Watch Me: A Memoir (32 page)

When the film was sold from October Films to USA Films, I did not understand that we would be left at the curb. First the company announced that it would be changing the title to
Agnes Browne
, because of the negative connotations
The Mammy
might provoke, and then they opened
Agnes Browne
a week before the Academy Awards in a letterbox theater with no title above the door. It was a major disappointment, and I felt deflated by the experience. On a more pleasant note,
Agnes Browne
was chosen as part of the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, but I no longer had an opinion about the film, as I was incapable of being objective.

*  *  *

After Cannes, Bob and I stopped in Paris on our way to San Sebastián. Joan was still the editor of French
Vogue
and was now living in a grandly proportioned apartment in the 8ème arrondissement, and had employed a full-time nurse to look after her father, Jules, in a flat nearby. She gave us a dinner party one evening. Jules spoke exclusively about Dad and their experiences during the war; he seemed terribly diminished and lonely without Joyce, like a turtle dove that has lost its mate.

On our first morning in San Sebastián, Bob and I awakened
and ate breakfast in our lovely turn-of-the-century room at the Hotel Maria Cristina, with windows overlooking a canal that ran under delicate white wrought-iron bridges, out to the wide gray Atlantic. I had a series of interviews scheduled all over town, and I was meeting the PR person downstairs. As I came down the staircase, I became aware of a large group of children in the lobby, mostly dark-eyed little girls, many of them dressed in black. Some were inside a roped-off area, while others formed a crowd in the plaza outside.

A whisper came up like wind through trees:
“La bruja! La bruja!”
I looked around, but no one else was there, and suddenly I realized they had come to see me. They were the children of the Camí del Mig school, with their teacher, Lola Casas. I had enjoyed a wonderful correspondence for many years with Lola’s students; these children were all fans of
The Witches
and had traveled from Barcelona to see the “
bruja
” in person.

That year, at the 1999 San Sebastián Festival, I received the Youth Jury Award for
Agnes Browne
and the Donostia Award for lifetime achievement, presented to me by the Spanish star Marisa Paredes. Jeremy Thomas and Hercules attended, and Herky gave lunches at the yacht club, his favorite spot. We had fine times with Chema Prado, the artistic director of the festival, going to tapas bars and spectacular four-star restaurants between the film presentations.

In December
Agnes Browne
had a screening in Rome. I remember little about the trip, only that Michelangelo Antonioni came to the premiere and the acute embarrassment I felt. My confidence was very low; I was so sure he would hate it that I left before I could see his face when the lights went up.

*  *  *

Early in 2000, I returned to England to work on
The Golden Bowl
for James Ivory and his producer, Ismail Merchant. Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman, Kate Beckinsale, and Jeremy Northam were starring in the movie, based on the classic Henry James novel about marriage and adultery. I was playing the part of Fanny Assingham, the meddlesome friend of the four main characters. We were on location in some of the great houses of Britain, including a castle near Richmond.

At one point we stayed in a hotel in the countryside, a stuffy institution that didn’t encourage actors in the dining room. It was vexing to be told at the end of a long day’s work that there was no food left in the kitchen or tables available in the restaurant. I guess they hadn’t heard that we’d been emancipated.

Jim Ivory was a calm, understated American in his early seventies. After the first day’s read-through in London, he had announced that he was not a demonstrative director, and please not to expect that from him. At the time, I had thought that this would be fine, but I always felt insecure when he called “cut” at the end of a scene and had nothing to say. He rarely commented on performances.

Ismail Merchant was just the opposite. A loquacious and outgoing man, he was a most enthusiastic host on set, often cooking up curries for the crew and giving cameo roles to visiting society ladies. I had met with the cameraman, Tony Pierce-Roberts, to discuss their vision for the film. I was still self-conscious about the scar on my nose and was hoping he could bleach it out somehow.

