WW | intimate portrait desperately seeking Would you fly 31,000 kilometres to spend an LET’S FACE IT, there aren’t many people So, yes, it’s true these roles might help Susanin the world you’d fly 15,572 kilometres to determine whether a middle-aged man hour with someone? see just for an hour. Take in the return such as myself would want to consider David Leser would, but journey and it’s actually more like 31,000 travelling across the world to spend an only if that someone kilometres for the dubious honour of hour with someone like that. Yet would spending 60 minutes in that person’s it be enough to get me across the line? was the fascinating company. That’s about 520 kilometres for Probably not (liar, liar, pants on fire). Susan Sarandon. every precious minute you’re with them. Surely you’d need something else, such as He or she would have to be a special her Academy Award-winning performance somebody, right? Maybe Mother Teresa as the New Orleans nun, Sister Helen or John Lennon, were either still alive. Prejean, in Dead Man Walking, or her Somebody endowed with qualities you unforgettable portrayal as that lioness of don’t normally find – a combination, a mother in Lorenzo’s Oil (for which she perhaps, of shining intelligence and earthy received one of her four Oscar nominations) wisdom, deep humanity and a fierce social to get a man to take out his suitcase. and political conscience; somebody smart Yet even then you’d be ill-advised and wise and empathic, and, well, yes, in not to throw into the mix the real-life this case, bosomy and beautiful, too, in an attributes we’ve read so much about – her ageless sex-goddess kind of way. devotion to her children, whom she began Remember the time she squeezed lemon having when she was nearly 40; the love juice on her breasts in Atlantic City, playing of a partner (actor/writer/director Tim opposite Burt Lancaster? Remember her Robbins) 12 years her junior; and the as the shameless hussy to both Tim Robbins championing of various political and and Kevin Costner in the baseball classic social causes – women’s rights, an end to Bull Durham? “There’s never been a the death penalty, the saving of rainforests, ballplayer who slept with me that didn’t the plight of Africa – and, more recently, have the best year of his career.” her fierce opposition to the war in Iraq, for Sorry … it’s easy to get carried away which she has been vilified and threatened. here, but, let’s be honest, she’s portrayed Add to that her status as “Hollywood’s some alluring and, at times, ill-behaved sexiest older woman”, the screen icon women during an illustrious 36-year who had a belly-dancing party when she career: Catherine Deneuve’s lesbian lover turned 58 and now, at nearly 60, still turns in The Hunger, Brooke Shields’ prostitute younger men’s heads and, yes, I think it’s mother in Pretty Baby, James Spader’s safe to say the suitcase is packed and the smouldering paramour in White Palace, ticket is bought. and, of course, fugitive ballbreaker that The only question now is a strategic she was, Louise Sawyer, in the feminist one: how long will it take me to get to the Susan Sarandon, road movie, Thelma & Louise. (And that’s airport without appearing over-zealous? stunning at nearly 60, uses her not counting, more recently, Jude Law’s celebrity status to older temptress in Alfie, or the groupie IT’S FUNNY HOW OFTEN you read champion social and gone straight, Lavinia Kingsley, in The articles about Susan Sarandon arriving for political causes. PHOTOGRAPHY BY FABRIZIO FERRI. BY FABRIZIO PHOTOGRAPHY Banger Sisters.) an interview dressed casually in jeans 2 | WW JULY 2006 L WW JULY 2006 | 3 It’s easy to see why and sneakers, titian hair tied back, of an unarmed African immigrant by four thought we would have to live elsewhere,” Susan has portrayed some alluring women sunglasses perched on her crown, no New York policemen. And from the time she says. “There were death threats [and in her movie career. make-up or hint of surgical enhancement of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, phone taps] and suggestions that people in sight. Perhaps that’s because it’s true. she has been railing against what she sees do something to me. And they started Susan Sarandon arrives for this interview as her government’s hypocrisy and deceit. printing mean stories about my kids in the BEAUTY NOTE dressed like the description above, drop “Somehow it became anti-American to