Susan Sarandon still 'going for the joy'

LOS ANGELES -- Susan Sarandon is a risk taker.

Eleven years ago, in "Bull Durham," she proved that women over 40 can be sexy. Her pivotal performance three years later in "Thelma & Louise" made her a feminist heroine. In 1993 she turned the Oscar telecast on its head when she and longtime partner, actor Tim Robbins, veered from their scripts and decried the internment of Haitians at Guantanamo Bay. She shocked Hollywood again in 1995 when she appeared on-screen without makeup in her Oscar-winning performance as Sister Helen in "Dead Man Walking."

Now she's taking yet another risk, throwing out the strong mother persona she developed in family dramas such as "Lorenzo's Oil," "Little Women," "The Client" and "Stepmom" in favor of the wild, dysfunctional mom she plays in her new film, "Anywhere But Here."

"I just was drifting into this icon place, which is fairly airless," says the 53-year old actress over the phone while en route to "The Late Show with David Letterman" in Manhattan. "I just wanted to poke some holes in it and do something that was a little more seemingly silly."

"Anywhere But Here," a comedy-drama based on Mona Simpson's acclaimed novel, is about the evolving relationship between the vivacious Adele (Sarandon) and her teenage daughter, Ann (Natalie Portman). Sick of small-town life in Bay City, Wis., Adele packs herself and the unwilling Ann into a 1978 Mercedes and heads to Beverly Hills looking for a better, more exciting life.

Ann is the realist and often takes on the mothering role while Adele, too caught up in hunting down a dream, often forgets to pay the electric bill. Striving to get out from under her mother's obsessive and selfish grip in order to find her independence, Ann learns to forgive and, in the process, Adele learns to let go.

Sarandon says she was attracted to "Anywhere But Here" because "the character was so wild and kind of nutty." While the actress had read the book years ago, the story wasn't as relevant to her then as it is now that her daughter Eva (whose father is Italian writer/director Franco Amurri) is 14.

Unlike the characters in the film, however, Sarandon and Eva are not struggling with the issues of independence that often arise during the teenage years. "Eva's been someone (who) has always amused me and stirred my imagination and my intellect," Sarandon says. "We're still exchanging thoughts."

She laughs and adds, "She hasn't written me off quite yet -- talk to me in another year or two!"

Unlike many of the roles Sarandon has played in the past, Adele is not immediately likable. "That's the scary thing about playing a character like that," the actress confesses. "You can't worry about if she's sympathetic or not." Sarandon wanted to stretch her abilities and try a comedic part. "There was something about her that really moved me. I find it much more interesting to play people with faults than someone who walks on the screen as a hero in the first five minutes."

Adele breaks all the rules of motherhood. She even dares to have sexual escapades with strapping young Hollywood men, telling her daughter all about them later on. Sarandon is one of the few actress who have been able to break age-conscious Hollywood taboos about female sexuality. "First it was sex at 40, now it's sex at 50 -- journalists are obsessed about how this could happen," Sarandon notes. "I think that, really, if you're just trying to tell the truth about a character and make her as real as possible, it's pretty silly to think that there wouldn't be some sexuality there."

Why is it so difficult for Hollywood to portray sexuality in middle-aged women? Sarandon sighs. "Who knows. It's a white, heterosexual, male-dominated world, and as long as studio executives are trading in their old wives for new, younger girls, I guess Hollywood will reflect that in some part."

Sarandon herself has been scrutinized because Robbins, with whom she has two sons, is 12 years her junior. "We take for granted men being with women that are 30 years younger," she says, "and eyebrows are raised when there's a dozen years between a woman and a man in the opposite direction. At the end of the day, you better be happy with your life, and you better have felt you're going for the joy and not what people think, or you're going to be really sad."

In conversation and on-screen, Sarandon projects a true joie de vivre. She doesn't hide behind a movie star wall. She lives in New York City with her family, far from the Hollywood glitz. Los Angles is a city Sarandon describes as a "tough place to feel good about yourself," mainly because Tinsel Town has such a problem with actresses getting older. But Manhattan keeps her grounded. "I'm constantly in contact with people and on foot and not isolated and not set apart," Sarandon explains. "If I were holed up somewhere, I think I would get completely confused about who I am."

She's also devoted to her family life. How does she manage to balance work and motherhood? "Not well," Sarandon says with a laugh. "I just do the best I can." She always takes her kids on the set with her. "We've got it down to a science now. I don't know that I would work without them being there. If I actually had to concentrate full force on my job, I'd probably be so self-conscious!"

In her precious spare time, Sarandon champions social and political causes ranging from homelessness to police brutality. She doesn't just write checks and lend her name -- she can be seen screaming alongside other demonstrators, often getting arrested in the process.

"I try to take on the things that nobody else is doing, that aren't popular, and champion people (who) are voiceless and don't have access to the media -- like the homeless, women, children, or people with AIDS," Sarandon says. "The issues that are less pleasant for some people to deal with have become kind of my specialty."

But she admits that speaking out for the Haitians during the Academy Awards was one of the hardest things she's ever done. "As a woman, you're raised to keep things moving smoothly, not to stop the show," the actress explains. "And as a Catholic girl, you really know that you're not supposed to cause any kind of bumps.

"I just felt the only thing that was worse than my fear at that moment was living with myself if I didn't do something to let the nation know what was happening to these people."

Sarandon is stuck in midtown Manhattan traffic. The Letterman people are "freaking out" because she's not there yet. She's come a long way since starring in cult classics such as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "The Hunger." Between her career, her family, her politics and her fans, Sarandon is a woman in demand. What is her secret?

"Follow your heart and be passionate," she says. "And don't read your reviews."

archive