What Our Contributors Are Up To - A Sampling

  JENNIFER ANISTON "Shirley MacLaine", page 110 To get to the heart of why screen legend Shirley MacLaine is currently having another big moment, her interviewer and co-star Jennifer Aniston seemed the perfect choice - after all, the two share a certain appetite of hard work. The perpetually busy Aniston will appear this month in the infidelity thriller Derailed, then Rumor Has It with MacLaine in December, and finally Nicole Holofcener's new comedy Friends with Money, in April.

Whether for a movie, women's right, or her own multidimensional beliefs, Shirley MacLaine has never been afraid to go out on a limb. And as her performances in two major new films prove, she is not to rest on her laurels. Here, Jennifer Aniston gets the scoop.

Jennifer Aniston: Hi, Shirl!

Shirley MacLaine: Hey!

JA: How ya doin'?

SM: I'm good. It was so good to see you when I was in Chicago the other week.

JA: I know. What a treat! After your big night of being honored [with the Career Achievement Award at the Chicago International Film Festivals summer gala] for being the fabulous Shirley MacLaine.

SM: Well, apparently I told some off-color stories to these people. I had just made my little speech and thanked them for everything. But then I just said, "Okay, name a picture, and tell me what you want to know about what happened on the set!" And they had this extraordinary interest in what's real and what isn't and what goes into making something. Like, when I first went on a set and turned the faucets on, did real water come out? When you kiss, are you really involved? When you're shot, is the blood real? So I've been involved with this metaphysical stuff just by being an actor.

JA: Do you feel like that had something to do with how you got involved in the metaphysical, going from actress to spiritualist? How did your curiosity in the spiritual develop?

SM: It's hard for me to trace it back, except that I felt like a little bit of a mystic from the beginning of my life. Then, of course, I became a very disciplined dancer, which is the opposite. But once I went into writing and acting and realized that I had to create a reality of this other person in the script - and that's a metaphysical act - I understood, by golly, that's what artists do.

JA: I also kind of feel like the parts you choose sometimes reflect things that are happening in your life at the current moment.

SM: And it's often something you need to clarify for yourself. That's a metaphysical act to me. Of course, I don't think there are any accidents; I don't think there are any coincidences - I believe in synchronicity. I believe that everything happens for a reason. But everybody wants to know what's real.

JA: Even some actors and actresses have a hard time making that distinction.

SM: I never have. I remember Ted Griffin asked me one day, "What happens when you get so involved in a character that after six o'clock in the evening you can't let it go?" Of course, nowadays it's never six, it's more like midnight. But I have never had that problem - and this is not a compliment to myself. I just have never had that experience of being so wrapped up in a character that I can't let her go. Have you?

JA: No, I can't say that I have. With me, pretty much when they call wrap, you can cut to the smoke coming out of the back of my car. What do think is the difference between those actors - and there are a bunch we could name - who live their parts and don't shut them down, and then people like you and me, who can walk away at the end of the day?

SM: I think they're better than us. [Aniston laughs] A lot of people would say -

JA: We're just phoning it in?

SM: Yeah. But I'm more grounded than that. I'm just not willing to give up my own identity to channel another. I don't know what a director does with someone who is just simply channeling this thing they've created. I tried that with Madame Sousatzka (1988), and I told John Schlesinger I was doing that, and he had great respect for that.

JA: Did you do that when you were making In Her Shoes?

SM: No, I don't think so. Curtis Hanson, the director, is a very fascinating man, Jen. He's an ex-journalist, so he had many, many questions. He would come up with more approaches to a line that my character would say than I ever thought of. I didn't expect that. Also, he anted me to play very underdone. Curtis wanted me to be very alive internally, which I enjoy doing very much. That's why I never want to give up acting - it puts me in touch with things that I might have been, things that I want to be, and things that I am but don't realize it.

JA: Well, you started out as a dancer - with those exquisite legs, which I might add, you are still sporting today - but then you went into acting and became deeply involved in politics, writing, metaphysics, and a lot of other stuff. How, as an actress, did you find yourself in the situations to delve into those other areas as deeply as you did - and not just from the perspective of having the interest but by being seriously involved?

SM: It's interesting, because when you do serious things, like becoming politically active or get involved in women's rights and feminism, and you are only an actress, you begin to develop these ways of answering people who say, "Oh well, what do you know?" And that's when, if you study and really go deeply into your reasons for staying in the art of acting, you get in touch with the feelings of these different movements, much more so than if you hadn't. Politics is the organization of activities, and art is undulation of the feeling of the activities, and if you don't have those feelings themselves, then how are you going to do it well? So I would just answer those people that way. I still think we, as actors, have problems being taken seriously, but I also think that art has the capacity to change the culture of society more swiftly and for a longer time than politics.

