interviews
From Orange Coast Magazine
Rude Awakening's Sherilyn Fenn on her light-fingered youth, life inside the box and introducing Barbie to the roller derby.
By Jill Daniel ·
Don't think you can define Sherilyn Fenn in a one-hour lunch meeting. Hollywood's known Fenn for 15 years but still isn't sure what to make of the 33-year-old actress, who looks like a real-life porcelain doll with her lily-white skin, small, chiseled nose and deep-set topaz eyes. Thanks to more than 20 diversified film and TV credits, Fenn can neither be categorized nor put on the shelf and ignored.
Fenn's path to a show business career began at age 17, after her divorced mother moved Fenn and her two older brothers from Detroit to Los Angeles. Fenn opted to skip her last year of high school and enroll in drama school instead. At 18 she began working professionally, doing small movie and TV roles.
Six years later Fenn registered in America's consciousness with her Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated 1990-1991 role as the peculiar, attention-starved rich girl Audrey Horne in the short-lived cult favorite, David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. After the cancellation of Twin Peaks, Fenn followed Lynch to the big screen in the 1991 dark comedy Wild at Heart, playing a walking-wounded, car crash victim with a windshield through her head. Then, in 1993, David Lynch's daughter Jennifer attracted Fenn with her script for Boxing Helena. The controversial story focused on a beautiful woman who's forced to live in a box after an obsessed and twisted surgeon cuts off her arms and legs in an effort to possess her. After Kim Basinger dropped out of the project (because of creative differences with Jennifer Lynch, who directed the film), Fenn signed on. What attracted Fenn to the role? The subtext. "Women do feel like they're in a box," says Fenn. "Society, Hollywood, some men ... they want to wrap women up in a neat little package." She adds, "I'd do it [Boxing Helena] again in a second. I'm that proud of it.
Other memorable film roles include a seductive country wife opposite John Malkovich and Gary Sinese in Of Mice and Men; a lesbian who realizes she prefers men in Three of Hearts; and a repressed Southern belle experiencing her sexual awakening in Two Moon Junction.
Fenn admits to being attracted to unusual roles, saying that "at the very least, my tastes are out of the ordinary." Her primary motivating factor in choosing a part? Fenn sighs and takes a long sip of her lemonade. "It's not sometimes realistic to think that something magical can happen, but I think I look for the magic.
"Generally, Hollywood makes the same stories over and over," she says between bites of Caesar salad and lobster risotto at Ivy at the Shore, a trendy, star-watching Santa Monica eatery. "I've never wanted to do the same thing twice. If a script doesn't surprise me in some way, I simply can't commit to the project."
When Fenn read the script for the TV miniseries Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story, she thought the chance to play Elizabeth Taylor would be ripe with magic and surprise ... and there were good surprises and bad surprises. Fenn's priority was to respectfully and accurately portray the Hollywood icon. Hollywood preferred a myopic focus on the scintillating details of Taylor's life. During filming, Fenn (and her lawyers) fought daily to keep integrity in the script, and won. However, Fenn was unsuccessful in contacting Taylor for her thoughts on her life. (Taylor and her own lawyers fought the unauthorized biography until the day it aired in May 1995.) Only recently did a close friend of Taylor's corner Fenn in their mutual dermatologist's office and whisper, "You did a good job, and she'll never let you know it, but Elizabeth thought so, too."
What did you want to be when you
grew up?
I wanted to be a marine biologist,
then I wanted to be a stewardess. Then I met this lady that was
really neat, and she cut my hair once; so then I wanted to cut
hair! But by far my biggest dream when I was young was to have
the perfect home and the picket fence, and babies crawling around,
and I'd be cooking food in the kitchen. I didn't have the picket
fence childhood so I always wanted that stability. I don't talk
much about that, though, because it hurts my mom to read those
things. It's basically that my mom was married twice, and so we
moved a few times.
When
did you become interested in performing?
I was probably in fourth grade. Me
and other kids would re-enact movie sin my friend's basement. I
remember one specifically, The Towering Inferno. I played
Faye Dunaway, and I wore curtains as my evening gown. The cutest
boy in the neighborhood played Paul Newman.
Other
than The Towering Inferno, was there a movie
that had a strong impact on your as a child?
