Allen’s eyes are wet. She ducks into the kitchen to blow her nose.
“It’s such an unvain performance. She’s got that body, that dress, that sagging chest. It’s so real,” Allen says, returning to the couch. “She says a line at one point about a woman she knows — ‘Callie Davis kept her farm going’ — and in one line you get how she feels about that woman. That kind of acting is so thorough and so important because everybody in your life you have a specific relationship with. You can tell by the tone of your voice how you feel. When I hear an actor do something like that, I just think, ‘I’ve got to remember to do that.’”
I thank Allen. As I am packing to go, she says there is one more scene she almost included. It’s from Terms of Endearment. Debra Winger is in the hospital, telling her two young sons good-bye. The older one knows his mother is dying. He is sullen. He doesn’t want to be there, as if by not acknowledging her imminent death he can will her to survive.
“She’s amazing in that scene because she’s not sentimental about it,” Allen says. “She strikes a balance. She says something like ‘Someday you’re really going to regret and feel bad that this happened between you and me. And I’m telling you right now — don’t.’”
Allen’s voice is fierce, and her eyes are full. I realize that after two hours of talking with her about acting, I am getting to see her act. “She’s saying, ‘Don’t. I know that you love me. I know.’” A tear travels down Allen’s cheek. “She just keeps saying that. She wants to free him. ‘Don’t regret that I’m dead.’ It’s just” — she pauses a moment, her voice again a whisper — “beautiful.”
ED HARRIS: LOSE YOURSELF IN SUBTLETIES, GET COMFORTABLE WITH SILENCE, AND TRANSCENDENCE WILL COME
ED HARRIS STANDS IN HIS DRIVEWAY IN A patch of sunlight, thumping the head of a large black dog. Compact, five feet nine, the actor wears blue jeans, a faded black T-shirt, running shoes, and a backward baseball cap that says SKI THE BIG ONE. When he waves hello, Harris looks more like a housepainter than a movie star. Except for his eyes. On the screen, those fierce, observant blue eyes — combined with his square jaw and wide mouth — have convinced more than one moviegoer that hair is overrated.
I park my car in front of the low-slung Malibu home where Harris lives with his wife, actress Amy Madigan, and their seven-year-old daughter, Lily. Harris’s dog, Barkley, is the first to greet me, and Harris observes that Barkley is not one to play fetch or other dog games. He says this admiringly.
Harris isn’t a guy who likes to jump through hoops. At times, he has been blunt about the failings of Hollywood, and he can chafe at some of its rituals, including the necessity of talking to people like me. His most recent film is Pollock, which he directed, coproduced, and stars in, and it matters to him that it do well. Still, he doesn’t relish the process. On a recent press junket, he says, he answered and re-answered the same 20 questions.
“I was beginning to feel like George Bush,” he says with distaste.
We climb some stairs to a bright, comfortable room over the garage. The Pacific sparkles outside the window, but we turn our backs on the view to stare at a huge television. Harris explains that he has chosen scenes from four movies that he saw before he decided to become an actor. He likes the idea that he initially responded as a fan, not as a student of the craft. If the scenes have stuck with him after 30 years, he reasons, there must be something there.
He slides his first selection, John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath, into the VCR and sinks into a small, plump leather chair. Harris, now 50, saw the film — about the Okie migration to California during the Depression — in high school in the mid ’60s. His parents grew up in southwestern Oklahoma, and even after they settled in Tenafly, New Jersey, they took the family back every summer when Harris was young. Later, after he realized he wasn’t big enough to play pro football, he studied acting at Oklahoma State University.
