Susan Sarandon as Sarah
Miriam, a beautiful 2000 year old vampire, needs help when she realizes that John, her current lover, is aging fast. Enter Sarah, a blood specilalist whose research involves geriatrics. Tony Scott's visually sumptuous tale is spun out with relatively tame lesbian love scenes and a mix of violence and sly humor. David Bowie (John), also adds the right element of sexual mystery.
Biography for Susan Sarandon
Date of birth
4 October 1946
New York City, New York, USA
Birth name
Susan Abigail Tomalin
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It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got the major role of the daughter of an advertising executive. Dad kills her drug dealer boyfriend and befriends an opinionated assembly line worker who collects guns. Five years later Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as Janet, who gets entangled with transvestite Dr. Frank n Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role -- Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. "It was such a wonderful script ... and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success", she said. "When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin [Costner], kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane". Her romance with the "Bull Durham" supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced three sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980). When Robert Hofler, writing a 1994 article for BUZZ, asked Sarandon whether it was difficult being directed by the man she lived with (Tim Robbins for "Dead Man Walking"), she answered: "I lived and worked with another director, and when you do that, you're in a real hostage situation. There are situations where you'd walk off the picture, but you can't walk because you've gotta go home and make the tuna melt". Hofler: "You're talking about Louis Malle?" Sarandon: "Yeah". Hofler: "Malle directed you in 'Pretty Baby' and 'Atlantic City'. Did working with him contribute to your breaking up? Sarandon: "Nah. I'd quote Proust on that one. It was just time."
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Trivia
Her partner is Tim Robbins (1988-present)
(October 1997) Ranked #35 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
Attended Catholic University of America Drama School, 1964-1968. Met and married Chris Sarandon there (by priest who was head of Dept.).
Former "Ford" Model.
(1996) chosen by People (USA) magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful in the world
Landed her first Hollywood role when her then-husband, Chris Sarandon, took her along on one of his auditions
As co-presenters of the Academy Awards in 1993, Susan and her partner, Tim Robbins, seized a chance to bring public attention to the plight of a few hundred Haitians with Aids who had been interned in Guantanamo Bay.
Is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador
Has a daughter from relationship with Franco Amurri (Eva Amurri, born 1985).
Has two children by Tim Robbins (Jack Henry Robbins (May 1989), Miles Guthrie Robbins (May 1992).
Graduated from Edison High School in Edison, New Jersey where she was a cheerleader.
She keeps her Oscar in the bathroom.
Sang in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); recorded a duet with Eddie Vedder which played over the end credits of "Cradle Will Rock".
Was involved in the effort to have Dr. Laura Schlessinger's television show taken off the air in 2000, because of her disagreement with Schlessinger's conservative views. The effort was successful in leading many sponsors to drop their support of the show, which was ultimately cancelled less than a year after its premiere.
For the past ten years she has been involved with Heifer International, an organization that donates farm animals to needy families who need the animals for work.
Is the first actress to win an Oscar for playing a nun.
Named son "Jack Henry" soon after attending the murder trial of career criminal Jack Henry Abbott. Abbot convinced playwright Norman Mailer to support his parole and promptly stabbed to death a restaurant night manager within weeks of his release. The argument was over access to a private restroom.
(30 March 1999) Was arrested for disorderly conduct during a protest in New York over the unarmed shooting African immigrant Amadou Diallo by 4 policeman.
Is of Italian and Welsh heritage.
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Personal quotes
"I choose projects I can talk about for days because now you do publicity for as long as it took you to shoot the movie."
"I feel I've always been on the outside and always on the edge of an abyss. The women I portray, and the woman I am, are ordinary but maybe find themselves in extra-ordinary circumstances, and what they do is at great cost."
"Sexuality ... is something that develops and becomes stronger and stronger the older you get... If you can continue to say yes to life and to maintain a certain generosity of spirit, you become more and more of who you are."
"I think the only reason I remain an actor is that you can never quite get it right. So there is a challenge to it."
"If I were 22 and trying to build a career, I don't know who'd be watching the kids as happily as I do. It takes so much to get me to break out of domestic paradise. There's hardly anything that interests me as much as my family."
"The thing that's bad about breasts is that you have to choose between having a mind and having breasts. It'd be nice if you could have both. Anyway, I think my breasts have been highly overrated."
"The largest party in the United States is the 50 percent who don't vote."
"I haven't yet had any plastic surgery, but I won't knock it. I think women have the right to do anything they want to their bodies that makes them feel good about themselves. It's hard to be in this business and be viewed on a screen that's huge. You can see every single line. But I think it's an aesthetic choice for the individual. I don't like it when surgeons take a perfectly interesting looking woman and she ends up looking like a female impersonator with these gigantic breasts. It's just so extreme and that worries me. I think everyone is looking the same."