Uma and Kate looked spectacular in their costumes, designed and cut with astonishing detail by John Bright at Cosprop. For sheer beauty and authenticity, I think they were
the most exquisite I’ve ever seen. And yet when I saw the makeup tests, I looked plain and frumpy as Fanny Assingham, and I felt the absence of light had much to do with it. Both Bob Richardson and Bob Graham used to say, “Light is almost everything.” And I think that is true for the visual arts. Light is capable of making you look good or bad. I have an angular face, and when lit from the side, my bones cast shadows that I don’t like, unless I also have a key light. I’ve had some differences of opinion over the years with cameramen who don’t like to light an actress from the front, preferring a more “realistic” approach, but I am never fully happy without my key.

The first man ever to steal my heart, James Fox, had been cast as my husband. When I was a schoolgirl in London, he used to pick me up in his purple Lotus Elan at the gates of Holland Park comprehensive. I had seen him briefly one evening in Los Angeles at a tribute to David Lean, but until this moment I hadn’t met his wife of nearly twenty years, the mother of their teenaged children. And yet here we were in the movie, playing a happily married middle-aged couple. It was odd and not just a little ironic.

CHAPTER 30

I
was going to be in New York and had heard through Toni Howard that the director Wes Anderson wanted to meet me. I was excited about this, as I had very much liked his most recent films,
Bottle Rocket
and
Rushmore
.

We met in the opulent restaurant of the Carlyle Hotel for breakfast. Bespectacled, with pale brown hair brushing his shoulders, Anderson was rail-thin, in a tan corduroy suit cut high on the forearms to expose a full shirt cuff with a few inches of sleeve above it, a knotted silk tie, and brown suede lace-ups. He seemed both serious and droll at the same time. I guessed he was still in his twenties.

I ordered eggs Benedict. “What is that?” he asked. I had figured him to be a bit more worldly; perhaps he was just not interested in food. He said he was from Texas, which, given that he had no accent and didn’t dress in any way like a cowboy or an oil man, seemed a bit of an anomaly. He spoke enthusiastically about his project. Within minutes, I was charmed and agreed to do his new movie,
The Royal Tenenbaums.
It was the story of a fictional New York family of misfits with a dangerous rogue at its helm.

It was obvious from the beginning that Wes was the sole author of his film. At the Tenenbaum set, a gracious, albeit narrow, house in upper Harlem, everything was chosen carefully
and generated by him; his eye was on every frame. Wes wore his heart calmly on his sleeve. At once I felt the desire to both please and protect him.

Wes sent me some drawings he had sketched of my character, Etheline. The matriarch of the family, she had a distracted air, a wispy bun on top of her head with a pencil stuck through it, the sleeves of her jacket too short, and a locket around her neck. My wardrobe was to consist of six identical cashmere suits in pastel colors, all with skirts too long and jackets too small. The locket I used was my grandmother’s.

Wes is extremely responsive to actors and ready to do anything he feels will improve his script. To that end, at my request, he wrote a beautiful scene for the end of the movie, in which Etheline forgives Royal all of his transgressions.

The cast was impressive—Ben Stiller, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover, and Gene Hackman, who played the head of the family, Royal Tenenbaum. I was nervous about Gene, because I’d heard he had a temper, and I knew that in our first scene together, I would be required to slap him in the face. It was a sharp, brisk morning in deep winter, and we were out on the street. In rehearsal I had faked it, and in the camera lineup, I had simply batted Gene on the lapel. But when the cameras rolled and Wes called, “Action,” I realized I had no choice but to go for it and strike Gene on the cheek as indicated. The slap landed hard. I was actually wearing kid gloves in the scene, but I think they only made it sting worse. My hand came down on his cheek like the crack of a whip. Gene’s eyes teared up, and a livid red welt rose on his face in the shape of my hand. “Goddamn,” he muttered.

I prayed that Wes wouldn’t ask for us to go again, and mercifully he didn’t.

It became apparent through the days that followed that Gene was generally much more tolerant of the fairer sex. Sometimes he got really tough, once telling Wes to “pull up your pants and act like a man.” I think he was just furious at having this youth telling him what to do.

I liked Billy Murray a lot. One night we went out to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see
Hamlet
; it was a flimsy performance, but we had a lot of laughs. Occasionally, he would come by my trailer and put my coffee on to brew in the mornings. We did a scene outside Gwyneth’s bathroom in the movie, where we stooped down to pick up a key she shoves under the door. And when we came up with our heads together, Wes said, “I’ve just had an idea. You two would be good in a movie I’m planning.” That movie turned out to be
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
, three years later.

