JUNE 2011
(thanks to Mike Epstein for the link)
Genre fans will recognize Lisa Langlois from a number of horror films including John Huston's Phobia (1980), J. Lee Thompson's Happy Birthday to Me (1981), not to mention several "nature goes wild" outings like Deadly Eyes (1982) and The Nest (1988). Langlois also starred in other fare, including two superior Claude Chabrol crime thrillers -- Blood Relatives (1978) and Violette Noziere (1978) -- as well the violent cult favorite Class of 1984 (1982), the sci fi horror Transformations (1988), and Mindfield (1989).
But did you know she was the "other Sarah Connor," almost garnering the female lead role in James Cameron's sci-fi epic The Terminator (1984)? Or that her bloody death scene in Happy Birthday to Me (1981) was edited out, for fear of the film getting a dreaded X rating? Or that she turned down the role of Beth in Chris Walas' The Fly II (1989)?
Langlois continues to work these days, starring in Poe: Last Days of the Raven (2008), The Fire Serpent (2007), as well as appearances on the hit television show The L Word (2008).
She generously agreed to sit down with us and discuss her memories of dabbling in horror all these years.
The Terror Trap: You’re from Canada. What part?
Lisa Langlois: Everyone thinks I’m from Montreal because I have a French name and I speak French. My father lived in Montreal for many years and so we always visited him in the summertime. But I’m actually from southern Ontario. I grew up in a small town 60 miles west of Toronto called Dundas and I went to school in Hamilton. For the Americans, we call Hamilton “Buffalo North.” It’s a very industrial city, with that type of demographic as well.
There’s a huge French-Canadian population in Hamilton so there was a French school there. My mother and father agreed to raise us as French-Canadians so we went to French schools, the French church, etc. TT: When did you first know you wanted to get into acting?
LL: When I was a teenager. I had a single mom. She bought a house with a brother of mine, and the only way they could afford the mortgage was by renting out all the bedrooms. So my four brothers and I lived in the basement, while my mother stayed upstairs and turned the dining room into her bedroom. We rented out the three bedrooms to some university foreign exchange students from Hong Kong, and we befriended them.
I remember telling one of the students I had wanted to be an actor, and he said to me that out of all the professions, they’re the ones that end up being paupers. I haven’t shared this story in such a long time…anyway, it was actually a misinterpretation. Lost in translation. He was trying to tell me actors were looked down upon in society, which they were, at another time.
I guess I abandoned the idea of being an actor because of that statement. But when I needed a way to pay my way through university, I had a dance teacher who said to me, “You should do commercials.” I asked her how one would go about that and she replied, “Well, you get some photographs taken and bring them to agencies in Toronto.”
TT: Did you take her advice?
LL: Actually, I had had some student photographers approach me on the street to take pictures. I contacted a student and asked if they would send some of my photos to Toronto.
I got a call from one agency and I signed with them. They turned out to be very Broadway Danny Rose. They weren’t kind to me. For several months, I never got any calls to go on auditions.
TT: Oh, boy…
LL: But then, I got a call from the Characters Talent Agency. It was this beautiful agency and they treated me wonderfully. They had their own recording studio. Really plush. They wanted to sign me, and I just took off with them. I booked about nine commercials in six months.
TT: Excellent. Now that would have been the mid ‘70s?
LL: Let’s see, it was 1977.
TT: Any formal training at that point?
LL: I had no training whatsoever. I had been a baton twirler and a dancer! That was about the extent of my performing on stage. And I had been in high school plays. I was president of the Drama Club.
At that point, I was very much rewarded for just being myself. For the late seventies, I had the perfect look. I had that Proctor and Gamble “girl next door” look.
TT: Agreed.
LL: However, I still had my sights set on becoming an attorney or an interpreter for the government or a journalist. I knew that I liked people and I liked to travel.
But this Movie of the Week came into town and my agent got me an audition to play opposite Henry Fonda in a film called Grandpa and Frank. The casting director gave me a script to read a scene in. I had no training and I thought I’d just read it like I read out loud. Because I loved reading. I did very well and it got down to the wire. But I was eighteen and the producer said, “You know, you did really great. But we want a real fourteen-year old.”
TT: How’d you feel about that?
LL: It didn’t phase me at all because I wasn’t thinking of becoming an actor. I was just using it as a way to pay for my university tuition. So I didn’t think anything of it.
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Incidentally, Ron Leach became a very successful casting director himself. More recently, he's been directing, including work on an award-winning film called Altarcations (2010).
TT: So then you went in and auditioned for the part of Muriel in Blood Relatives?
LL: Yes. And for Claude Chabrol! I had no idea who I was meeting. I wasn’t a cinephile whatsoever at that point. I mean, I was still seeing Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies and enjoying them as “art.”
Then what happened is we talked for a while. I did tell him I spoke French, and at one point during the audition, he turned to the woman who was assisting him -- who happened to be the producer’s wife -- and said in French, “This is the best one we’ve seen yet.” And I thought, gee…I just TOLD him I spoke French. Now he’s speaking in French. I guess he didn’t believe me!
TT: Funny…
LL: He turned back to me and said the same thing in English. “You’re the best one we’ve seen yet. But the producers want a name. We’ll get back to you in a week.” I didn’t hear back from him in a week. TT: What happened?
LL: Oh, in that time they offered the part to Sissy Spacek and she turned it down because she thought she was too old. It was also offered to Jodie Foster, who had always wanted to work for Claude Chabrol. But she was working on another film called Moi, fleur bleue (1977). And so I got the role.