"My children were embarrassed at my Lincoln Center Tribute. I forgot they would show film clips and my children hadn't seen anything. Every time something a little racy would come on like 'The Hunger,' I'd look at my 13-year-old, who was shielding his eyes."
"I'm certainly not an expert, but Tim and I just celebrated 17 years together, which in Hollywood years I think is 45. I think the key is just focusing on this one person and not keeping one eye on the door to see who might be better."
On Thelma & Louise after her nomination for best actress, 1992, "I was surprised that the film struck such a primal nerve. I knew when we were filming that it would be different, unusual and hopefully entertaining. But shocking? I guess giving women the option of violence was hard for a lot of people to accept."
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
From her early film output, one would never have guessed that Susan Sarandon would emerge as a major female star in the 1980s-or that, in her 40s, she would stand as the very definition of a mature, modern, liberated, sexual woman on screen. She debuted as the defiant hippie daughter in 1970's Joe and kept busy throughout the seventies in a mixed bag of movies, including Lady Liberty (1971), Lovin' Molly, The Front Page (both 1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), One Summer Love (1976; aka Dragonfly The Other Side of Midnight (1977), King of the Gypsies (1978), and Something Short of Paradise (1979). She played a virginal ingenue in the decade's ultimate cult movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), spending much of her screen time clad only in a bra and slip. The following year she coproduced and appeared in The Great Smokey Roadblock (1976). But it wasn't until 1978 that she had a really substantial part, in Louis Malle's controversial look at turn-of-the-century prostitution, Pretty Baby Moviegoers were impressed, and so was Malle, who cast her again as a weary working woman in his brilliant Atlantic City (1980), which earned Sarandon her first Oscar nomination.
A constant screen presence in the 1980s, she gave consistently strong per- formances in such films as Loving Couples (1980), Tempest (1982), The Hunger (1983, as a vampire), The Buddy System (1984), Compromising Positions (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Sweet Hearts Dance (1988), The January Manand A Dry White Season (both 1989). She won her best notices, however, for her performance as a seductive, middle-aged baseball groupie in the baseball comedy Bull Durham (1988), then took the lead as a sexy waitress who falls in love with a younger man in White Palace (1990). But nothing compared to the stir that was raised when she and Geena Davis starred in the role-reversal road movie Thelma & Louise (1991); she and Davis were ideally matched in this liberated "buddy" movie, and it earned them both Academy Award nominations. She was Oscar-nominated again for her intense dramatic performance as the mother of a boy with a baffling-and heartbreaking-disease in Lorenzo's Oil (1992). Other credits include Light Sleeper (1992), Little Women, Safe Passage and The Client (all 1994, the last-named earning her a fourth Best Actress nomination). She also contributed a funny cameo (as a newscaster) to Tim Robbins' satiric Bob Roberts (1992). Formerly married to actor Chris Sarandon (himself Oscar-nominated for Dog Day Afternoon and memorable in Fright Night and The Princess Bride she met Robbins on the set of Bull Durham and has since had two children with him.
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Links:
A Whale in Montana (2005) (filming)
Romance & Cigarettes (2005) (post-production) .... Kitty Kane
Elizabethtown (2005) (post-production) .... Hollie Baylor
The Exonerated (2005) (TV) .... Sunny
Alfie (2004) .... Liz
Shall We Dance (2004) .... Beverly Clark
Jiminy Glick in La La Wood (2004)
Noel (2004) .... Rose Harrison
Ice Bound (2003) (TV) .... Jerri Nielsen
... aka Ice Bound: A Woman's Survival at the South Pole (Canada: English title)
... aka Prison de glace (Canada: French title)
"Children of Dune" (2003) (mini) TV Series .... Princess Wensicia Corrino
... aka Dune - Bedrohung des Imperiums (Germany: second part title)
... aka Dune - Der Messias (Germany: first part title)
... aka Dune - Die Kinder des W�stenplaneten (Germany: third part title)
... aka Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (USA: complete title)
Moonlight Mile (2002) .... Jojo Floss
Igby Goes Down (2002) .... Mimi Slocumb
This Child of Mine (2002) .... Narrator
Banger Sisters, The (2002) .... Lavinia
Uphill All the Way (2001) (voice) .... Narrator
Concert for New York City (2001) (TV) .... Herself
Rudyland (2001) .... Narrator
