For most of her life Anjelica Huston has been known mainly as the adjunct of powerful men: the daughter of director John Huston, the girlfriend for 17 years of Jack Nicholson. In the last five or so years, however, she has come into her own-with a vengeance.
Starting with her Oscar-winning work in ”Prizzi`s Honor” (the 1985 black comedy directed by her father and co-starring Nicholson), she has put together a series of finely crafted yet full-bodied performances in such diverse movies as ”The Dead” (1987), ”Gardens of Stone” (1987), ”Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989) and ”The Grifters” (1991).
Now she stars in ”The Addams Family”in which she plays Morticia, the ghoulish, glamorous mother of two.
Today at 40, her father gone, her relationship with Nicholson over, Huston is very much her own woman, and one of the pre-eminent screen actresses of her generation. Nonetheless, as she admitted in a recent conversation, at times she still feels very much like a little girl.
”I turned 40 last summer,” she said. ”I didn`t think I`d be fazed by it. But as it turned out, it was a hideous, crucial turning point.
”I had a complete breakdown-for about two days. Tears, wallowing in self-pity. It was like one`s birth: Now that one is past it, one doesn`t remember a hell of a lot. And thank God for that.
My mother died at 39. I think in some way that was tied in. I remember as a child feeling that my mother was definitely an adult. And now here I am older than she ever got to be. It`s strange the degree to which one still feels infantile at 40. Here I am at this advanced age, an age that seemed so advanced when I was a child, yet I still feel pathetically juvenile in so many ways.
”My first ambition was to be an actress. I think it started very, very early. I remember as a child, practically a baby, liking to amuse people and liking to get attention.
”When I was about 9 or 10 Marlon Brando came to talk to my father about
`Reflections in a Golden Eye.` Brando was mysterious even then.
”I had a similar one-on-one relationship with John Steinbeck. The situation with him was different from the Brando situation, but, again, he was a man of considerable personal power in the house of another man of considerable personal power.
”I think I was easy to talk to, accessible in a way that my father wasn`t. To a degree I was shy and retiring. It would depend on which day you got me on. It still does. There are times when I`m weirdly shy and retiring and other times when I`m alarmingly gregarious.
”When I was 14 or 15 I tested for a film that my father was doing called `Sinful Davey.`
”Though the test was a bit of a fiasco, `Sinful Davey` was a package with another film, and somehow it was understood that my father would direct this other film, `A Walk With Love and Death,` and I would be in it.
”I was never really asked if I wanted to do it. I was living with my mother in London at the time and the script just sort of arrived.
”I don`t know how in love with it my mother was, but I did not love it. It seemed a little icky to me. It was a 15th Century love story set against the background of the Hundred Years` War. My tastes ran more to the Rolling Stones. Nonetheless, I didn`t feel I had a tremendous amount of choice, not if I was to remain on my father`s good side. I remember at one point word was sort of passed down to me that if Katharine Hepburn was good enough to work with him, who did I think I was?
”Part of his idea to have me in the movie was, I think, to be able to discipline me, both personally and as an actress. For my part, I was heavily into avoidance. I didn`t want confrontations. I didn`t want to be criticized. I didn`t want to be judged by my father, who, if he saw something he didn`t like, (let you know) about it pretty hard and fast. I was afraid of my father in those days. He could be pretty strict and overbearing. So we didn`t have a lot of communication.
”Around the time I finished `A Walk With Love and Death` (in the late
`60s), the director, Tony Richardson, was preparing a new production of
`Hamlet.` He and my mother were friends, and he asked me if I would read for the part of Ophelia. I wound up understudying Marianne Faithfull. She wasn`t very well at the time, so I got to go on quite a bit.
”When the play came on tour here in the States I was ready to leave London. My mother had just died and I wanted to get away. So I went to New York. That`s when I started modeling. When I was about 15 Richard Avedon, a friend of my parents, had taken test photographs of me in London. He told my mother that I`d never be a model because my shoulders were too big. But when I got to New York shortly after my mother`s death, I started to get calls from magazines.
”My boyfriend at the time was a photographer, and we lived in New York. When we split up I came out here (to Los Angeles).
”In those days-this was 1973-there wasn`t much magazine work in California. It was mostly television. But that was OK because I`d just met Jack Nicholson, and I wasn`t really in the mood to work for a while.
”I was unsettled and sort of afraid. I had a yen to act, but I didn`t want handouts. I remember early on in our relationship Jack was going to do
`The Fortune` with Mike Nichols, and Mike asked if I would test. I didn`t want to be in the position where I was getting to read for a part because I was Jack`s girlfriend. I wanted to do it by myself. Then `The Last Tycoon`
came along. I read, and though I got a part, it wasn`t the part I wanted. I remember being sorry but feeling a sense of relief.
Slowly my confidence began to grow. I did a part in `The Postman Always Rings Twice.` I did a movie called `Swashbuckler.` I did several episodes of
`Laverne & Shirley` and Shelley Duvall`s `Faerie Tale Theatre.`
”Then along came `Prizzi`s Honor.` `Prizzi` actually came out of a movie called `The Ice Pirates` that was produced by John Foreman, who worked with my father on `The Man Who Would Be King.` John, whom I think of as one of my guardian angels, very kind, gave me a part in `The Ice Pirates,` a co-starring role as the best swordswoman in the universe.
”On one of the last days of `Ice Pirates` John came to me with a book called `Prizzi`s Honor.` `Read this and tell me what you think,` he said, `and how about Maerose?` I really liked it. When I told him how I felt, he said,
`What do you think about Jack to star and your father to direct?`
”After that it happened pretty fast. I finished `Ice Pirates,` and the next thing I knew we were in New York, ready to start. My father was directing, and I was playing opposite Jack in what I thought was the best part in the movie. Maerose is the black sheep of the story, and that always rides well.
”It wasn`t terrifying, but it was a challenge. Although I had finally achieved a good working understanding with my father, I was still the first one he would go after. I think it was because it was very important to him that I be good. And he knew that I could be good. So he got on my case about my accent or whatever.
”I realized that `Prizzi` would change my life when the movie opened and people loved it and all of a sudden I could get meetings for other projects.
I remember right before we started shooting `Prizzi` I asked my agent if she could get me a little more money-they had offered me scale. She turned on her speaker phone and called this money man on the picture who said, `Great, ask for more money. We`d love for her not to be in this picture. You know and I know there are two reasons, and only two reasons, why she`s in it.`
”Hearing this guy say that helped me play Maerose. After all, she was a woman who`d seen a few ups and downs, who`d been ignored by her father, who was still being treated as a small entity and who was harboring a lot of vengeance in her heart.
”So it was good for me to go into the movie knowing that except for the three principals, Foreman, Huston and Nicholson, nobody wanted me. I like a good challenge. My attitude became `OK, watch me.`
”There was always something to prove when I worked with my father. I had to work that much harder than I did for anybody else.
”The trick to acting is to find places in the framework of what you`re doing in which you can show the audience what you`re feeling. Screen time per se isn`t really important. What`s important are the moments when you can be intimate with the audience, when it`s direct.
”When you come out of something like `The Grifters,` your main impulse isn`t immediately to go back into another major psychodrama. Your feeling after that is, `Oh, give me something fun and light and loose.`
”So then, when a part like Morticia in `The Addams Family` comes along you read it and go, `Ah, yes!`
”You go, `Ah, here it is. This is good. This is interesting. This rings true.”`