TT: Remember how you found out?
LL: I had been at my father’s house, which is about a four-hour drive from Toronto. When I got home, my phone was ringing and it was my agent, who had been calling me all night. He said, “Where have you been? They want you in that film in Montreal and they’re starting today.” I got on a flight and they flew me into Montreal and I shot three scenes. They put me in wardrobe and I filmed those scenes before I even read the script.
TT: In Blood Relatives you played a young girl who's brutally murdered by an unseen assailant. As the police inspector Donald Sutherland investigates the homicide, it becomes clear you were harboring some pretty nasty secrets leading up to your death.
Did you have any trepidation about the racy subject matter in Blood Relatives? LL: Yes, I did. But I was young and when you’re working with Claude Chabrol, you’re thinking…well, he must know what he’s doing. It won’t be salacious and it’ll be well handled.
After all, that’s Claude’s brand. He had incest in a lot of his movies. I think he was fascinated by the subject.
TT: Let's talk a bit about the cast of Blood Relatives. David Hemmings?
LL: Well, Blow-Up (1966) was my boyfriend’s favorite movie. I said to him, “Can you believe it?” His girlfriend was in a movie with David Hemmings...and kissing him! I had the biggest crush on David. He was so handsome, eloquent and refined. Very English.
TT: Because of the flashback narrative in Blood Relatives, you don’t get to share any screen time with Donald Sutherland…
LL: I know. And yet I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with him on the set. I guess it was because of the scheduling. I’ve always been very frank and I remember he asked me to go to a Blue Jays game with him and I said no. (Laughs.) I just wasn’t into baseball so why would I go?
TT: Donald Pleasence?
LL: I didn’t get to do anything with him. He was so revered and was probably someone who was on Claude’s “wish list” because of his past work in the genre.
TT: Yes, this would be the same year he did John Carpenter’s Halloween. And of course, he had a long history in British horror films of the ‘60s.
How about Laurent Malet, the French actor who played your cousin and love interest?
LL: I fell in love with Laurent. For real. I probably would have wanted to marry him but that wasn’t in the cards. He had a twin brother and both were actors in France.
TT: Do you have any personal recollections you wish to share about Chabrol?
LL: Well, it was Claude’s first English language picture. (It was dubbed in French for the French market, and titled Les liens de sang).
Everybody thought Blood Relatives was beginner’s luck and no one would see me for any other parts. But Chabrol offered me a role in a second film in French in France. After that, all the doors flew open.
TT: And that was Violette Noziere (1978)?
LL: Right. It was kind of the Lizzie Borden case in France. It's a crime thriller based on a true story about a woman who killed her parents. It starred Isabelle Huppert, who is the French Meryl Streep. It ended up being a huge hit and was the official selection for France at Cannes. Isabelle won Best Actress.
I learned very quickly the reason why some directors are legendary and others aren’t. It wasn’t because of any marketing or P.R. or anything like that. It was because when I worked with these guys [like Chabrol], they all had something in common: when they hired you, they let you run with it. They never tampered with you.
At the same time, they paid incredible attention to detail and they also knew exactly what they wanted. They were editing in their minds, so they always started with a great script and a great cast. The crews were always the best. There was no yelling. No need for that. Everyone just had a wonderful time. TT: That’s not true with every director…
LL: That’s right. When I did my third film, It Rained All Night the Day I Left -- and had a really terrible time of it -- on my way back from Israel, I called Claude and explained how it went.
He said to me, “Oh, you have to be very careful who you're working with because it can make you hate your craft.” Back then, I didn’t understand how that could be. But over time...when I did work on sets that were unhappy, I realized it CAN make you hate what you’re doing. It’s not your job, it’s the environment.
TT: That’s probably a truism for any profession.
LL: Definitely. I've done pictures that I really had a bad time on, and even if they become successful or cult films, I don’t look back upon them with a good feeling. It just stays with you.
TT: That’s sad.
LL: Well, it’s because sometimes shoots can be so dysfunctional.
TT: We hope that not too many of the films we cover today are among those!
LL: (Laughs.) Well, we’ll see.
TT: Let’s talk about Phobia, directed by John Huston. First of all, is this one of the bad ones you referred to?
LL: No, no…because here again, we have a director who knows what he’s doing. He’s trusting his actors and letting them run with it. There’s no indecision, and he’s editing in his head. So it’s easy.
The hardest part of Phobia was that I was very much intimidated by Huston and his whole essence. At that time, I was in university and taking courses and I was studying one of his films! I was studying his film at night when I went to school and working with the guy during the day.
TT: Wild!
LL: Yes. And also, he was on oxygen. He would sit in a corner in his director chair with oxygen tubes in his nose. You’d see this big man who was very much a Hemingway character looking so frail.
TT: He was sick?
LL: He had emphysema. But he still had that John Huston voice. God’s voice.
TT: Do you recall how Phobia came your way?
LL: I got an audition and apparently Huston had wanted to see only two actresses -- who were very similar but very different. It was me and Sarah Torgov, who I saw her at the audition. She went in before me, and I remember that she came out of the audition very emotional because she had been crying for the scene. So I thought, “Well, she hit the mark.”
There’s always that fear of "oh, I hope I don’t get distracted and don’t hit the mark or don’t have the experience." I went in and we talked for a long time. That can be scary for me because I think I’m going to get out of character and not be focused.
TT: Do you remember what you and Huston talked about?
