Thin pickings... 75-year-old star Faye weighs her salad at dinner
IF you’re a Hollywood star, you’re never too old to worry about staying thin.
And Faye Dunaway stunned fellow guests at a star-studded Cannes gala – by pulling out a set of scales to weigh the food she was eating at dinner.
The 75-year-old star of Chinatown and Bonnie and Clyde joined Leonardo DiCaprio, Uma Thurman and Kevin Spacey at an AIDS research fundraising party at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc.
The slender actress requested a simple meal of fish and salad – even weighing the green leaves on a small set of scales she pulled out of a paper bag.
Miss Dunaway has a reputation for eccentric, diva-ish behaviour but insists that her extreme caution over her diet has allowed her to stay thin throughout her acting career.
The late film director Michael Winner described how, in her acting heyday, his friend would place small round scales under her laden plate at every meal.
She would then scoop food off the plate until the scales registered a certain weight.
‘I asked her once: “Are you still using the scales, Faye?”’, he recalled.
‘She said, “Yes, people laugh at me but I don’t care. They keep me slender.’”
She has been known to take drastic action if she ever forgets her precious scales – once even refusing to take milk in her tea during an interview because she wasn’t able to measure the minuscule amount.
Miss Dunaway’s odd and highhanded behaviour is extreme even by Tinseltown standards.
She has been accused of screaming at flight attendants, hotel concierges and shop staff who fail to meet her demands.
In 2013, she reportedly took it personally when staff at a Los Angeles hotel showed her a selection of rooms including one that was fitted out for a disabled guest. ‘Do I look handicapped to you?’ she shouted at staff.
It isn’t only service industry workers who have incurred her wrath. While making Chinatown with the director Roman Polanski, she reportedly grew increasingly irate as he refused to let her go to the lavatory while they filmed endless retakes of a scene in which she sat in a car.
Eventually, when he bent down to the car window to talk to her, she rolled down the window and threw a cup of coffee in his face.
And reacting to the death of actor Robin Williams on Twitter, she wrote: ‘Always be yourself, even if you are a little mad.’