paper that weren’t true. And things like Susan wears Revlon Age Defying Makeup with pearl earrings adding to her appearance ever discuss anything,” she says, clearly that made my children very anxious and Botafi rm for Dry Skin in of chic insouciance, a red-striped shirt infuriated by the turn her country has taken. I did think we might have to leave.” Medium Beige, ColorStay unbuttoned fetchingly at the top, a look of Three years ago, with the American-led And, yes, New Zealand loomed large Eyeshadow Quad in Berry no nonsense in those remarkable almond invasion of Iraq, the tone of things turned in her thinking. “I love New Zealand and Bloom, Luxurious Lengths Mascara in Blackest Black, eyes and a firm handshake at the ready. decidedly nasty. Radio hate jocks began I think they’re probably the closest [to my Super Lustrous Lipstick baying for her blood over her public way of thinking] in terms of a government in Soft Suede and WE MEET AT her favourite Greenwich denunciations of the Bush Administration. trying to give people a fair shake. At least Super Lustrous Lip Village bistro, where she has just finished Film studios were asked not to hire her – it seems like a government that has a dialogue Gloss in Nude Lustre. lunching with her daughter, Eva Amurri, not that that had much effect – and even going … But I really don’t want to leave. the 21-year-old multilingual actress from the Baseball Hall of Fame, in theory a I love this country. And my children love Susan’s relationship with Italian director non-political organisation, cancelled this country and they love this city. We’ve Franco Amurri in the mid-’80s. (Eva has her and Tim Robbins’ appearance at the lived through the 11th [the terrorist attacks appeared with her mother in two films, The 15th anniversary of Bull Durham. on the US on September 11, 2001] and it Banger Sisters and Anywhere But Here.) “And there have been all these other made them and myself even more committed Susan sits down, unbuttons her jacket little things, too,” she says now, sipping a to being New Yorkers. and, with very little prompting, begins to glass of water. “My niece in Virginia was “Also … as a privileged person, I hate the regale me with how a journalist recently doing a production of The Wizard of Oz idea of just picking up and leaving. I kind of took creative licence with her quotes, so and the drama teacher said to my sister, feel as if I’m going to stay here until they much so that she was totally confused by ‘I hope your sister isn’t planning to come throw me out. I want to make it clear that if what she’d supposedly said. “You can because we won’t let her’. My nephew in I were to leave, I want to make it public and only be as smart as the person interviewing New Jersey was at a class and his teacher make people understand why I was leaving – you,” she offers with a smile that suddenly said, ‘I’d like to smash her teeth in’.” that I was given no alternative.” looks like a warning. “So if they already Just recently on Christopher Street, in have an angle before they go to meet with the heart of Greenwich Village, the star of SUSAN WAS BORN in New York but you, then they’re not listening – just as more than 35 feature films was abused as raised on the wrong side of the tracks in some actors do when they’re in a scene she was leaving a restaurant. “I was with New Jersey, which probably helps explain and they come already deciding what’s my younger son and his friend … and a why she plays working-class women going to happen between you. carload of young guys was going by and so well (Atlantic City, White Palace, “It’s a little bit like public officials picking they said, ‘Hey, Susan’. I always look up Thelma & Louise). and choosing their information before they with a smile and they said, ‘You’re a terrible The oldest of nine children, her father Wstart a war. They just listen to that information American. You should die’.” was a big-band singer with Celtic roots and her mother an emotionally damaged “I’VE THOUGHT WE WOULD HAVE TO LIVE ELSEWHERE. woman of Sicilian ancestry. Her mother, THERE WERE DEATH THREATS [AND PHONE TAPS] AND Lenora Tomalin, now in her 80s and living in Virginia, was born to a 13-year-old SUGGESTIONS THAT PEOPLE DO SOMETHING TO ME. mother and abandoned when she was two, AND THEY STARTED PRINTING MEAN STORIES ABOUT brought up first in foster care and then in a MY KIDS IN THE PAPER THAT WEREN’T TRUE.” Catholic boarding school.