LL: Yes. We talked about politics and I remember telling him that the history of Quebec was the history of the French church. We talked about all kinds of things. And then I did the scene and had a good experience.
My agent at that point was John Downey and he told me that after I left, John Huston turned to the casting director and said I reminded him of a young Marilyn Monroe. He had worked with her twice. He had said there were two Marilyns: the young one and the woman who would become “Marilyn Monroe.” I reminded him of the young one.
Later when I worked with J. Lee Thompson, it came up again…he told me in person that I reminded him of Marilyn and that he was supposed to do a movie with her. At that time in my life, it kept coming up over and over again.
TT: That’s interesting that you say that. In watching your films in preparation for this interview, we said that you definitely reminded us of a young Marilyn. The Norma Jeane look, specifically.
LL: Oh, thank you. I guess my eyes slant downwards and I have that real vulnerability going.
TT: Do you recall if the audition scene was the one in the movie where your character sees herself up on the screen being molested?
LL: It must have been a crying scene because I think I was talking about being raped.
TT: Was the filming mostly a pleasant experience?
LL: The only unhappy memory I have of Phobia is that my agent got a call from the casting director saying, “Oh, incidentally, we now added a scene in a bathtub and there’ll be a flash of a breast.” He told me that and it didn’t sit well with me at all. I thought, well that’s not in the script. I’m not going to want to do that. I don’t want to be nude on the screen.
So we had this big, big to do. They kind of told my agent I had to do it. Things have changed since then. Based on what happened to me on this film, there's now a ruling in the Canadian actors' union agreement that says an actor has to be notified before the audition if there's nudity. And the actor must be able to read the scene from the script. Long story short, I remember getting the courage to go up to John Huston and saying, “Katharine Hepburn would NEVER take her clothes off on the screen!” (Laughs.) Because I really looked up to her…
TT: And what did he say?
LL: He said, “For me, she would.” (Laughs.)
TT: Ouch!
LL: I had just come back from shooting in Europe with Claude Chabrol and there, nudity is no big deal. It’s like drinking wine with your meal. Everybody just takes their clothes off. But during Phobia, I was wrestling with that whole thing and also with my own culture.
I finally agreed to let a body double do it. On the day of the shoot, I saw the body double and I noticed she had a big mole on her chest. A big birthmark. I thought, they’re gonna know it’s not me. And how unprofessional is that?
So I decided to just do the scene myself, and I agreed that he could shoot it the way he wanted to. I would see the dailies and if I didn’t like it, they wouldn’t use it. It was naïve of me, really, because my agent didn’t negotiate anything in writing the way you would today. He also didn’t negotiate a closed set for the dailies. So when the dailies were shown, it was like every driver in the world was in the room. It was highly embarrassing for me.
TT: What did you think of those dailies? LL: I didn’t like the way it was. It showed much more than the way I had envisioned it. They said they were just going to have a big overhead shot where it looked completely clinical and not salacious at all. And it would be at a great distance, me floating in the bathtub naked. I guess the idea was to communicate defenselessness because I was nude and had been strangled. I didn’t like it.
There was a big fight over it. At the time, I was dating a cameraman and I didn’t know what to do. He said, “Lisa, you need to say something because they’re gonna back down. They can’t afford to have it in the press that there’s a fight over a nude scene with John Huston and a young girl.”
TT: Did you speak up?
LL: I did. And they took it out. I got to have “final cut,” I guess, in a John Huston picture.
TT: Oh, we get it now...you’re saying the scene with your brief nudity that we’ve seen in the released version was originally much longer?
LL: Yes. It was much longer. And so I always had this fear that John Huston wouldn’t like me because of that, or that he’d be angry with me.
Sally Kellerman starred in my third film and she had all these autographed pictures of people she had worked with. She told me, “You must start doing that. Getting autograph photos of your fellow cast members. You won’t regret it.”
I started doing it and I sent Huston a photo of he and I together. He sent it back and it was signed, “To Lisa Langlois, a very talented young lady. John Huston.” I felt better after that. He wasn’t mad! TT: That’s good.
LL: The other thing that’s sad about Phobia is that I can’t tell you how often I’d walk into auditions after that, and a director or writer would look at my resume and say, “Oh, that was one of the worst films John Huston ever did.” I always wanted to say, “You would be so lucky to have ever done ONE film as good as John Huston's.”
TT: Damn right!
As genre fans, Phobia has grown on us over the years. It gets a bad rap because the pacing is slow in spots. And the ending "revelation" feels odd. But it's a decent enough horror movie. It's a slasher that's in the closet. It wants to be an upscale thriller, but at its core it's really a slasher.
LL: I think so too. You guys make me want to watch it again now. I guess because it was my first time nude
on film, it was very hard for me to watch it and I never wanted to see it again. It's been so long. Of course, one of the scenes was in my demo tape so I would see that.
TT: Moving on to Class of 1984. Just wow. Here, you played Patsy the Punk. A completely different character…as rotten-of-an-apple as you can get.
Was it fun to be vicious and terrorizing rather than terrorized?
LL: Well, it’s so much more interesting. Although understand, they brought me in to play the nice girl, Michael J. Fox’s girlfriend.
TT: Really?
LL: Yeah, I went in and they told me they really saw me in that part. I said, “You know what? Would you just let me come back dressed and acting like the other character?” I explained that I grew up with four brothers. I’ve been around a lot of their friends and I’ve seen these kinds of tough people. I know how to do it. So I came back in, did the role and they loved it.
TT: You really stand out in that film. How much of your characterization was in the original script?
