Starlet can scarcely believe her own success story

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 12

Starlet can scarcely believe her own success story

By

KIM MILLS,

of Associated Press

(through NZPA) in New York

If Karen Akers’ rise to stardom was made into a film, it would sound like the sequel to one of those 1930 s musicals where the spirited chorus girl gets a break and steals the show. She has played a leading role in “Broadway’s Nine,” for which she received a Tony nomination. She gave a solo concert in Carnegie Hall in 1983, and sold out the house. Her first movie was "The Purple Rose of Cairo,” now showing in Christchurch, and shown earlier this year in Christchurch at the Canterbury Film Festival. Her second film, which opened in New York this month, is “Heartbum,” starring

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Even Miss Akers has a hard time believing her string of successes. “I’ve had lots in my life that’s not the real world. I mean, it’s crazy. To have “Nine,” and to have your first film be a Woody Allen movie, and your second film directed by Mike Nichols, ...” She trails off. “Carnegie Hall ...” She has a faraway look in her dark eyes. Some of her success has been serendipity, she admits. Once you have heard her sing, or seen this 1.83 cm fall Nefertlti walk across a room, it is clear she has got something special. To hear Miss Akers tell it, she used to be painfully shy and

serious, afraid to sing in public. Her husband, Jim, used to have to coax her to take out her guitar and sing for their friends. Slowly, she ventured out into New York’s club scene in the 19705, becoming a favourite at Reno Sweeneys, once a popular cabaret in Greenwich Village. It was there that an independent New York-based director, Mr Christian Blackwood, first heard her. He sold a West German television station on the idea of a filmed concert, which led to the half-hour programme, “Presenting Karen Akers.” The film has also been shown in the _ United States on television. How she landed her role as Luisa Contini in “Nine” — which starred 21 women and one man — is the stuff of which theatre legends are made. She began her audition by

singing “La Vie En Rose,” immortalised by Edith Piaf. When she was asked to do something in English, she sang “I Met A Man Today,” a torchy number by Craig Carnelia. The / director-choreographer, Mr Tommy Tune, approached the stage in tears and asked her to sing something upbeat So she sang Stephen Sondheim’s “Can This Boy Foxtrot” and immediately landed the role. Since then came the two movies, tucked between charity appearances, singing at clubs in New York and Washington, Carnegie Hall and basically steady work. She divides her time between Washington, where she lives with her lawyer-husband and their two sons, and New York, her. hometown. Getting the part of Thelma Rice — the notorious

other woman — in “Heartburn” was also serendipity, she said in a recent interview. "Heartburn” is based on Nora Ephron’s roman-a-clef about the breakup of her marriage to the journalist, Carl Bernstein. “I found out the other night that apparently another actress was brought over from England and screen tested for the role of Thelma Rice,” Miss Akers said. "Someone who was in ‘Jewel In the Crown,’ I don’t know the name. But someone told me at a dinner party. I had no idea. I was just summoned.” Her part in “Heartbum” is small, but critical. Miss Akers laughed when she recalled how she accidentally convinced Nichols to cut one of her bigger scenes.

"We had this one day where Meryl (Streep) wanted to go through this scene where she is trying to turn me against her husband by showing me what a slob he is,” she said., Miss Streep’s character, Rachel Samstat, ticks off her husand’s annoying habits, such as how he goes Insane if they rent a car and the ashtrays are v not clean.

“I sat there imagining what it would be like if I were having an affair with her husband and he did these things,” Miss Akers said. “So I said to Mike Nichols, ‘I don’t know. It seems as if everything she says could make me even fonder. I’m just as likely to respond, ’Oh, yes, isn’t that cute.’

“Nichols suggested that Ephron rewrite the scene. It never got done. So I talked myself out of a scene. It’s the last time I’ll do that,” Miss Akpr<? cmid With “Heartbum” finished, Miss Akers plans to visit Russia soon, to sing and read poetry. She will also do another album. She uses independent producers because she said no large record company ever made a serious overture to her.

“They can not figure out who my audience is, that is the main thing,” she said. “It is a mixture of straight and gay, pink and purple, young and old. I’m not a nostalgic trip, but I don’t seem to be doing the songs that are written absolutely at this very moment in time.

“I’m going to have to do it on my own terms, that is all. I think the audience is out there, I really do.”