn't know how the story unfolded. But we talked about how part of the film was in reality and part wasn't, and that my character was in the unreality part. Woody told me there would be no nudity. And that if there were specific lines that I was uncomfortable with, I didn't have to say them. He was very reassuring with me on the phone, and I thought, OK, let's do it. And when I saw the movie, I felt very relieved."
"You did? I can't remember people having such a visceral, negative reaction to a sex scene in a long time ..."
"Oh, calm down," Louis-Dreyfus says, reminding me that we're only talking about movies here. "I mean that I felt relieved because it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I certainly made the decision to play it broad. This was not in any way, shape or form a realistic sex scene. It was bawdy, it was raunchy, it was vaudeville. It was easier for me to watch than if I'd played it straight. Actually, I liked it and felt good about it."
Comments like this make it easy to forget that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the daughter of an award-winning writer mother and a father who runs a billion-dollar financial firm. Her parents divorced when she was a baby, and by the time she was five, they had both remarried. She says she felt like she had two families, although she doesn't make light of what divorce does to kids. She met her future husband, writer/producer Brad Hall (_The Single Guy_), while at Northwestern University, and they've been together ever since. (They now have two young sons, Henry and Charles.) They were both tapped to costar on Saturday Night Live back in 1982. Louis-Dreyfus says that her three seasons there were pure hell, mostly because she didn't have a clue what she was doing. But that eventually led to a two-year stint on the sitcom Day by Day, which led to her role on Seinfeld, not to mention a fat contract with Clairol's Nice 'n Easy. Along the way, Louis-Dreyfus also made a series of forgettable movies. And she made Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, which wasn't forgettable, though her role was.
"If you blinked during Hannah, you would have missed me, because I was only there for a second. In the beginning of the movie, Woody Allen works on a comedy show and I'm his assistant. I was supposed to walk in front of him while he said his line. So I do it and he says, 'Wait a minute, stop, stop.' And I stop. Only that's Woody's line, not a direction to me. We kept having to do it over and over. I was dying."
"Let's talk about North," I say. Here we're talking forgettable. "I remember reading a piece where you talked about how excited you were by that film." Louis-Dreyfus gives a major shoulder shrug. "The best part was that Jason [Alexander, her costar on Seinfeld] and I were on that movie together. And that was fun because it was like going to camp with your best friend. No, camp isn't quite right. More like going to a new school with your best friend. And we worked with Jon Lovitz, who is just hilarious. So we had a wonderful time. I was just surprised that North didn't do better."
"You felt that after you finished shooting, or after you saw it?"
"After I made it," she admits reluctantly.
"But when you saw it, you had to admit that it sucked, right?"
Louis-Dreyfus draws up to her full five-foot-three height with indignation. "No, I don't have to admit that. But I will say it didn't hold together as well as I hoped. But the experience is still something I think of fondly."
"Fair enough. How about Father's Day? Everyone had such high hopes for that. Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Ivan Reitman--if those three guys can't make a funny movie, what hope is there for anyone else?"
"I had fun making that one. Billy and I worked on Saturday Night Live together. And Robin had hosted the show a couple of times when I was there, so I knew him a little. They were just hilarious together. We could hardly shoot some scenes because the cast and crew was breaking up so badly."
"So what happened? None of that translated to the screen. It was so not funny."
"Oh God, what can I say? I don't read reviews, because that just drives you out of your mind. I don't know why it didn't work. You can't blame that on me, can you?"
"Not at all. What about Jack the Bear?" Forgettable doesn't cover this one.
"To tell you the truth, I never saw it, because it was too sad. We were shooting this one scene where Danny [DeVito] is making an appeal for his son who has been kidnapped. And his eyes were tearing up, and I knew that I would never see this movie. I cannot take those kinds of emotions when they have to do with children. They freak me out. So I never brought myself to sit through it."
"If you could work with anyone in this business, who would it be? And don't bother saying Marty Scorsese."
Louis-Dreyfus blushes, and I realize that she might have been just about to mention Scorsese.
"It's only that everyone says they want to work with him," I tell her. "It's a given."