LL: I’ve gotta tell you...there was really not a lot of dialogue for me in that film. Everything that I did was improv and they kept it in the final cut.
That’s what I liked about the director, Mark Lester. He didn’t have an ego about you throwing a line in or some business. He loved it.
TT: What was the experience like for you making Class of 1984?
LL: Not good.
TT: For you or everybody?
LL: Everybody.
TT: Why is that?
LL: Several reasons. One was that all the Canadians (not the Americans) got asked to work for scale. They said they would give us a buyout later because they didn’t really have the money to make this film. And then the movie became this big hit and none of us ever got paid any residuals for television or video, etc.
The extras really got mistreated. They hardly got paid. They got peanut butter and jam sandwiches. That scene where the girl takes her clothes off in front of the punks…that was really hard to do. It involved real acting for Tim Van Patton and me because she didn’t want to do that scene. She didn’t want to take her clothes off. She was shaking.
It reminded me of what happened to me in Phobia. You get intimidated and you don’t want to make waves. You’re young. You want people to like you. And they make it sound like it’s no big deal. That poor girl was literally shaking.
I remember it was so sad, my makeup artist was making her up and I was sitting next to her. She told the girl, “Don’t worry, I’ll make you up so that no one will recognize you.” And I thought, that’s NOT just the issue. It doesn’t matter whether someone can see your face...in front of everybody, you’re taking your clothes off!
TT: Yikes. That's not cool. Kind of makes it go from shooting an exploitation film to almost forced porn… LL: Right. Timothy and I were talking about how uncomfortable we were with that. He said something to Mark because that guy was a gentleman. I just loved him.
TT: There’s an almost lascivious nature to your character Patsy in that scene with the naked girl…almost lesbianic…?
LL: That was an acting choice I made. Like I mentioned, I made the choices with Patsy because in the script she was just...standing there. That was one of my complaints. We had this really terrific stunt coordinator with Terry Leonard, and he never gave me anything to do in the fight scenes. Nothing.
I decided I would be this character who’s really perverted in that I got off on sex and violence. What I would do is, when they were beating people up, I would jump up and down, and dance around. And when someone had to take their clothes off, I would get excited.
That year, the logo for the Toronto Film Festival was the line from Being There: “I like to watch.” People were wearing pins with that expresssion printed on it. So in the scene you mentioned, I decided to throw in the line, “I like to watch.”
TT: Very cool.
LL: Tim was generally unhappy on this shoot. At the time, the movie was very violent. To me, it seemed so surreal and over-the-top and exaggerated because where I came from, I could never imagine kids behaving like that in school or having to go through metal detectors to get into class.
Again, it was the wild, wild west we talked about earlier. The punk rockers that were hired to be extras…they weren’t really extras, they were real punks.
TT: Did they cause any problems on the set?
LL: Well, for me personally, they knew I wasn’t a real punk rocker. I had my hair purple, pink and some other colors. So a) they knew I was an actor and not one of them, and b) they didn’t appreciate me wearing a dress. Several times, I had punk rocker women come up to me and say, “We’re gonna get you...”
TT: That’s awful!
LL: Mark really wanted reality. It would have made more sense for me to have a wig than to dye my hair all those colors anyway. It was hell getting my hair to look normal again.
But I was terrified. You won’t notice in the movie, but whenever there were big scenes like in a club or whatever, you wouldn’t see me. Because I would literally disappear.
TT: For your own safety…
LL: Yes. I was afraid. When they were slamming people, they were actually doing it. It was for real. They were really hitting each other. The punk extras got off on it.
TT: Lester has talked in documentaries about going out and finding these punks for the film. LL: It wasn’t well thought out for the actors. It wasn’t taking care of us. I was afraid because I knew there was no protection on that set.
TT: Did the female punks consider you a poser?
LL: I think that would be the term you would use now. They just felt I was a fraud, I guess you would say.
We were embarrassed to be in that film and it ended up being this big, big hit. (Laughs). I was shocked. A boyfriend of mine was in Paris and saw this HUGE floor to ceiling poster with me and big breasts that they’d given me. (Laughs.)
TT: What did you think when you saw the finished product?
LL: I didn’t go see it for a long time. However, I remember my mother saying that it was the quintessential moment for her when she knew I had done a good job as an actress. Because she was in a theater watching it, and when I got killed at the end, the audience got up and cheered. It was a real memorable moment for her.
TT: Great! The audience was so engaged, they cheered. LL: Although, honestly…I don’t think I’m killed. I think I survived.
TT: A car comes crashing down on your head! We’d have to side with the people who think you died. It’s pretty extreme.
LL: (Laughs.) Yeah, but it IS the movies. And I’m still talking.
TT: That’s true.
Back to something you mentioned earlier about metal detectors and violence in schools. It would seem that movies like Class of 1984 and Massacre at Central High almost foretold the future with what’s happened since. Columbine, etc.
LL: Sure. My son has already had two lockdowns at his elementary school and there was a drive-by shooting in front of it. So we’re there. It’s sad.
TT: That’s terrible. Class of 1984 was prescient in a way.
LL: It really is. I was amazed when I watched it recently at a screening. I really appreciated it because it had this documentary look to it…maybe due to the fact that it was so low-budget and grainy. I was impressed with how well Perry King did, because he too was so unhappy shooting that film - and yet he did such a good job. Which reminds me, I had completely forgotten about the part where the gang members killed Roddy McDowall’s animal in the biology lab. That was horrible. That was really, really horrible. I watched it and just thought, “Oh, wow…”
But it was really great to act opposite Roddy in that movie.