When I was a kid I saw Kansas
City Bomber, and I remembered thinking how beautiful and how
strong Raquel Welch's character was. So I went home and dressed
up my Barbie like her character. I borrowed one of my brother's
little toy plastic football helmets and I made Barbie a Kansas
City Bomber outfit, and it really affected me. She was a strong
woman, and I guess I admired that even then.
When
you were growing up, what did you get into the most trouble for?
I used to steal candy and gum in
stores. I was very good at it. I would how my friends what do to.
As I picked up two packs of gum, I'd gentry push one into my
sleeve while pretending to look at the other one -- then I'd put
that one back. It was horrible! I remember getting caught
stealing very young -- stealing a Tootsie Roll. But then I just
got better at stealing things. Later, in middle school, I started
to steal clothes. My girlfriend and I were always stealing shirts
from stores. We'd layer them under our clothes. One time there
was a horrible spree and then we never did it again -- all the
middle school girls were at this mall stealing! We were so-ooo
bad! At that point, we realized this habit had really escalated
and it had to stop.
How
do you get yourself into trouble today?
I'm honest. I say what I feel. I
try to be tactful, but I can't not say what I feel. I have a
really big problem with that.
How
do you have a problem with that?
Well, I was told once that I didn't
play the Hollywood game, and that's why I wasn't a big star. What
they meant when they said that was that I don't go to parties,
and when I go to an audition and I don't like the script, they
know it. I don't flirt and I don't play the people that I'm
meeting with. In the next breath, this person said to me, "When
you're passionate about a role, there's nobody that can touch you,
but you have to learn to do this also..." But I don't know
how to sit there and pretend I love something when I don't -- I'm
not that good of an actress! If something inspires me, I can talk
about it. I can tell you how it parallels things in my life. Also,
it's the simple fact of you meet somebody, and you either connect
or you don't. If a director makes me feel unsafe, and I don't
like their energy, there's no way I'm going to sit there and
schmooze.
Let's
talk about your new Showtime series Rude Awakening.
You play Billie, a former child star who's grown up in Hollywood
and is now trying to restart her career and stay sober. What
attracted you to this part?
I liked the hard-core truth of Rude
Awakening. But when I first read it, I was scared of it. Part
of me was, like, it's so unattractive! Does she have to vomit on
herself? Does she then have to fall in it? God, What's going on
here!? But I liked that it didn't glamorize alcohol. And what's
admirable about Billie is that she's a straight shooter. She
doesn't have a lot of pretense. It's like, "Take me as I am.
You like me, fine! You don't, I don't give a [damn]! There's
something quite empowering about somebody who doesn't care what
other people think. Billie is learning about herself. She's
recognized that she has a problem with drugs and alcohol, and she's
trying to straighten it out.
How
did your personally relate to Billie and her problem?
At times, we all have a way of
looking outside ourselves for our power. We reach for something
lower rather than something to build us up. People in life aren't
perfect. Everybody has a dark side, a negative side that's not
easy to be around. Everyone exhibits destructive behavior in one
way or another: It can be cigarettes, it could be food, it could
be drugs, alcohol, bad men, whatever ... I wanted to explore that
element of a character. And Billie laughs her way through all of
it. I love r her because of that. That's something I want to do
in my own life -- learn to laugh and smile more. My acting has
always been about doing things that I can grow from, that say
something, or should be heard.
Describe
the humor of Rude Awakening.
Our show has a truth, a base, and
the comedy is on top of that. I don't think I could ever do a
network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite
circumstance. I don't want to be a part of a show where it's
mostly about coming up with the jokes. If the comedy comes out of
what's real, it's much more appealing to me.
Now
is the time for making New Year's resolutions. What's on your
mind in that regard?
You know what's been on my mind
lately? Yesterday, I had this really great youga class ... In it,
my teacher was talking about the idea of getting out of your own
way when it comes to making good things happen in your life ...
that there is something that's at work that's bigger than us.
That doesn't mean to be lazy. It's about having a trust in life
and being at peace that things are happening the way they should.
You do what you do as well as you can do it, and then you don't
worry or agonize about the outcome. When you eat food, you don't
think if it's going to be digested, it just it. When you plant a
seed, you water it, but you trust that the sun and the earth
knows what it's doing and makes it grow. It's also about being in
the moment of your life, really living in them -- like being here
right now, focused on this interview, or when I'm with my son, [Fenn
is the single mother of a 5-year-old named Myles] I'm hopefully
giving him my full attention. This is something I'm working on
within myself. It's something to strive for.
