No demure role for Shirley MacLaine
“Writers have this thing, when you pass a certain age, (they assume) you tell people exactly what you think,” says Shirley MacLaine of a character type she’s often offered. “And usually that means ‘bitch,’ though that’s not really true.”
But speaking by phone from her home base in Santa Fe, N.M., to promote her new film, “The Last Word,” the 82-year-old Oscar winner for “Terms of Endearment,” prolific author and women’s rights activist certainly doesn’t seem to shy away from voicing whatever’s on her mind.
“My favorite part was ‘Terms of Endearment,’ Aurora Greenway,” she says. “I think, after that, the trajectory was pretty clear: That I would play laughable bitches. And that’s what I did, of course, in ‘Steel Magnolias.’ That was like a postcard, though, that was a little broad. Same thing in ‘Postcards from the Edge.’ ”
“Last Word” director Mark Pellington acknowledges that MacLaine’s famous outspokenness in her personal and professional lives was the inspiration for protagonist Harriet Lauler: “The writer, Stuart Ross Fink, said he wrote it with her in mind, all the way back to Aurora Greenway in ‘Terms.’ ”
He remembers that early in the process, “She wanted me to give her direction, specifically, and I did it — and the next take, I was telling her what to do and she said, ‘Stop telling me what to do!’ ”
Harriet is an obsessive, brusque and successful businesswoman who had fought social conventions and won her whole life. Now she wants to control her worldly exit, starting with her obituary. She forces a young journalist (Amanda Seyfried) to investigate her life to craft a positive but truthful story, and Harriet finds she has some work to do to make that possible.
“I loved the idea I was playing a woman who was born in the ’30s and is still suffering from ‘Nobody will pay attention to you if you’re a woman,’ ” MacLaine says. “I loved the idea of working with Amanda. I didn’t know anything about the director, but ended up really appreciating him. I certainly didn’t do it for money, I’ll tell you that.”
MacLaine cut her teeth as an ingenue in films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Trouble with Harry” and was known for her dancing, including on Broadway. Apart from “Terms,” she has five other Oscar nominations (one for codirecting the 1975 documentary “The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir”), including for best picture winner “The Apartment” (1960).
“That’s so long ago, I’ve forgotten making ‘The Apartment,’ ” she says with a laugh. “I learned very much from working with the great directors, like Billy Wilder and Willy (William Wyler) on ‘Children’s Hour,’ Mike Nichols. … The experience of working with directors now is entirely different than it was then. Now, it’s much more free-flowing, and it’s up to you to improvise and kind of become, immediately, the character. Half the directors don’t know when to say ‘action’ and ‘cut,’ so you’ve got to make it up.
“Fortunately, I’ve been able to make that shift, and that’s what I did with ‘The Last Word.’ Mark basically let us just be, and I think it was very wise of him. I found my own untapped improvisational talent that I didn’t know was there.”
Pellington says, “Like her character, (MacLaine) expected a lot, had high standards. Everybody’s got to learn each other’s process. Everybody’s working as hard as they can. But she doesn’t suffer fools.”
The director says she was a powerful presence on the set. “I remember her sitting right next to the dolly, talking to the camera crew, some anecdote about, like Billy Wilder, some movie. Six guys, not one a day over 35, all kids, and they’re all huddled around her, listening to her talk about old Hollywood.”
MacLaine says she, too, took something new away from her experience: “I have a place in Malibu, so I drove from Malibu to Pasadena (their location) every day, and that’s what I learned: How bad the traffic is and how desperately everyone in their car is silently wondering how they can change their life.”
Michael Ordoña is a Los Angeles freelance writer. Twitter: @michaelordona