TT: The scene where he has the gun pointed at you is quite a good moment.
LL: It was one of those things where you’re thinking, “Oh my God, I have this scene with Roddy McDowall…how am I going to do this?”
Roddy actually ended up writing a letter for me for my immigration to move to the United States. John Huston also wrote a letter for that. TT: Nice! You have letters of reference from all these great people you worked with.
LL: Personally signed!
TT: Do you think Roddy was one of those people who was unhappy making this movie?
LL: I don’t know. Because the scene with the gun was really the only one I had with him. When there’s a big scene like that with lots of people, you don’t get any instant one on one time.
TT: We wanted to ask you about one of the most powerful, unnerving scenes in the movie. The sort of Clockwork Orange scene where the gang goes in and rapes Perry King’s wife. Was that difficult?
LL: So upsetting. I just saw it. Again, that was my idea to get a Polaroid camera and take a picture of it.
TT: That was a good idea. It’s certainly revolting!
LL: (Laughs.) It’s really revolting. And then to give the Polaroid of his raped wife to Perry at the event. It was also my idea to put my finger in my mouth…my middle finger…and summon him with it. TT: Wow. What else?
LL: Well, I came up with the moment when Patsy, like a little juvenile delinquent, takes her finger and pushes it through a hole she makes with her index finger and thumb.
TT: You should be really proud of yourself, Lisa.
LL: (Laughs.) You know what? I had to find something to do because they never gave me any lines. In fact, before I thought of lines and things to do, my boyfriend suggested I wear a chain that makes noise. So whenever the audience would hear that chain, they would know that character is present. I thought that would never fly because the sound department wouldn't go for that.
TT: We have to say the choices you made are fantastic. We couldn’t take our eyes off you. Even in the scenes in which you aren’t necessarily supposed to be the focus of attention. There was a certain...unpredictability to your character that made us always want to watch you.
Was the “kissy kissy” thing your idea as well?
LL: Yes, that too. Ironically, they gave me a Marilyn Monroe shirt to wear. I’m wearing a shirt with her face on it.
TT: Warhol's Marilyn.
LL: Right. And when I was asked my name, I thought Mark was going to tell me to say “Marilyn Monroe” and he didn’t. He wanted me to say “Elizabeth Taylor.” And so I just said it that other way to be obnoxious.
TT: And...it is!
LL: (Laughs.) I also really hated my makeup in Class of 1984 because in my mind, that was so not punk. The makeup artist that I had was this woman who was not a young person. Privately, I thought, "She doesn’t know what punk is." She kept bringing out all the glitter stuff and everything. It was so not the character.
TT: It's more New Wave than punk.
LL: Yes.
Okay, let's play a game. We’ll throw out some titles to you that you made after Class of 1984 and just get your thoughts, your immediate responses. Whatever comes to your mind…
I had visions that The Nest would be like The Birds, and I was going to be Tippi Hedren. (Laughs.)
Coming fresh from Canada, I didn’t really know who Roger Corman was on The Nest. That shoot was a VERY unpleasant experience. Again, another film where they tried to get me to take my clothes off and I had it in my contract that I would have a bodysuit on. They didn’t have one available the day of the shoot, so I thought I would wear gaffer’s tape on my breasts for the scene.
TT: Did that work?
LL: They said, “Oh, we keep seeing the tape in the shower.” So I told them they were seeing too much anyway. The producer took me in the trailer and said, “I heard you’re being difficult about doing the nude scene. What’s your problem?” I said, “Look, I don’t have an issue with nude scenes. I don't. I did one for John Huston. But they’re not treating me fairly because you don’t have a bodysuit for me.” I had actually gotten the idea for gaffer’s tape from Phoebe Cates [in Fast Times at Ridgemont High].
TT: A lot of genre fans like The Nest. They think it’s fun. It's a sort of a gory throwback to the creature features of the 1950s.
LL: I can see that. I’m starting to be able to laugh at it. I have enough distance from that movie.
But I won't deny that when I first saw the poster for The Nest, I was really offended. I thought, who is that woman? It was the same woman from the Class of 1984 artwork. You know, with the big breasts. She was wearing lingerie, which I didn’t wear in the movie. And she had curly hair, which I didn’t have either. She looked like she was being seduced by a giant cockroach, like she’s just an appetizer. I think as a woman, I was feeling really exploited. But now...I can laugh at it.
You know, this is a good point to give you some backstory. I had been molested as a child. I could never discuss this years ago…but now that we’ve had 25 years of Oprah, we can all talk about this stuff. And so we can help other people. I think that had that not happened to me in my life, I probably would have been more equipped to deal with these male authority figures in those kinds of situations.
For years, when I’d play the “girl next door,” I went in and I nailed auditions. And then once I got to the age where I was supposed to be seductive in scenes, to be sexy, and I'd have to go into an audition room filled with men, I would fall flat on my face. I’d self-destruct and get really nervous and stutter. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
It was then that I went to a therapist and she explained that it was really much deeper. It wasn’t that I wasn’t a good actor. TT: How recent was this?
LL: Not recent. I started seeing the therapist in the early '90s. That’s when I discovered what was going on…because I was just really self-destructing at auditions.
TT: Does that put a different spin on your performance in Phobia, because your character has such issues with being molested and/or raped?