Having
that kind of Zen attitude in angst-ridden Hollywood must be a
challenge.
Yes, but it's not just in Hollywood.
I think there's an anxiety in life where we automatically tend to
look to the next thing or we're complaining about he past. like
somebody recently said to me, "Well is your show going to
get picked up? Aren't you concerned about that?" I said,
"I don't care. I don't want to worry about that that because
worrying is not going to make it happen or not happen." I
want to trust that if it does, then that's what's supposed to
happen and if it doesn't get picked up, then that's okay, too. It's
just a more peaceful way to live. Right now, in my life, I'm
really striving for peace and more of a calm outlook.
Yoga
is helping you do that?
Yes, I do Kundalini yoga, which I'm
such a devotee of. I've been doing it on and off for about eight
years. What I like about it is you keep your eyes closed through
almost all of it, and so you're not competing with other people.
You're just competing with yourself as you try to get past your
mind, which is usually saying, "Sto-oooppp! you cant do this!"
Do
you have a fitness goal in mind for yourself?
Well, I don't want my body to look
like a man's. I'm not into the three-hour-a-day Madonna workout
thing. I just want to tone my body and feel stronger in my body.
Who
would you really want a New Year's kiss from?
John F. Kennedy Jr.! He does yoga
too! (She laughs.)
From 'Bikini' Magazine
IT'S BEEN ALMOST EIGHT YEARS AND A DOZEN MOVIES SINCE SHERILYN FENN STARRED IN "TWIN PEAKS." NOW SHE'S BACK WITH ANOTHER TV SERIES, SHOWTIME'S "RUDE AWAKENING." ROB HILL VISITS HER ON THE SET.
Sherilyn Fenn is blindfolded. She's tiptoeing from the bedroom out into the living room, letting her hands guide her. They slide tentatively from the couch, to the table, and back to the couch as she takes little baby steps. She knocks a pizza box off a table, emitting an unmistakable Sherilyn Fenn giggle, the one that rises swiftly and then disappears into total silence, before rising and falling again. She finally finds her way around the couch and grabs a pack of cigarettes that are on top of the TV. She struggles to get them open, becoming flustered, scrunching what part of her face isn't concealed by the piece of red satin tied around her head. She then shakily guides herself back across the room and flops down onto the couch, where she attempts to light a cigarette and pour a diet Pepsi into a glass. She begins to giggle again, as the Pepsi dribbles all over her gray tank-top and down to spot her khaki pants.
"This is so fuckin' hard," she laments. "I can't see a thing. I'm helpless."
"Cut!" a voice booms.
No, this is not my Sherilyn Fenn dream, although it wouldn't be a bad one. This is a rehearsal for her new Showtime series, Rude Awakening. Fenn is using the blindfold to help her simulate nursing a monumental hangover as she tries to explain to her flighty mom that she doesn't have a drinking problem.
"Sherilyn," the director says, "let's try it again but try not to spill all over your top. Remember, you're supposed to be good at being hungover ... it's your specialty."
"But I can't see!" she booms back, peering out from below the blindfold that's now lifted onto her forehead like a Jimi Hendrix headband, finally revealing those arching and somewhat sinister eyebrows of hers.
"Yes," the director responds. "That's the point."
It's midsummer in Hollywood, the time of year that all the little non-descript studios off Santa Monica Boulevard become air-conditioned TV series factories, pumping out boob Tube fodder that will keep America warm and cozy in the upcoming winter. And it's here, in Studio B, that Sherilyn Fenn has decided to make her return to a TV series (well, cable, but that's just a function of the times). It's been almost eight years since Sherilyn caught America's eye as sultry Audrey Horne of David Lynch's surreal and groundbreaking Twin Peaks. Peaks was the rarest of rare on TV: a show that was a critical hit, had a feverish cult of fans, and actually had something to say, however abstract. ("David really tapped into that suburban paranoia thing that pervades the Northwest that America can identify with even if they can't quite articulate it," says Sherilyn.) Of course, it was canceled after a year-and-a-half. but those involved did not go unnoticed. Especially Fenn.
"It opened so many doors for me," she says, munching on a cobb salad in her dressing room. "The whole world seemed to just open up for me."
