Shirley MacLaine‘s been making magic on the big screen since her screen debut in 1955. What other actress can you think of who, in her first year in film, could hold her own with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock (who directed her in The Trouble With Harry) AND with the hi-jinxs of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (in Artists and Models)?
Since then she’s shimmered brilliantly in a succession of film triumphs–including Can-Can, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, Sweet Charity, Being There, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias and Postcards From the Edge–maturing from ingénue to grand dame. And, given her metaphysical beliefs, those are just the highlights of THIS lifetime.
It wasn’t just the red hair that made her the perfect fit to play Endora, Bewitched‘s all-powerful mother-in-law-it was her endless array of acting enchantments.
Did you ever meet the original Endora, Agnes Moorehead?
MacLaine: “I talked to her last night.” [laughter from the room] “She’s doing very, very well. She’s doing fine. She says ‘Hurry up and see the movie,’ which I haven’t seen. So I have to see it. I never met her, actually. But Nora gave me–at the end of the movie–her autograph. She got it online. It was really cute. I have it framed. [But] I didn’t think about her at all. No, because [my character] Iris is an actress playing Endora. Agnes WAS Endora…I just got dressed, but on my makeup and my wig and went in and went [she strikes a spell-casting pose]. That’s basically my day.”
Were you a fan of the original ’60s series?
MacLaine: “Not really. I saw it a couple times. I wasn’t my kind of thing. Until later.”
Then why take on the role of Endora?
MacLaine: “I wanted to play a witch. I loved the idea. Since everyone else thinks I’m one, too. [laughs] I wanted to play it with good writing. It’s an entertaining thing, and I loved the idea in a fantasy setting that was acceptable to the public, because it was such a successful series, of doing something that utilizes magic powers, which I think are possible in real life and are sort of quasi-acceptable now. I must say, the things that I started talking about and writing about 20-25 years ago are now basically mainstream, wouldn’t you say?”
Why did it take so long for your views to be embraced by the broader public?
MacLaine: “Ask the people, not me. I mean, I was already there. I think they tried lots of other things in their lives and they found that the power was within–and we could do a seminar right now if you want to, but I don’t think you want to. You know, the power within is everything. But to come back to Endora and Bewitched, that’s really what she was doing and what Samantha was doing, so I liked it in a very surface, entertaining way.”
And there was the allure of working with Nora Ephron and Nicole Kidman…
MacLaine: “Yes. It was to work with Nora, and Nicole. I’m a real fan of Nicole Kidman‘s. I think this woman is in the Meryl Streep category. She’s that good. And a very interesting person to observe if you’re a student of human nature, which I am, and she is. Almost not of this world. She has a quality–and not just because she’s Australian, because I’ve known a lot of Australians and almost married one–but she has a quality of elusiveness in real life, but it’s necessary for her to act. And we talked about that. She needs to act. She needs to be other people. Probably because that talent is so profound, it doubles up and needs to be recognized and then used.”
Do YOU feel compelled to act?
MacLaine: “I don’t need to act. I love the warmth of the set. I love the protection of the set. I felt it when I was 20 and did my first movie. I was never nervous–not a good thing, necessarily. Very comfortable on a set, with the warmth and the lights and the crew cares about you, and the director, if he yells at you he’s not going to get a good performance, so they don’t yell. Well, a lot of them were scared of me anyway and wouldn’t yell. The whole sense and sensibility of a set, as opposed to the stage. Now that made me really nervous! But it’s also the most satisfying, the stage.”
You got to share some great scenes with Michael Caine.
MacLaine: “I love that Michael never forgets where he came from. And being a Cockney with parents who did what they did have kept with him, and it’s amazing, because a lot of people who come from that kind of background tend to rise above it and forget it. But he doesn’t and didn’t. And he’s very, very truthful, and so real about how full of it most everything is. So we had a great time, reminiscing about the old days and pictures, and what people have done since we knew them then, and since we were different then. He was telling me things I had done that I’d completely forgotten about. I apparently a great big Hollywood party at The Daisy [a popular club on Rodeo Drive in the ’60s and ’70s]. I don’t remember doing that, but then I don’t remember anything anymore. And you know, we talked in between shots because there was a lot of waiting around on this film with the special effects, and it was fabulous discussing our lives and the people we both knew over 50 years.”
What other film projects do you have coming up?
MacLaine: “I did In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz and Toni Colette–brilliant actresses, by the way. [I play] the grandmother, of course. They find a lost grandmother. Their lives are very screwed up and as a result of finding their grandmother, they straighten out. It’s very endearing. It’s a drama, a very underdone, contained performance. Not at all showy, not at all bravado. She’s very internal. [And then] Rumor Has It. It’s The Graduate 30 years later, so I play Mrs. Robinson. Me, I’m very vulgar and very bawdy and very caustic, and Jennifer Aniston again is my granddaughter. And I really give Kevin Costner, who is Dustin Hoffman‘s character, what-for, only I say things like ‘Why don’t you go s— in your shoes?’ Stuff like that is what this character does. It’s very funny. I sock him and hit him and stuff like that, for what he did to me and also my daughter, and he had this whole thing going with the granddaughter. He has a thing about the women in this family.”
Was there ever a point in your career where you were close to doing a film with your brother, Warren Beatty?
MacLaine: “No. I don’t know why. It never came along.”
Are you writing more books on your spiritual beliefs?
MacLaine: “I’m getting ready to do one now [about] the nature of masculinity and femininity in spiritual terms. It’s very interesting. It comes from some memories of other times and places, and basically it’s probably what’s wrong with us all, looking for the other half of ourselves.”
And for Bewitched, did you enjoy the opportunity to play a full-blown diva actress?
MacLaine: “I loved that. The older I get, the more I think I deserve to act just like that!”