LL: I didn’t make the connection then. Because I hadn’t come to terms with that in my life yet. I only came to terms with that and wrote a letter to my perpetrator when I was around thirty. I hadn’t done that work on myself yet when I made Phobia so I compartmentalized it. There was no sense-memory from my own experience in the way I played the character of Laura.
TT: Thank you for feeling comfortable enough with us to discuss such a personal story.
Thoughts on Transformations (1988)?
LL: I love that director, Jay Kamen. I loved working on that. It’s unfortunate they didn’t have a proper budget or a better script to make it what the director envisioned. He had what some of the legendary directors had, and I knew he would go far.
TT: Mindfield (1989) with Michael Ironfield.
LL: (Long pause.) Another difficult movie. I realize now what was difficult…because what I suspected was going on WAS going on.
TT: What’s that?
LL: I found out that Michael Ironside was very unhappy and had wanted to get the director fired, and me as well. TT: Why?
LL: He didn’t think that either the director or I were good. That we didn’t know what we were doing. I had a feeling.
Imagine doing a love scene with somebody that you know wants to have you fired. It's like the perfect thriller in itself. (Laughs.)
TT: Did he do anything weird like put garlic in his mouth?
LL: (Laughs.) No. All I thought of is...I have to do a good job here, and I flashed in my head to Richard Gere and Debra Winger and how they hated each other when they filmed An Officer and a Gentleman. But you would never know it. You have to be the consummate professional.
TT: That's right.
LL: It was also probably an even colder shoot than Deadly Eyes. We were in Montreal in that Olympic Stadium. I think it was the coldest I had ever been in my life!
TT: Yikes.
LL: I had all the hopes in the world for Mindfield because I thought it was a very interesting story. In fact, it was based on a true story about the CIA experimenting on people in Canada. I had always wanted to have Jodie Foster’s career and do films that had underlying social messages.
So I thought, finally, I would get to do this. All the press on me was about the fact that I was finally going to play an adult role and move out of playing teenage ingénue parts. And I was playing opposite Michael Ironside.
I was also so thrilled to work with Christopher Plummer on that one. I hadn’t had that kind of thrill since waiting for Tony Curtis to arrive on the set of It Rained All Night the Day I Left in 1980.
TT: Were there any parts in your career that you didn’t take or missed out on?
LL: There’s these “flavors of the month” and then you end up going up against them. One was Kelly McGillis. I was up against her for a while and so I went in for Top Gun (1986). She got it. Then I was up for the supporting part…and Meg Ryan got that. Another was the lead in No Small Affair, a role that went to Demi Moore. Jon Cryer came up to me once and said, “I have to tell you that you did the best reading and I told the producers that you should have gotten the part.”
TT: Is it true you were offered the role of Sarah in James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984)?
LL: Yes. What happened there was, I went in and I read for the part. I had another audition right after and I feel like I was more focused on that because it had much more dialogue. Anyway, I got called back and went to writer Gayle Anne Hurd’s house to read with Michael Biehn for James Cameron.
My agent at the time told me that Linda Hamilton had gotten the part but that Gayle Anne Hurd thought I had more charisma. I didn’t think anything of it because in the meantime, I got cast in The Slugger’s Wife with Hal Ashby, a director with whom I had always wanted to work. That was exciting because Quincy Jones was doing the music and I got to sing all these songs.
I started working on The Slugger’s Wife when my agent got a call saying that Linda Hamilton had sprained her ankle badly and they wanted to offer the part to me. But I was already shooting in Atlanta, Georgia. They said they were shooting in Florida and could I possibly do the two films? It was determined that there was no way I could do both pictures and that was the end of that. My agent said to me, “It’s okay, YOU got the better picture. That’s just a small movie with an unknown director and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
And I replied no, that The Terminator had the better script and a better story. TT: So they just waited for Linda's ankle to heal?
LL: Yes. They decided they’d wait for her because I wasn’t available.
Years later, I saw James Cameron when he was being honored at the Canadian Consulate. I didn’t know whether he would remember me or not, but I went up to him and said, “I’ve always wanted to tell you it was a disappointment to me that I couldn’t do your film because I had told my agent it was the better script." He turned to me and said, “Lisa, you haven’t aged at all. It’s okay that you didn’t do the film because otherwise, I would never have met Linda.” He ended up marrying her and I thought that was so wonderful.
TT: Were you asked to read for any roles in other Canadian horror productions such as My Bloody Valentine or Curtains?
LL: Yes, I was asked but I didn’t go in for them. Funny, but Lori Hallier (from My Bloody Valentine) was actually my stand-in on Happy Birthday to Me.
TT: Wow, really?
LL: Yeah, older directors like Lee Thompson really believed in stand-ins. It wasn’t an ego thing for actors. You would save time if you knew how to effectively use them. An actor could go and get their makeup and hair done, as the person stands in while they’re lighting.
TT: What do you think of the horror genre? Are you a fan?
LL: I am a fan. I’m much more into psychological thrillers than anything exploitative. I understand the fun of exploitation. I get it. But, just for the sake of seeing something over and over again, films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Shining are terrifying to me. Although movies like
Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are a lot of fun. They’re escapism.
TT: What have you been up to more recently as far as your career?
LL: Well, I did something I really thought would be a great bookend for my career. It kind of broke my heart that it didn’t pan out the way I had envisioned it.
I got asked to audition for a show that was going on in Canada called Heartland, based on a series of children’s books. I get killed off and I thought, why would I go in for it? I was told there would be flashbacks to my character all the time -- like in the books. I believed it would be a wonderful steady job, and I would even move my son to Canada and give him a great pastoral upbringing.
