BACK
STAGE WEST
February
26, 1998
ACTORS'
DIALOGUE : Gloria Stuart & Frances Fisher
Reporting
by Karen Kondazian & Rob Kendt
In
the midst of the horrifying special effects and heart-wrenching tragedy of the
multi-Oscar-nominated blockbuster Titanic, two images that stick with us the
longest are of faces: that of the stern Ruth DeWitt-Bukater as she knits up the
corset of her rebellious daughter Rose, who is about to throw over her wealthy
fiance for a starving young artist, and that of the aged survivor Rose as she
recalls in desolation the fateful night of the ship's sinking.
Providing
these memorable images were actresses Frances Fisher, who played Ruth, and
Gloria Stuart, who played the Older Rose (Rose the younger was played by Kate
Winslet, and both Winslet and Stuart are nominated for Oscars this year).
Stuart,
who was born in Santa Monica two years before the Titanic sailed, began her
film career in 1930, appearing in such films as John Ford's Air Mail and The Prisoner of
Shark Island, Here Comes the Navy with James Cagney, Poor Little Rich Girl with Shirley Temple,
Busby Berkeley's Golddiggers of 1935, Roman Scandals with Eddie Cantor, The
Three Musketeers with the Ritz Brothers, and three films with the English director
James Whale: The Invisible Man, The Kiss Before the Mirror, and The Old Dark
House.
Stuart more or less retired from acting in 1940 and has kept busy as an
accomplished painter, collage artist, book artist, bonsai gardener, and
hostess.
The
redhaired Fisher is best known for her roles in Unforgiven and Lucy & Desi:
Before the Laughter, though her other film credits include Female Perversions, Wild America, Babyfever, Patty Hearst, and The Stars Fell
on Henrietta. Following a diverse Off-Broadway and regional theatre career,
she worked as a regular on The Edge of Night and Guiding Light, and recently starred
in the Fox series Strange Luck. Prior to Titanic, she appeared in a
limited run of Caryl Churchill's one-act Three More Sleepless Nights and recently appeared
in Joan Tewkesbury's Jammed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Though
Fisher and Stuart don't appear on-screen together, they've become friends since
the film's shooting, and got together recently with Back Stage West at Stuart's homey
Brentwood residence to discuss their craft, their careers, and Titanic.
Back
Stage West: We'd love to know how the two of you got your roles in Titanic.
Gloria
Stuart:
Well, I'm a book artist, and one afternoon I came in from the studio and there
was a message on my tape about this location shoot and the Titanic and all of
these names--Lightstorm, etc. So I called a friend of mine, Marvin Paige, who
used to be a casting director and was the only person with whom I had any
contact in the film industry, and he told me it was Jim Cameron's company, and
I said, "Who's Jim Cameron?" He told me, "Only the biggest
director in Hollywood," and he made a call to the casting director, Mali
Finn, for me. Mali wanted to know if she could come over the next day and talk
to me. She came with her assistant and a handheld video camera. I had never
seen one before.
They
filmed me while Mali talked to me for about an hour about who I was and what I
was doing. I had a fine time. She left around 3:30 or 4:00, and by around 4:30
she called and asked if she could send the script over. I said, "Yeah,
fine." The studio's only 15 minutes from here, and I think that Jim saw
some of that video and said, "Find out if she wants to read." He'd
been turned down by several actors of my age who wouldn't read because they
felt that their work spoke for them. So they sent the script over and by time I
got halfway through the script I could taste it.
Mali
called again a little after five to ask if I would read for Mr. Cameron the
next day. I was so excited. She called back to ask if I would read without any
makeup on, since Rose was a 101-year-old woman. I started to say I would read
for him without clothes on! Jim came over the next day. I read and he stopped me
twice and gave me a little direction, and that was it. I went on vacation to
London the next day, but after a couple of weeks, I cut my trip short and came
back and looked at the script again. I realized that I hadn't looked at Young
Rose enough--I had studied Old Rose. So I wrote him a note saying that I would
love to read for him again and give it a feistier reading, because Young Rose
was feistier than I had remembered. I sent it priority mail so it wouldn't get
lost on his desk. It went out on Saturday, and on Tuesday Mali Finn called and
offered me the role. I didn't have an agent, I did it all myself.
Frances
Fisher:
You know, that relates to the story of Rochelle Rose, another actress on this
movie, who plays the Countess of Rothes. She's a young woman, 26 at the time,
and she found out that Titanic was being cast. She didn't have an agent, but
she wrote a note to Mali Finn saying that she wanted to come in and audition.