"OK. I would work with Woody Allen again. I would work with Peter Weir. Even before The Truman Show--I thought Fearless was terrific. Can I say I would work with the Coen brothers? Because I would love to. I thoroughly loved The Big Lebowski. I thought Jeff Bridges was so great, because, you know, he played this really stupid guy, and yet he never winked at the audience, he never explained himself. I'd love to work with him. I'd love to work with Emma Thompson, who I think is fantastic and also a great comedienne. Robert De Niro--I mean, there are so many good actors out. Actually, there's not so many good actors. There are some good actors."
"Are you a leading lady or a character actress?"
"I think I can do both." She pauses. "What?"
"What?" I answer, not sure what she means.
"You're giving me this look like I've lost my mind."
"Well, maybe I'm concerned because all the guys who have worked with you--Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner--they're always saying how you're this leading lady. But I see you more as a character actress..."
"But I'm not fighting for leading lady roles. And in the movies that I've done--obviously they've been few and far between because I've been on the series for nine years and I've had two children during that time--I always played secondary characters. But I would like to think that I could do both. I'm certainly not a model type, so I couldn't be that kind of a leading lady. But how about a regular old leading lady, like they used to have in those Preston Sturges movies and all those great movies from the '40s and the '50s?"
"They don't have those kind of leading ladies anymore. If they do, they're 23 and the guys they're playing against are old enough to be their grandfathers. But I understand what you're saying. So what's your strategy?"
"All I know is that I'm really not going to do stepping-stone jobs anymore. I'm just going to do jobs that are creatively appealing to me. I don't need the money and I don't need the exposure, so I can be more choosy. But think of Frances McDormand in Fargo. I love that movie, and it's about a pregnant cop! C'mon, does it get better than that for an actor? I don't think so. So if the Coen brothers want to call, I'm listed under L!"
"Even though I hardly ever saw you on Seinfeld, I was well aware of you because you're often the prettiest, best-dressed woman at the Emmys or the Golden Globes. What's your feeling about style? This is Movieline's style issue, you know."
Louis-Dreyfus groans. "Oh God, I don't know. I'm not sure I have a real 'sense of style,' but I do know what I like. This sweater I'm wearing is a Marion Foale. I bought it from a photo shoot because it was so great. And no, I didn't steal it or ask for it--I bought it. During the day, I'm a clogs, khakis and T-shirt kind of girl. Although T-shirts are becoming an issue because the neck is crucial and often I can't find the kinds I like."
"Are you a big shopper?"
"No, although I used to be bigger. Now, because of the kids, I don't have the time."
"How do you choose whose clothes you're going to wear for an awards show? Everybody must be begging you to wear theirs."
"I've worn a lot of Armani. I know it looks good on me, fits great, feels terrific. I've worn Herve Leger. I've worn Bob Mackie. I have an idea of what works for me. I like getting dressed up, because it's kind of like getting married every time you do it. I'm very girly that way, so I dig it. I don't dig the time it takes, though."
"And how about your husband--does he like it as much?"
"No, I don't think he likes it that much. But he goes, he's a good sport about it. Plus, it's so much easier for men. It's a tuxedo, period. So he puts on his tux and he stands there uncomfortably. He looks beautiful, though, and now I got him a nice watch to go with the tuxedo. He's all set. He's got his studs that I gave him when we got married. I love men in tuxedos. They always look fantastic. You know what else I love? A man in a dinner jacket, a white jacket with black tuxedo pants. Could you die when you see a man like that? But there are rules about what time of day you can wear them, and I never read the etiquette book, so I'm never sure. But I'm going to get one of those for Brad."
"Now that we've done our duty talking about style, can I ask what sort of an ant you play in A Bug's Life?"
"It's about an ant colony, and the ants are the good guys, the grasshoppers are the bad guys. My ant is being groomed to become the queen ant. It's very funny how they do these animated films--they film you and get all your gestures down pat, and then they draw the characters to have your movements. My ant's very nervous and second-guesses herself all the time and doesn't feel confident in this position of power. Which very well could be me!"
"One last thing--if you never work again and all you're remembered by is Elaine from 'Seinfeld,' will you feel fulfilled?"
"You mean when I'm dead? Honey, when I'm dead I'm not going to care how they remember me. But the fact that they do remember me at all is pretty good, don't you think?"
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Martha Frankel interviewed Terry Gilliam for the June '98 issue of Movieline.