But instead, it turned out that the way they handled my part is the other characters take my photograph and look at it and talk about me. It broke my heart because my role was a strong woman that I really liked. I was disappointed.
I’ve recently started working for Nathalie Gaulthier, who runs sort of a Cirque du Soleil for children called Le Petit Cirque. It's great. It’s more of a place where kids get empowered. She’s helped many people, adults, kids. One of the reaons I wanted to become an actor is because I wanted to lend my name to charitable organizations, and I'm definitely getting a fullfillment in my life by working with Nathalie. She had been a very successful agent in Canada and then Hollywood, and she remembered me.
TT: That sounds wonderful.
Thank you so much for speaking with us. Much luck and success in your career, and best wishes to you and your son.
LL: I truly enjoyed this. I have to tell you, I was lucky to have worked with some directors who were top-notch in my day. And as interviewers, you guys were really in that top-notch category today. You were really well prepared.
TT: Thank you so much. That means a lot to us.
Fans of Lisa can connect with her on her official Lisa Langlois Facebook page.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0486590/
https://rapidshare.com/files/3440860461/LLP303jh.rar___________________________________________________
Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace Do the De Palma in First Look at Passion
Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace lean towards each other, hover as though about to kiss and wait for the unit stills photographer to do his business before breaking it off and relaxing out of this constrained pose just before it gets unbearable.
At least, that’s how I imagine it went down. I’m sure plenty of other folks will be dreaming up a somewhat different story.
This is the first promotional image from Brian DePalma‘s Passion – and there’s a DePalma-friendly title for you.
It appeared on Noomi Rapace Online, along with this apparent synopsis of the film:
An erotic thriller in the tradition of Dressed To Kill and Basic Instinct, Brian de Palma’s Passion tells the story of a deadly power struggle between two women in the dog-eat-dog world of international business. Christine (Rachel McAdams) possesses the natural elegance and casual ease associated with one who has a healthy relationship with money and power. Innocent, lovely and easily exploited, her admiring protégé Isabelle is full of cutting-edge ideas that Christine has no qualms about stealing. They’re on the same team, after all… Christine takes pleasure in exercising control over the younger woman, leading her one step at a time ever deeper into a game of seduction and manipulation, dominance and humiliation. But when Isabelle falls into bed with one of Christine’s lovers, war breaks out. On the night of the murder, Isabelle is at the ballet, while Christine receives an invitation to seduction. From whom? Christine loves surprises. Naked she goes to meet the mystery lover waiting in her bedroom…What do you think, guys? Rachel was briefly topless in Notebook but Passion could be defining moment for her in terms of nudity. My take she will be nude but like recent movies (and cable series) with sex and nude scenes, it will be shot in darkly lit and shadows nonsense.
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'Spring Awakening': Risque business at the Children’s Theatre
The Eau Claire Children’s Theatre is presenting the controversial musical ‘Spring Awakening’. Local performers hope the Tony Award-winning rock musical sparks a conversation among parents and their kids.
The Eau Claire Children’s Theatre is presenting the controversial musical ‘Spring Awakening’. Local performers hope the Tony Award-winning rock musical sparks a conversation among parents and their kids.
Posted: May 9, 2012
Reporter: Jenny You
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – The Eau Claire Children’s Theatre is presenting the controversial musical ‘Spring Awakening’. It’ll be at the Oxford Theatre starting Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. Local performers hope the Tony Award-winning rock musical sparks a conversation that often goes unspoken.The original was banned in Germany for being the most controversial play of the 20th century. 'Spring Awakening' unravels the issues of sexuality, abuse, suicide; issues that are all too real for those coming-of-age.
It’s stirring a melting pot of raw issues on the stage of the Oxford.
“There's homosexuality, teen suicide, sexual abuse,” says executive director of ECCT Wayne Marek. “They touch on all those topics. There’s certainly a message at the end of the show that there is hope that at some point society and parents will be able to get to a point where those are topics they can talk about with their children.”
But performers say 'Spring Awakening' is more than just controversial themes.
“We have to progress as a society to a place where we can discuss this in a public form and with our parents and be comfortable because this part of human life,” says freshman at UW-Eau Claire Sebastian Armendariz who is playing the part of Moritz.
Armendariz describes Mortiz as the “odd one out of the group.” After failing his examination, his father reacts with disappointment and he feels he has no where to turn.
“I don't do very good in school, I’m pretty skittish. I don’t have a very good relationship with my parents,” says Armendariz. “I make this huge downfall towards the end of the show,” he says, referring to his scene of suicide.
Then there’s discussion of sexual confusion. Molly Wilson, also a freshman at UWEC plays Wendla, the curious adolescent that’s told by her mother that a child is conceived when a woman loves her husband with all of her heart.
“She's always asking questions but she doesn't always get answers so she starts looking for them,” says Wilson. “She is a perfect example of goodness and light being tainted by the unknown.”
The characters contemplate with what society says what they want in life. Jared Martin, junior at UWEC, plays Melchior, a rebellious and witty young man who wants to change society.
“He goes out of his way to kind prove people wrong and like not to be the expected and to just be who he is,” says Martin “Usually the kind of characters that are the forefront characters, they're not so in depth. They're very one-dimensional so to be able to play a character who has so much to him which one scene he’s really happy and in the next scene just upset and in the next scene I’m just angry. There’s just something about him that relates to everyone.”
The performers hope it’s a musical everyone can relate to.