She went in and got the role. No agent.
Gloria: Everyone has said to me
that from now on I have to have an agent, but at this point in my life, I don't
want anyone selling me, going in and saying, "I think Gloria Stuart would
be great for this role." Having seen Titanic, if someone thinks I
would be right for something they're doing, they can come to my house. So what
I really need to get is a theatrical lawyer for negotiations. I don't need
anyone pitching me.
BSW: What about you,
Frances? How did you get your role?
Frances: I got the call because
I had been going through old address books in my house and I came across Mali
Finn's name. I hadn't spoken to her for something like eight years. So I just
called to say hello and reconnect. The following week my agents called and told
me I had an audition for Titanic. Once I read it, I was so thrilled because I
found this incredible character that was complex and had a beginning, a middle,
and an end. It wasn't stereotypical or one-dimensional.
I
was put on tape and did three scenes with Mali, which she sent off to Jim, who
was shooting the present-day sequences up in Halifax. About a month later, I
was asked to meet Jim and do the whole ending of the film for Ruth--a line
here, a line there. Impossible to create a flow, because of the varied
emotional levels Ruth was experiencing. So at the audition, I asked Jim, who
was taping everything with a handheld camera, if I could do each one as a
separate scene. When it came to the lifeboat scene, I enlisted Mali Finn to get
up onto the table with me. I stepped off onto a chair as if I were getting into
the lifeboat. Jim said, "I should have brought a crane!" And he got
his camera right in my face for the "close-up." It was great. I was
so lucky that he was open to all of that.
BSW: It's inspiring that you
had the confidence to take that kind of risk at an audition! Gloria, what does
it feel like to have the option of a new career at the age of 87?
Gloria: Well, I just don't
think old. I think, in the morning, How are my aches and pains? Are they better
or are they worse? That takes my attention for about five minutes. Then, after
that, I make do with the arthritis; that's about all I have to complain about.
My life is very full with the things I want to do. There are two books that I
want to design, illustrate, and print. Each one will take a couple of years.
The first is a book about the butterfly kite. I've flown kites all over the
world and I collect kites, so I want to do a kite book.
I'm
very selfish about my time. I never "do lunch." I never shop. I don't
go out at night. I don't talk on the phone during the day. I only play cards
once a week. These are all things that I used to do a great deal. Now, I save
myself. Because at my age, my energy level and the time that I have left is not
forever. Most of the time I print, paint, or garden. I wear dirty sweatpants
and sneakers and no makeup. I could do that for weeks at a time and just not
surface. So I left acting by choice--except I left being very disappointed and
very frustrated.
Frances: But don't you feel it's
about passion? The thing that I feel happens to actors, and anyone who's in any
creative field, or maybe even in business, is that if you have a passion for
something and you're frustrated and not fulfilled, you have to find another
way. Your passion has not changed--you've just found another way to channel
your energy, your passion, so that's where you're putting your creative energy.
If the right thing comes along, it'll happen. It'll work in your life now,
because you're not giving yourself over to the exterior.
BSW: You two obviously come
from different generations. How would you say you differ in your approach to
acting?
Gloria: I have such a wonderful
story about The Old Dark House. It was an almost 100 percent English cast,
including Charles Laughton and Raymond Massey. It was Laughton's second film.
His entrance was coming in out of the rain and he's panting, so before the
take, he's running around backstage back and forth. I said to the director,
James Whale, "What is he doing?" and he told me, "He's getting
ready to come in." I said, "What do you mean he's getting ready?
Look, [she pants], I'm out of breath, too, and I don't have to run up and down
the stage for five minutes." He said, "Gloria, please." They
were trained stage actors, and they were perfection. It was wonderful to watch
their technique. This was only my third film. I had never been exposed to
professional actors who had been classically trained.
BSW: Did you find it easy to
slip into the work again?
Gloria: Someone asked me how it
was to walk onto a set again. It was as though I never left. You just make sure
that you don't crash into things. I worried that I might not remember the
lines, that I might blow it. But I think that during the entire four weeks that
I worked on Titanic, I only blew a line once, and that was because someone
dropped something behind me and I was distracted.
Frances: The easiest thing about
film, though, which took me so long to learn, is that it doesn't matter if you
blow a line, because film is the cheapest thing. It doesn't matter. But coming
from the theatre, it took me a long time to transition to the film style of
working. You know, the master, the close-up, the over-the-shoulder shot. And
having to do it over and over, and even if you get another impulse, you have to
match what you did before.