Bob came and we stayed at his favorite hotel, the Stanhope, from whose windows he could gaze at the Metropolitan Museum, which he so loved, and plan his next tour of her galleries. He decided during his visit to do a group of drawings entitled “The Stanhope Series.” For an exhibition at Earl McGrath’s New York gallery, he drew portraits of friends and faces who came through our rooms upstairs, everyone from Gwyneth to Lauren Bacall. My niece Laura and my nephew Jack welcomed the subjects and helped make them comfortable.

I posed, too, after Bob asked me somewhat formally if we might do a portrait. I was shy when I asked him what he wanted me to wear, and he chose a black crepe evening dress with a halter neck and a slit up the side. When I sat down in the armchair he indicated, my breath was short and I was very
nervous. I saw that his hand was shaking; it was an intimate moment. I think we were both very excited. After the portrait was finished, we were both gasping for air. Bob had to open the window. But the ice was broken.

*  *  *

Going to the Met with Bob was always a learning experience. He loved to pop in just to look at a couple of things each day. It was the Pompeiian marble busts that had given him the idea for the Stanhope drawings. He used to say, “Only look at what you need.”

*  *  *

Allegra was renting a house in Taos. She had first gone there to visit Tony in 1995. She had been living in London in a pretty little mews house in Notting Hill Gate and hadn’t reckoned on moving to the wilds of New Mexico permanently when, on a subsequent trip to visit Tony in 1999, she met Cisco Guevara, a renaissance man and owner of a river rafting company on the Rio Grande. He was from a long line of Spanish and Zapotec ancestry, and one of his great-aunts purportedly was married to Pancho Villa. This seemed like an interesting match for Allegra, who has the same attraction to travel and exoticism as our mother.

In February 2002 she called to tell me they were expecting a baby. I was thrilled for her. Finally, Allegra would have a family of her own. I knew that having a child would transform her life and allow her to feel again the deepest connection that exists, between mother and child, having endured the loss of our mother at such an early age.

*  *  *

Working with Clint Eastwood was a breeze, because that was the way he liked it. Surrounded by his loyal team at Malpaso
Productions, Clint’s set was all about good food and no fuss. He had invited me to participate in
Blood Work
, a film on which he was doing double duty as actor and director. In Clint’s case, it just seemed to afford him more ease. His approach was cool and relaxed; if he went off-script, he would merely ask for the line and continue the dialogue without pausing. I was to play Dr. Bonnie Fox, a stern cardiologist who gets on his case about maintaining a healthy lifestyle after his heart transplant. Throughout our scenes, Clint would whisper, “Beat me up! Give me what for!” I guess I was a little intimidated.

We had some lines by his hospital bed, where I took his pulse and inserted a stent. Sometimes I would look at him and choke, because he reminded me so much of my father when he was sick, especially if I was standing behind the hospital bed on set, watching Clint work, with his long arms with their bony elbows stretched behind his head. Also, he called me “daughter,” just like Dad, which I adored. Clint would often shoot rehearsals when the actors did not know the camera was rolling.

One day when we were in a tough scene, he leaned forward—I thought he was going to give me direction—and whispered, “There’s steak and lobster for lunch today.” There is much to love Clint for, not least of which is the swimming pool I built up at my farm with the earnings from my short time on his film.

*  *  *

Having directed several movies, my brother Danny was now acting as well, working repeatedly with his friend and collaborator Bernard Rose. They had just completed
Ivans Xtc
, one of the first digital movies ever made, in which Danny was starring to much acclaim. He was living across the street
in an apartment that had functioned as a design studio while Bob and I were in the process of building our house. We had not met her yet, but there had been sightings of a beautiful girl in the parking lot. Helena, having moved from Mulholland Drive, was now living next door to Bob’s studio in Venice and had taken to breakfasting with them both. The girl’s name was Katie Evans. One evening Danny brought her over to meet Bob and me. She was slender, with aquamarine eyes, pale ash-blond hair, and high cheekbones. She was English and spoke like a debutante, shy and sweet and self-deprecating, and came across as quite serious.