THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 25, 1996 TAG: 9601250079
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
MARY STUART MASTERSON has taken on a series of no-nonsense, sometimes tough screen characters who tend to be self-sufficient. In a movie industry in which most roles for women - particularly young women - amount to mere decoration, she's been the ingenue with gumption.
Such roles got her good reviews, but she's still not a household name - until now.
It seems that the good-hearted, rural Alabama tomboy from ``Fried Green Tomatoes'' is now ready to become Doris Day.
In ``Bed of Roses,'' the new dating flick, she has the tailored suits, the chic look, the career-woman aloofness of sunny Day in her heyday. She also has the handsome leading man who is ripe to sweep her off her feet and teach her that there is more to life than merely a career.
The type of role played by Rock Hudson in the golden age of the genre is played here by Christian Slater. He's the seemingly perfect guy. He sends her roses, secretly. She imagines he's a floral delivery guy. As it turns out, he's a Wall Street tycoon who got out of the rat race because he just loves to see people be happy when they get flowers. He has a nice family. She's invited to spend Christmas with them.
Indeed, it sounds like a bed of roses. But, with no thorns, can there be a drama? It is only in the background, way in the background, that there is the psychological underpinning of a so-called ``modern'' story - the darkness that 1990s folks seem to demand.
Masterson admits that she hesitated in doing the film. ``I ran across this script three years ago. We have a first-time director who wrote his own script. Everyone wondered if there was enough there,'' she said.
It was only when Slater got involved that the project got its final green light. After all, he was the winner of MTV's ``most desirable male'' award a year or so ago. He has the kind of female following that sells tickets.
Chemistry?
``Well, Christian and I felt very comfortable together,'' Masterson admitted as she sat for an interview in New York. ``Chemistry on screen is something indefinable. Hopefully, we have it, because the movie is about two people who wander New York and find each other. But it's work, just like any other work. It's acting.''
Yes, there were the cases in which the public was easily fooled. Debra Winger and Richard Gere actually loathed each other during the filming of ``An Officer and a Gentleman,'' but they were America's sweethearts for a while. Merle Oberon hated Laurence Olivier, claiming that he bit her during one kissing scene; yet they remain, even today, the classic lovers of 1939's ``Wuthering Heights.''
Masterson, 28, and Slater, 26, seem idyllic together. Both claim that they were merely acting, but that they are friends. Each comes from a show business family. Slater started his career at age 7, in a production of ``The Music Man'' starring Dick Van Dyke. She started hers, also at 7, in a movie called ``The Stepford Wives,'' which also featured her father Peter Masterson.
Her father is the prominent writer-director who directed Geraldine Page to an Oscar in ``The Trip to Bountiful.'' Her mother is actress Carlin Gwyn, a Tony Award-winner for writing and starring in the musical ``The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.'' ``At 7, I didn't really have any choice'' but to enter the film world, said the fresh-faced actress. ``Movie sets and theaters were my home. But I wasn't pushed into the business. My parents, any parents in the business, know that this is not a stable business. No one should go into it unless they really love it. By the time I was 15, I knew this was it. I love acting. I love, particularly, making movies. There's a sense of family.''
She and Slater both went to the same professional children's school, she said, ``although in different years. Because of our similar backgrounds, I feel that I know him quite well.''
She became a teen star in 1987, in a tomboy role in ``Some Kind of Wonderful.'' She won the National Board of Review's ``best supporting actress'' award for her role as a young pregnant girl in ``Immediate Family,'' with Glenn Close as the woman eager to adopt her baby. She had an offbeat screen romance with Johnny Depp in 1993's ``Benny & Joon.'' ``Fried Green Tomatoes'' was the surprise breakthrough role of her career.
``I'd like to be asked to be loving more often on film,'' she said. ``I'd like to pursue the comedy style of romance.''
She gives credit to Slater ``because his role is very tricky. He is asked to play the perfect, wonderful guy, but yet it had to have a certain depth and edge to it. My character is that of a girl who is afraid to get too close to anyone she really cares about. I was afraid the audience might wonder, for maybe too long, `What's wrong with this girl? Why doesn't she buy into this situation? What could be more perfect?'''
She admits that she's experienced in ``choosing the wrong person.'' There has been a failed marriage.
``Men and women simply don't know how to act anymore,'' she said. ``The scar tissue is out there everywhere. You wonder: Are we dating? Are we a pair? Are we engaged? The signals just aren't the same as they used to be in the dating game.''
Asked how she avoided drugs and alcoholism in an industry which ruined many teen actresses before they reached adulthood, she vows it was never a problem. ``There are far more serious addictions than chemical ones,'' she said. ``Like the character I play, I'm a workaholic. They should have meetings for us, like the AA. I could stand up and say ``My name is Mary Stuart, and I'm a work-aholic.''
Just to prove it, she has two other movies coming out this year. Next month, there will be the thriller, ``Heaven's Prisoner,'' co-starring Alec Baldwin, whom she said has ``a powerful energy that fills a scene.'' That will be followed by a screen adaptation of Horton Foote's ``Lily Dale,'' co-starring Sam Shepard and Stockard Channing. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
NEW LINE CINEMA
Mary Stuart Masterson plays a career woman who finds romance in
``Bed of Roses.''
Photo
New Line Cinema
Mary Stuart Masterson is swept off her feet by Christian Slater in
``Bed of Roses.''
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES by CNB