Gloria: And be fresh.
Frances: And be fresh. You're
trained in a play to go from beginning to middle to end in a scene, and if you
screw up a line, you've got to keep going. In film, an actor has a choice of
saying, "You know what, we've got to start over." The process is so
different.
And
what I've just learned is that even if I feel like I've screwed up, not to
"cut" unless the director says to, because maybe there's something
good in there. There was a whole scene on Titanic where I forgot my line.
The scene before we get lowered into the lifeboats, one of my lines was,
"Will the boats be seated according to class?" So it's the first
night out on the boat deck, and it's night and there are all of these people.
Jim's doing this tough shot of bringing the camera in handheld, through the
crowd, and this one couple who's kissing and saying goodbye isn't working out,
and we're finally on take seven and it's a little edgy, a little tense. The
camera's coming through and it reaches me and I go completely blank. I was so
in the moment of what was going on and how all of this would make me feel if I
had been there that I went completely up. So I said, "Fuck!" because
I knew I had blown the whole shot. At that point Jim said, "Why did you
say that? We could have used that. You were so lost. That's exactly where Ruth
should be!" And I was so thankful to Jim for that lesson. It was such
great generosity.
BSW: Did he ask you to
improvise at all?
Frances: Oh, no. We stuck to the
script. We went exactly with the text. Although there was a time when we were
between shots and they were setting up for another angle and Jim was watching
Billy Zane and Rochelle Rose and me just kind of hanging out. He brought the
camera over and told us to just keep talking but "put it where you are in
1912 and we'll just roll some film." Now I can tell this story because the
producers are rich, so it doesn't matter: We spent an hour and a half
improvising a scene between Billy, Rochelle, and myself, just giving character
background. Jim just wanted to pull out as much as he could from what we all were
doing. I'm sure we were not the only improvisation that he decided to do. It
helped to layer the work.
I
asked him recently about his intentions for a director's cut, because there had
been talk of like a seven-hour CD-ROM that would include a lot more footage,
and he said, "Frances, that was the director's cut." Every frame is
his.
BSW: Did you rehearse a lot?
Frances: Kate Winslet and
Leonardo DiCaprio had a lot of rehearsals of the period stuff. We had etiquette
lessons when we weren't working. Lynne Hockney came down and showed us what
10-course dinners were like and how to walk through a door, how you hold your
glass or napkin.
I
felt that I went to a different level with this movie, though, because I have
never worked with a male director who gave me so much room to work. I felt an
immediate respect from him, not only as a person, but for the work that I had
to bring and the acting. And I saw him have respect for everybody else in the
room. I remember Kate coming up to me and saying, "Frances, he never talks
to me, I don't know if I'm doing well," and I said, "Listen, if
there's anything I've learned in this business, it's that if a director doesn't
talk to you, it's so much better than if he does. If they hired you, it's
because they trust you to do the work, so take that as a compliment." To
waste their time talking about what they think motivation is--that's the
actor's work, and if you need a coach or a friend to work things out with,
that's fine, but they expect you to show up and do it. The amount of respect
that he still shows is tremendous. He's one of the greatest.
Gloria: As a writer, as well.
What Jim had written for these characters was so involving. I feel very
strongly that an actor cannot act without the words. Like an artist can't paint
without the brushes. If a scene is written with words that don't contribute to
an enrichment or a reality of the scene, then forget it. But I think it has to
start with the words. If I don't feel any involvement, then there's trouble.
Frances: I think that's the
problem with television. People are "community writing," which is
really hard. I come from studying the classics. Stella Adler, in her great
script interpretation class, taught you to try to understand the author and why
he or she wrote that play. When you've got 11 writers, you get this mush.
That's why some of the television is so bland; you don't get the energy of the
human being writing from their own gut. It's gone through such a process that
there's no character left. The actor doesn't get inspired by anything on the
page, and they have to totally go inside of their heads and create something.
So
it pisses me off that the Academy didn't give Jim a nomination for the
screenplay. If it weren't for the screenplay, this movie would not have
happened. The play's the thing. And obviously, this screenplay speaks to
people.
Gloria: A lot of kids are
going. My gardener's son, who does not have a lot of money, has gone three
times! He's taking his friends! They're touched by this writing.
BSW: And by your acting, as
well.