Like anybody in their right mind, Sherilyn walked through the parted doors. She wandered off into the wilderness of Big Pictures, but soon found out that the world can sometimes be even stranger than anything David Lynch dreams up. In fact, it's safe to say that you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody in Hollywood with a more varied or bizarre filmography than Ms. Fenn. In Wild At Heart she played "Girl in Accident," who was wandering around dying with a windshield through her head; in Ruby, she played a stripper who gets messed up with the mob; Two Moon Junction had her naked through the whole movie having sex everywhere; and in Three Of Hearts she played a lesbian who realizes she's really straight. There were others -- over 20 film credits -- but no need to mention all of them here, because most of them never even made it to the theaters. The Hollywood and Sherilyn Fenn marriage was not going well. Depending on who you talk to, either Hollywood did not know how to use the sultry yet quirky actress or Fenn failed to pick the right parts. But the lines are hazy, as they always tend to be in these matters, especially when curvy brunettes and high-powered suits are involved.
"I would say that at that time I was a brat," she admits. "I was more than a brat. But they also have a way of putting you in a category. I wasn't into playing the Hollywood game. I only responded to certain things."
One thing that Fenn did respond to, however -- which was kind of a grand culmination of what she was going through with her career -- was the controversial role in Boxing Helena.
"When I read the script, I was like, 'Hello, woman in a box,'" she says pointing her thumbs toward herself. "I had to explore that to the end."
In the movie, Fenn played Helena, a bitchy and unlovable narcissist who is humbled after having her limbs amputated and must live in a box. Besides the fact that the movie spurred a massive lawsuit against Kim Basinger for bowing out of the project and the very liberal Madonna turned down the role, Helena's subject matter made it a pariah among critics and the industry, even though Fenn showed great range and courage in taking the part. I mean, isn't that what acting is supposed to be about?
"I thought so," she says, "But I learned a lot from that, in a career sense. But that was then, right?"
Indeed.
Cable is where it's at these days. It's the mid-point between the usual vacuousness of TV and well, the more weighty vacuousness of films. You can say and show almost all the stuff that's only implied on network shows but still not have to bow to the formulaic monotony of movies. Some of the most entertaining and creative shows have found homes on cable such as The Larry Sanders Show, Dream On, and, of course, Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Fenn is looking for such a home with the dark comedy, Rude Awakening, which sports its fair share of such cable mainstays as curse words, lesbianism, naked boobs, and puking.
"My character is trying to get her shit together, but is having a tough go of it," she tells me. "Perfect for cable."
Fenn plays Billie, an ex-B-movie actress "party girl" who wants to become a writer, but has two problems: one, she never writes; and two, she's a drunk who strips in bars, sleeps with the wrong men, and can't seem to stop consuming Irish coffees, no matter how many interventions her friends try. In it, Fenn gets to show her comedic sense, one of her most underutilized and unrecognized talents -- both in therms of timing and her ability to satirize herself, and the more demanding, physical stuff, where she falls from stools, down stairs, out of beds, and off tables. And if all this wasn't enough, she has to work a day job for a satin jacket-wearing sleaze (Richard Lewis) who constantly wants hugs from her.
"Now I know why guys like to hug girls," she says, struggling to chew a mouthful of salad. "You guys just want to cop a feel. I can't believe that I've fallen for it all these years!"
At this point, Sherilyn's publicist comes through the door to snatch her back to the set.
"Just a few more minutes," she says. "It's just starting to be fun."
Fun? Yeah, well here's some fun questions:
BIKINI: Where's one place you never like to be touched?
SHERILYN: That's a weird question. (laughing) It depends on who the person is. There isn't any one place.
BIKINI: Most exotic place you've been?
SHERILYN: Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.
BIKINI: Would you ever do the Howard Stern Show?
SHERILYN: They're pushing me to do Howard. Howard's a trip. My friend made me watch the "Lesbian Love Connection" and I was like, "Oh God, get me out of here!"
BIKINI: What's your drink?
SHERILYN: Red wine.
BIKINI: What's the weirdest thing you can tell me about David Lynch?
SHERILYN: That he's really normal.
BIKINI: What's something you've done that you really regret?
SHERILYN: Oh, God! I hate that question. Bleaching my hair for Two Moon Junction, I guess. My hair was fried and I looked like an idiot.
BIKINI: Were you really on Friends?
SHERILYN: I was in one episode. I played this girl with a wooden leg.
BIKINI: So you've played a girl with a wooden leg, a woman in a box, a stripper, a drunk, a lesbian, a girl with a windshield through her head, what's next?
SHERILYN: (laughing) Hopefully something normal.
BIKINI
October 1998