Cats & Dogs (2001) (voice) .... Ivy
900 Women (2001) (voice) .... Narrator
Film-Fest DVD: Issue 3 - Toronto (2000) (V) .... Herself (Interviewee)
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000) (voice) .... Coco LaBouche
... aka Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II (2000) (USA: complete title)
This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000) (voice) .... Narrator
Iditarod: A Far Distant Place (2000) .... Narrator
Dirty Pictures (2000) (TV) .... Herself
Ljuset h�ller mig s�llskap (2000) .... Herself
... aka Light Keeps Me Company (2000) (Europe: English title)
Joe Gould's Secret (2000) .... Alice Neel
"Secret Life of Geisha, The" (1999) TV Series .... Narrator
Our Friend, Martin (1999) (V) (voice) .... Mrs. Clark
Anywhere But Here (1999) .... Adele August
Cradle Will Rock (1999) .... Margherita Sarfatti
Earthly Possessions (1999) (TV) .... Charlotte Emory
VH1 Divas Live (1998) (TV) .... Presenter
Stepmom (1998) .... Jacqueline 'Jackie' Harrison
Illuminata (1998) .... Celimene
Twilight (1998) .... Catherine Ames
187: Documented (1997) .... Voice
Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins (1997) (voice) .... Narrator
Need to Know, The (1997/I) (voice) .... Narrator
Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1996) (voice) .... Narrator
James and the Giant Peach (1996) (voice) .... Spider
Dead Man Walking (1995) .... Sister Helen Prejean
Celluloid Closet, The (1995) .... Interviewee
... aka Celluloid Closet (1996) (France)
... aka Gefangen in der Traumfabrik (1995) (Germany)
67th Annual Academy Awards, The (1995) (TV) (uncredited) .... Presenter - Best Art Direction
Client, The (1994) .... Reggie Love
Safe Passage (1994) .... Mag Singer
Little Women (1994) .... Marmee March
65th Annual Academy Awards, The (1993) (TV) (uncredited) .... Presenter - Best Supporting Actor
Bob Roberts (1992) .... News Anchor, Tawna Titan
Lorenzo's Oil (1992) .... Michaela Odone
Player, The (1992) .... Herself
64th Annual Academy Awards, The (1992) (TV) (uncredited) .... Presenter - Best Film Editing
Light Sleeper (1991) .... Ann
Thelma & Louise (1991) .... Louise Sawyer
63rd Annual Academy Awards, The (1991) (TV) (uncredited) .... Presenter - Best Art Direction
Through the Wire (1990) .... Narrator
White Palace (1990) .... Nora Baker
Dry White Season, A (1989) .... Melanie Bruwer
January Man (1989) .... Christine Starkey
AIDS: The Facts of Life (1988) (TV) .... Herself
Sweet Hearts Dance (1988) .... Sandra Boon
Bull Durham (1988) .... Annie Savoy/Narrator
Witches of Eastwick, The (1987) .... Jane Spofford
Women of Valor (1986) (TV) .... Colonel Margaret Ann Jessup
Compromising Positions (1985) .... Judith Singer
Mussolini: The Decline and Fall of Il Duce (1985) (TV) .... Edda Ciano
... aka Mussolini and I (1985) (TV)
"A.D." (1985) (mini) TV Series .... Livilla
... aka "A.D. - Anno Domini" (1985) (mini)
Buddy System, The (1984) .... Emily
Hunger, The (1983) .... Sarah Roberts
"Faerie Tale Theatre" (1982) TV Series (Beauty & the Beast) .... Beauty
... aka "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre" (1982) (USA)
Tempest (1982) .... Aretha
Who Am I This Time? (1981) (TV) .... Helene Shaw
Loving Couples (1980) .... Stephanie
Atlantic City (1980) .... Sally Matthews
... aka Atlantic City, U.S.A. (1980)
Something Short of Paradise (1979) .... Madeline Ross
... aka Perfect Love (1979) (USA: video title)
King of the Gypsies (1978) .... Rose
Pretty Baby (1978) .... Hattie
Other Side of Midnight, The (1977) .... Catherine Alexander Souglas
Checkered Flag or Crash (1977) .... C.C. Wainwright
... aka Crash (1977/II)
Dragonfly (1976) .... Chloe
... aka One Summer Love (1976) (USA: reissue title)
Great Smokey Roadblock, The (1976) .... Ginny
... aka Last of the Cowboys, The (1976) (USA)
Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975) .... Janet Weiss (A Heroine)
... aka Rocky Horror Show, The (1975) (UK)
Great Waldo Pepper, The (1975) .... Mary Beth
Front Page, The (1974) .... Peggy Grant
Lovin' Molly (1974) .... Sarah
Satan Murders, The (1974) (TV)
June Moon (1974) (TV)
F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' (1974) (TV) .... Ailie Calhoun
"Search for Tomorrow" (1951) TV Series .... Sarah Fairbanks (1972)
Mortadella, La (1971) .... Sally
... aka Lady Liberty (1971) (USA)
... aka Sausage, The (1971) (Italy)
Fleur bleue (1971) .... Elizabeth Hawkins
... aka Apprentice, The (1971)
Joe (1970) .... Melissa Compton
"World Apart, A" (1970) TV Series .... Patrice Kahlman (1970-1971)
Producer
Moonlight Mile (2002) (executive producer)
Stepmom (1998) (executive producer)
The Last of the Cowboys (1977) (co-producer)
... aka The Great Smokey Roadblock (USA: new title)
Other Susan Sarandon pages on Women of Horror:
Witches of Eastwick