Sean Young: Young at Heart

Q: Given your past experiences, are you more careful than ever about the personal life of the guys you play opposite?

A: I'm always really very careful with their spouses now. I'm very skittish around women who have a competitive, jealous side.

Q: In No Way Out, you and Kevin Costner played a sex scene in a limo in which you couldn't smell the popcorn for the pheromones in the theater. What was that scene like to film?

A: I'm still waiting to have sex in a limo in real life myself [laughing]. I remember being in that limo and Kevin's heart was just pounding. I had no clothes, I was surrounded by male crew members and Kevin was fully dressed and I reminded him, "I'm the one who's undressed here." I think the limo scene works because there's a kind of carefreeness to Kevin and me in it. That's when things really work, when you're not afraid of really going for it and you're not holding back. I felt I had the support of all the people in the scene with me. Everybody was open.

Q: What are the biggest differences between actors and actresses?

A: A costar said to me recently, "You're like an actor, not an actress," and I took it as a compliment. Men and women in Hollywood act out in different ways. Actresses tend to live in their own world, floating onto the set beaming and glowing for a while as they do their thing, then floating away again. They lock themselves in their trailers because they're all worried about how they look. It's a big sort of vanity thing and everything slows down because of how they look. Actors are a little paranoid. They end up acting out through a competitive working and reworking of a scene because they want to come off a certain way in the movie. And they tend to watch their backs. I guess that makes me an "actor" these days.

Q: What's it like working with an actor who's tough to be around?

A: Whether you're shooting a movie or it's real life, get 10 people in a room and if one of those 10 is a psychotic, crazy asshole, guess who winds up running the room? If you've got one actor who has a problem, all the rest of us have to turn around and go--[big snore]. With big old pros, it doesn't happen that much. Unless you get all of them together in one room, like Tommy Lee Jones, Harrison Ford and Gene Hackman--then I'd bet you'd see some shit fly.

Q: What sort of actors do you work best with?

A: Ones who, like me, love to laugh and keep their energy up. William Devane was just a doll and a half on Poor White Trash. From the neck down, he has the most gorgeous body and from the neck up, he's like "Iguana Man" with this tongue that constantly moves around. Michael Caine is wonderful to work with, too. Other actors like to isolate, like Kevin Costner.

Q: How do you define sexual chemistry between costars on screen?

A: It's sexual attraction. Moviemakers look to cast people who have a certain amount of fuckability, then put together two people who have some sense of attraction between them to harness while they're filming. You don't repress it and you don't go after it and try to gratify it. You just try to be comfortable with it. One of the nicer aspects of chemistry is that you're able to have closeness with someone and it's completely legal. It's something, hopefully, your mate understands.

Q: What kind of pressure does doing such a scene put on your husband?

A: Today, my husband looks forward to movies in which I have a love interest. I get home from the set all jazzed up and I'm like, "Honey, come here!" and I take it out on him and he loves it. He's totally comfortable with it now, but that took time. We were together during No Way Out and I think that was the key moment in the learning curve for him. He wasn't happy about any of it and I basically said, "You have to get over that. This will be my situation again and again." I've never been unfaithful to him. I've never messed with him or hurt him. He's not afraid that I'm deceiving him or anything and he needn't be.

Q: Your manager claims to have seen Harrison Ford, who rarely has really good chemistry with his female costars, saying he thought you and he had very good chemistry.

A: [Laughing] I'm in shock. I thought he hated me. And he hated Blade Runner, too. He still doesn't concede that it's a great movie, but it is.

Q: Have you had to fake it with a costar?

A: The times I had to fake it were dreadful. On Love Crimes, I wanted Billy Petersen but they said they wanted a bigger name and it was Patrick Bergin. Making it was awful. The other one was with Tom Conti--ughhh!--in a movie called Out of Control. He was so wrong and the chemistry was so dreadful. When it came time to do the love scene, I sat there looking really depressed and they had to get a body double because I got to the point where I just couldn't do it. We turned the girl away from the camera, stuck her head on the pillow, shot the scene and I said, "That's it. Let's move on." Patrick Bergin and Tom Conti, both from the island, huh? [Laughing] Hmm, is there a pattern here? On the other hand, I met Jeremy Irons in Cannes and he put his little arm around my waist and I was very, very happy. I'd work with him in a minute.

Q: What happens when you act out your attraction to a costar in real life?

A: You get to have sex with Sting [long laugh]. Though Sting and I weren't really playing opposite each other in Dune, Kyle MacLachlan and I were [long laugh]. Hey, I was 23 and single. But it's not a good move to do that.

Q: Who's on your hit list of guys with whom you think you'd have chemistry?

A: John Cusack, funnily enough. Johnny Depp I'd love to work with, and Sean Penn. Ben Affleck, because he's great and he's my height, but not Matt Damon. I can't work with someone and have to bend down going [breaks into baby talk], "Ooh, let me kiss you and I promise I won't wear heels, OK?" I mean, Matt is awfully good, but Ben Affleck is sexy--and tall.

Q: How did you like doing that funny, strange cameo in Sugar & Spice in which you play a hard-boiled prison lifer who's mother to Mena Suvari's cheerleader?

A: I hear the movie is hilarious. It's a little part, but I had fun. Talk about brave: I wear this big, scraggly hair and have a scratchy Southern voice. What's nice about Mena is that it cheered her up greatly that I was in the movie. She asked me for autographs and she expressed to me her appreciation of my work. I feel very strongly that younger women dig me. Actually, I feel like a lot of women dig me.

Q: You also have a very strong androgynistic vibe.

A: [Laughing] I get some strange mail from women. I always oblige by signing with a big kiss, mmmmmmm, and a big heart. It's part of me, too. I'm not gay, but I definitely like looking at good-looking women. Maybe it's just because I've been in such a strange business for so long. We're all checking each other out all the time and you're often exposed to gorgeous types. I like looking at good-looking people, period.

Q: Do you offer advice to any of your younger costars?

A: Only when asked. The one thing that I might come up with for a young woman is, "Don't trust anybody. Look out for yourself and assume nothing." I hate to give that kind of jaded advice, but young women are much more willing than young men to assume that everybody's coming from a good point of view. It sets you up for a real jawbone fracture.

Q: Would you warn them about chase-girls-around-the-desk type producers?

A: The only producer who's ever chased me around is Warren Beatty, and he's chased everybody [laughing]. The Hollywood 101 Course is all about how to dodge Warren.

Q. I've heard that you're considering one project in which you'd play the Hollywood evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and another in which you'd play the troubled silent-movie superstar Clara Bow.

A: The Aimee script I was sent is really good, a little like Elmer Gantry. The Clara Bow project will depend on the right script.

Q: Do you have any interest in being part of the cast of The Women, which, so go the rumors, may star Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan and others?

A: But if I get on the set with all of them, they'll be all scared of me [laughing]. Joke, joke. I may be more intimidating as an unknown quantity but once known, that pretty much disappears. The vibe I get from people is very positive.

Q: What are you happiest about these days? A: That I'm taking care of business and that I'm mature enough now that I won't be bounced around anymore like I once was. I'm more careful now and I'm more responsible about everything, which includes my personal life. I'd say I'm a pretty fearless person now. I have confidence about what I'm doing. And that's a pretty good thing to have in this business.

_____________________________________________________________________

Stephen Rebello interviewed Steven Soderbergh for the December/January issue of Movieline.

Pages: 1 2