JA: I couldn't agree with you more. The sad thing is, even if actors aren't taken seriously, they do have in opportunity to get the word out and encourage the discussion. That's sort of the beauty of what we do for a living, that we have that podium to be heard. SM: What I would suggest is that we learn to do it better, that we learn how to be articulate about what we've seen after we take a trip to Iraq, or when we decide to talk about the Taliban's treatment of women. We have to learn to be more proficient with the language we use to express ourselves. Somewhere they call it gravitas. It seems if gravitas is the ability to find the right language, right words. But we have lost our respect for language, and now it's all about computers and doing things in half the time.

JA: You've written 10 books, Shirley. Do you write on a typewriter or on a computer?

SM: Neither! I write longhand.

JA: When did you write your first book?

SM: My first book was Don't Fall Off The Mountain. I think I wrote it in '59 or '60. I used to write using a yellow pad and a pen until someone told me Richard Nixon wrote his speeches on a yellow pad, so I stopped using those. [Aniston laughs] Then I started using a loose-leaf notebook, and I write with a nice, smooth sliding pen. I write on the right-hand side, and then if I want to interject, like, 13 pages, I do them on the left-hand side, and my typist somehow understands because she can read my writing. I have a lot of problems with carpal tunnel syndrome because I write fast - now that's channeling, Jen.

JA: When you started writing these books, how did you deal with people's reactions to your metaphysical interests and the "Shirley's out on a limb and she sees other people from past lives" thing? How did you handle all the media scrutiny and the kinds of judgments that were placed on you?

SM: Well, I remember the Johnny Carson guys calling me and saying that they were going to make Shirley MacLaine jokes and asked for my help writing some. I told them I don't have any objections as long as they're funny.

JA: So, did you help them write the jokes?

SM: Yeah.

JA: Oh, please tell me. Do you remember any?

SM: I think there was one great joke about something I wrote in my books about my Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage across Spain, where I walked for 30 days, and I had this past-life understanding that I knew Charlemagne, So they said something like, "They were all suffering from sexually transmitted diseases then, so if anybody sleeps with Shirley today, they have to realize she slept with Charlemagne." [Aniston laughs] I think it was a little grosser than that, but it was funny, and I sat in bed laughing to myself.

JA: That's a wonderful thing to be able to do. I think that's the trait of a very strong, enlightened, in-your-body human being.

SM: Well, maybe, but also the whole exercise of being alive is a joke.

JA: But laughing is also a lifesaver, isn't it?

SM: It's healthy. It changes your endorphin level. I think it even helps you lose weight.

JA: [both laugh] You should write a diet book.

SM: Well, you have to find a way to laugh at what's going on, even though sometimes I find it hard now.

JA: Yeah, it is hard sometimes. But there is always a joke somewhere in everything.

SM: Isn't that the truth? You can just hear the cosmic masters up there going, 'Ha ha ha.' I was with the Dalai Lama for two weeks at the Rio conference in '92, and he would do these long speeches - without notes, by the way - and all of a sudden he would start to laugh, and nobody knew why. He would just sit there in front of 20,000 people, hearing something from the cosmos, and start laughing. I remember once he came to Los Angeles, and everyone thought that because there were a lot of famous people there the Dalai Lama was going to give us some speech on the most profound subject of all. But he just stood up and talked for an hour about the profundity of smiling, about how important it is to smile at somebody. Isn't that brilliant?

JA: What was it like meeting the Dalai Lama for the first time?

SM: He's a big flirt.

JA: The Dalai Lama flirted with you?

SM: Yes!

JA: Come on. How many people can say that?

SM: Probably a lot. [Aniston laughs] I loved him, though. He's just one of those guys who are just so profoundly simple. His emotions are simple. His sense of humor is simple. There's kind of an arrogance in our culture about simple things, that if something is simple, then it's not intelligent. But simplicity really is the most difficult thing to get to. I'm noticing as I'm getting older that I have the simplicity of a child more. The questions that I ask are the same ones I was asking when I was 6 or 7 years old, about the universe and God and whose birthday it is on Christmas and why don't we have a birthday cake and stuff like that.

JA: So, what is a big question you're asking now?

SM: Well, I guess it would be about whether or not there is something manipulating this war of Gods that we're going through right now. Or is it just us who think our Judeo-Christian way of life is better than the Islamic way of life? I mean, here's a question, Jen: We have a president who is basing even legislation on faith-based morality, and yet we invade a country whose whole government system is faith-based, except that it's their faith and not ours. So what is going on here? Why can't we see that a faith-based society, no matter what the faith, is not really a democratic society? Then I guess my other big question is, what is this separation of church and state? We have a device for separating church and state that we like to call our constitution, but most of the culture is veering toward a sort of faith-based morality, and that separation is disappearing. It's a big question. Just because we've been taught all these things doesn't mean they're the truth.