“I've seen friends and family go through really rough times and I’ve seen how they have not had the comfortability or the confidence to talk to people older than them, to talk to their parents, to talk to their school counselors and it’s sad to see it,” says Armendariz.
Wilson says the musical is beyond sex and controversial issues. It’s about conversation.
“It’s more than body parts. It’s more than masturbation. It’s a good thing those topics are being discussed, but the message is more than that, And if that’s all that people are seeing, then I feel like we're not getting through to people, so I’m hoping they'll come away with more than just the controversy,” says Wilson.
Brief nudity in a simulated sex scene and language may be among parents’ concerns, but the director says to look beyond that.
“The themes of this show are things that teenagers deal with and that was really one of the reasons why the Children's Theatre wanted to do this show. We hope that these are themes really that the community is ready to talk about. They're the themes that parents in society need to get comfortable with,” says Marek.
‘Spring Awakening’ opens Thursday, May 10th at 7:30 p.m. and runs until May 12th at the Oxford Theatre in Eau Claire.
19-years old Molly Wilson gets her titties sucked but she can't topped the great Lea Michele. Groff you lucky fuck.
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Starz Magic City's Jessica Marais and James Stewart welcome baby girl Scout Edie Stewart
May 10, 2012
Former Packed to the Rafters favourite Jessica Marais is celebrating her new role - that of proud mum.
The couple has been counting down to the birth, both eager to embrace the joys of parenthood and family.
However, they won't have long to nest with their precious new arrival in Australia, with the pair planning to relocate to the US within a month.
Marais’ career is on the up in the US thanks to her role in the well-received Miami-based TV drama Magic City.
A second series of the drama is set to start filming soon.
Stewart confirmed this week he would be departing Rafters, the Channel Seven drama on which they met and fell in love, to move to America with Marais and their daughter to be a stay-at-home dad.
"I just can't wait to be a dad and that's my priority right now. We're moving to America not long after the baby is born - probably three or four weeks,'' he told TV Week.
"It's a pretty massive deal, but we have to do it.
"It's Jess's turn to work and I'm going to do the primary care thing and keep the house going."
The South African and Aussie actresses-models are pretty open about nudity. Jessica have both the countries firmly embedded in her DNA so we can expect nude fest from her in upcoming projects. I don't see the relationship with Stewart lasting long. Stay at home guys tends to quickly lose respect of the partner. It will not be long before she is banging some Hollywood actor. I give it a year or two before custody battle heats up the tabloids. Plastic tits or not, she is hot on Magic City. Thank the heavens to Britain, South Africa and Australia for supplying girls open to nudity (and cheaper to hire). In fact their talent for sex and nude scenes far outweigh the acting skills. LOL.
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NBC’s Brian Williams: ‘Unmitigated Joy’ Over Daughter’s Graphic TV Sex Scene
Published: 5/4/2012
NBC anchor Brian Williams likes skin, and doesn’t seem to care whose. He once gushed over a shirtless President Obama. Now, he’s enthusiastic about his own daughter, Allison Williams taking it off (to put it politely) for the public. In a recent interview Williams said he felt “unmitigated joy” about watching his daughter’s graphic sex scenes in Lena Dunham’s new show “Girls.”
In the bleak, amoral world of “Girls,” Allison’s character Marnie is the epitome of first-world entitlement, whining
to fellow character Hannah (played by Dunham) about how “respectful” her own boyfriend is, while Hannah is emotionally and physically used by her BDSM-loving sex buddy Adam.
In the second episode of “Girls” Marnie planned an abortion for might-be-pregnant character Jessa.
So casual were the friends about the taking of human life treated ending human life that they even brought snacks
to celebrate the occasion.
When Jessa failed to show up, Marnie was aghast, commenting, “Can you imagine anything more disrespectful than not showing up to your own abortion?” Shoshanna, the reluctant virgin of the bunch, comforts her saying, “You threw a really good abortion.”
Dad’s joy pride must have really shone when his daughter starred in her very own masturbation scene in “Girls” third episode. Allison’s character headed to a bathroom to pleasure herself after a headstrong young artist tolds her he would f*ck her in the future.
Holidays with the Williamses must be a real Norman Rockwell painting.
Now that Daddy Williams have given his blessing, maybe the big boobs princess will be incline to perform an actual nude scene. Even if it was for less than a minute, I put the Irish babe on my top 10 nudity of the year list.
In the bleak, amoral world of “Girls,” Allison’s character Marnie is the epitome of first-world entitlement, whining
to fellow character Hannah (played by Dunham) about how “respectful” her own boyfriend is, while Hannah is emotionally and physically used by her BDSM-loving sex buddy Adam.
In the second episode of “Girls” Marnie planned an abortion for might-be-pregnant character Jessa.
So casual were the friends about the taking of human life treated ending human life that they even brought snacks
to celebrate the occasion.
When Jessa failed to show up, Marnie was aghast, commenting, “Can you imagine anything more disrespectful than not showing up to your own abortion?” Shoshanna, the reluctant virgin of the bunch, comforts her saying, “You threw a really good abortion.”
Dad’s joy pride must have really shone when his daughter starred in her very own masturbation scene in “Girls” third episode. Allison’s character headed to a bathroom to pleasure herself after a headstrong young artist tolds her he would f*ck her in the future.
Holidays with the Williamses must be a real Norman Rockwell painting.
Now that Daddy Williams have given his blessing, maybe the big boobs princess will be incline to perform an actual nude scene. Even if it was for less than a minute, I put the Irish babe on my top 10 nudity of the year list.
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