The Return of Juliette Lewis

I ask her if the reported drug use on the set of Natural Born Killers was what started I her down the road that I proved disastrous. She I denies this.

"On that set, I was mostly just heartbroken. In fact, so much of my younger [acting] experiences were tainted with sadness because of my personal dramas, which absorbed me more than filmmaking. Either I was in love and it wasn't working or I was in love and we were apart."

One major object of her personal I drama was Brad Pitt, whom she'd met on the set of a TV movie called Too Young to Die when she was 16 and he was in his mid-20s. "Brad was part of an innocent, anonymous journey," she says of their early relationship. "In fact, he was the first guy she cooked for. I made rice and steamed vegetables and chicken dogs from the health-food store. The same meal for two weeks."

She and Pitt were still together two years later when Thelma & Louise came out. They waded through the flashbulb frenzy at the premiere and got a sense of what was to come. "We split just before Legends of the Fall and Interview With the Vampire came out," she explains.

That's like breaking up with a guy just before he gets elected president. Where do you go to recover from that? An offshore oil rig is one possibility. But Lewis stayed on the mainland and, as a result, she couldn't walk down the street without seeing Pitt's gorgeous mug on a billboard or magazine cover. "It was like a haunting," she says. But she's quick to add that it wasn't just the breakup that sent her spiraling downward. "It wasn't any one thing," she says. "[Even] at the age of 17, I was full of self-loathing, and who the hell knows where that comes from?"

How bad was it?

"I'd be sitting in the makeup chair contemplating suicide. And I can't blame [drug-using] people on movie sets, because I was a pothead from when I was 13. Pot was my way of trying to sedate some of my creative energy." How much creative energy? Well ... Lewis once stood on her head in a movie theater and yelled at the screen, "I love you, Superman!"

She says, "The funny thing is, I was rumored to have had a drug problem before I actually had one. To explain my uniqueness, people would say things about me." She sips her soup and shrugs. "I'm being candid, but ... why not?"

In Florida she got into a detox program run by the Church of Scientology. Her parents are Scientologists and though Lewis had not exactly been a poster child for the organization, they took her in when she needed help. "I'd give you the gory details of my withdrawal," she says. "But it's so sad."

Slowly the poisons were leeched from her system. Slowly her strength and self-esteem began to return. Slowly her soul was revived. What got her through, she says, was the support of her family and her belief in L. Ron Hubbard's philosophy. After 18 months with Mom and the Scientologists, Lewis began looking at scripts. The Other Sister resonated with her.

"Because my character, Carla, was leaving an institution and entering the world again, her journey paralleled my own, and so I related to her more than any character that I've played. Not only her journey, but her alienated existence and her perseverance. When I went in to read for Garry, I was scared shitless. I didn't have the character down, but I did what I always have had the ability to do--say lines honestly." (Marshall later recalls to me, "I didn't know her at all. And she came in with this bright yellow, spiky hair, and I thought, 'This isn't exactly what I'm looking for. This is not a Lucille Ball type.'")

"In the past," says Lewis, "if I went to an audition and didn't get a part, I'd say, 'OK, that sucks, but they didn't 'get' me. They want something safer, something more predictable.'" But this audition was different. "To get this part, I was the most passionate I've ever been." She told Marshall she wanted to come back and read again. He was so impressed with her determination that he gave her a second shot.

Still the executives at Disney were leery.

"I can understand that," says Lewis. "First of all, I was never a star." (Now wait a second. If Gretchen Mol is a star, Lewis is a legend.) "Second, because of The Evening Star, I had this crappy reputation." She did a third audition. " 'Vanni [Ribisi] gave me courage," she says. The two actors have known each other for nine years. Their parents were friends. Years ago, Lewis recommended Ribisi to her manager. Now Ribisi was repaying the favor. "He inspired me to drop the fear and go for it."

After the third audition, Lewis had a long talk with Marshall and told him of her odyssey. Then she met with his sister, Penny, who helps him with casting.

"How did you dispel concerns about your state of mind?"

"The way I hold myself and present myself now is different. It gets rid of any concerns, because I'm not concerned. What am I trying to say? I can totally trust myself. I'm my friend now."

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