JA: But we seem to take them very much at face value. It almost seems like people need to because it's more frightening to go off and think for yourself.

SM: Exactly. I think people made jokes when I began to write about metaphysics because I was veering off my own path of questioning. And it can be lonely. But I think the greatest gift that my parents gave me was to not buy into system of beliefs. So my open mind comes from not having been colonized and not having been taught. God knows my parents didn't force anything upon me. My mom was Canadian.

JA: And an actress!

SM: She was a poetess, an actress, yeah. But she wasn't one that inspired me to do that. I think what inspired me was her disappointment because she never made it. She never even tried. She got married and gave it all up. My dad also always wanted to be a musician. He told me he wanted to run away and join a circus.

JA: No! Did he tell you this when you were a kid or an adult?

SM: Both. I think he really meant it. And so I've run away and joined my own circus, because he never did it. And Mom wanted to act and never did - she gave it up to raise Warren [Beatty, MacLaine's brother] and me. I think both of us have basically done what our parents didn't do but wanted to.

JA: So, I want to ask you some movie questions. Do you feel like, with the three movies this year - Bewitched, In Her Shoes, and the one we did together, Rumor Has It - it's like "Shirley's suddenly come back"? Were you taking a break? Or was I something else that caused you to stop making movies for a while?

SM: Well, I think age had something to do with it. The business took a break from me, number one. I've had, what, four or five comebacks? But my longtime agent and manager, Mort Viner, died two years ago and I was devastated. So I thought, Well, I wonder what's going to happen now? I guess Mort has been working through the other agents at ICM.

JA: He has?

SM: He has. And you know what? They cop to it. Why else should they care about somebody my age? It's not like I'm going to be on the cover of a magazine in a bikini or something.

JA: Well, now, Shirl. I've seen your legs.

SM: Well, yeah. But anything above that up to the neck I'm not too sure about. [laughs] Anyway, I don't know what happened. I think I made the decision myself. I wanted to confine to act. I mean, now I'm doing character parts, supporting parts, a couple of things that would be leads, but they have to be interesting. Most of the time those character parts are much better. Michael Caine and I were talking about this when we did Bewitched. We both just loved the idea of working with people like you and Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz and Will Ferrell. You guys take responsibility now. You have to go out and sell the damn thing. That's why you have to have great bodies and be fashionistas and say the right things in public. I can say "Fuck you" to anybody I want now, and they just laugh and say, "She's just a curmudgeon!"

JA: [laughs] How do you think it's different being a young actress nowadays in Hollywood as opposed to when you were starting out?

SM: There's a big difference. As you said, in my beginning days we didn't have to think about promotion like you guys have to now. Today you have to really think about what you're doing with your life, because it will be used.

JA: Well, the studios used to control the publicity, didn't they?

SM: They controlled the publicity. I think People magazine changed everything. And tabloid journalism. When I was starting out, we only had Confidential.

JA: That was around when Hedda Hopper was working. She was sort of the first übertabloid journalist, right?

SM: She and Louella [Parsons]. And man, you'd have to go to Louella's house or Hedda's house, and if you didn't make a good impression, your career was in the toilet. Today the tabloids pay these journalists so much money to put a microphone under somebody's hospital bed or something, and usually what you read, unless it's a complete slant, is written like it's a real, good, hard story. Then people at Time magazine read it and decide, "Well, we have to follow up on this, " and it becomes a tabloid reality. If I were starting out now, they would've had a field day with my affairs, and the fact that I was living with other guys while I was married to my husband, who was in Japan having his own thing. But I had a free ride with that. Today, I don't know how you guys do it. Your personal lives become the definition of who you are. So then you have to be really PR savvy and think, How am I going to look good with this?

JA: I believe that some form of honesty is usually the best road taken, and you keep as much to your heart as you can.

SM: That's why I decided that I'm just going to live my life in public. I'm going to do my metaphysical search completely in public, and my life will be an open book. There's still a lot about me that nobody knows, and after a while you get very adept at keeping that part of your life for yourself, which you'll learn.

JA: I am learning.

SM: And then you look at some sort of these other people, I mean, Paris Hilton just thinks that any publicity is good publicity. What is that?

JA: Somehow though, we love Paris Hilton.

SM: Who does?

JA: I think she's adorable.

SM: I like her little dog, I guess.

JA: I think she's an example of someone who makes no apologies. She lives and breathes who she is.

SM: Well, maybe I just wish she would change her stance when she's having her picture taken.

JA: The pose? Yeah, I think she's worked on that, though.

SM: I'm so sick of that look. You know, please turn around and stick your tongue out at me from the back or something.

JA: Maybe we can get that message to her.

SM: I'd do that. I like to help young people.