An unlikely Hollywood star

Press, 30 May 1987, Page 16

An unlikely Hollywood star

SCOTT ADAMS

find moviedom’s

mermaid has a matter-of-fact approach to her career.

Daryl Hannah runs down the hallway, late for an appointment, her long blonde hair swirling about her face. She drops into a chair at the back of the restaurant and immediately begins to apologise.

It seems she was daydreaming and overshot the freeway exit. Assured that 15 minutes is hardly late by L.A. standards, Hannah breathes a sigh of relief, grateful her lapse is so easily received. Her choice of a meeting place is immediately striking, presenting a side of the actress that comes as an unexpected yet pleasant surprise. She exchanges familiar greetings with the waitresses in the small cafe 170, a restaurant tucked above a small art gallery in the heart of Hollywood.

Unlike the scenes of most Hollywood tete-a-tetes, nary a head turns when she rushes to one of the cafe’s eight tables. The restaurant, like Hannah herself, seems far removed from the pretension of Hollywood. Hannah’s openness, her irreverence for the accoutrements of fame and the industry’s wheelersdealers, all belie her position of one of cinema’s major box-office draw.s

“I’ve had some bad experiences on (film) sets,” she says matter-of-factly. “But ‘Roxanne’ was a great experience. It was the best film I’ve been on workwise.

“Director Fred Schepisi is brilliant. He was a dream to work with. He’s the nicest, smartest most intuitive person,” she raves. “He has the best sense of humour.... The whole film was a joyful experience.”

The movie, a modern retelling of the Cyrano De Bergerac legend, poses Hannah as an astronomer who falls in love with a fireman, only to discover that he isn’t as eloquent as his heartfelt love letters suggest. Steve Martin, who also stars in the film, wrote the script. Hannah can’t lavish enough compliments on the comedian.

“He was great,” she asserts. “If a line of dialogue didn’t work, he’d rush back to his trailer and bang out a new scene on his typewriter and come rushing back and hand it to you and say, ‘Here. Read this.’ He was constantly improving the script. Making it better

and funnier every day.” As positive as her experience on “Roxanne” seems — Hannah labels it the “only film I’ve been on that had a thoroughly cheerful, nurturing environment” — Hannah has endured her share of miserable sets. And she doesn’t try to mask her disappointment under a public relations veneer. “I was doing one movie up in Canada,” she recalls “and they were using nonunion crews and trying to get away with everything they could. We found all these packages of smoke that were being used for one scene, and on the packages there was a warning label that said, ‘Caution, do not use in

confined spaces ... can cause death.’ Death! Not Illness but death. Of course they were using it in an enclosed area. “The actors used to pin these packages upon a board for everyone to see, but they didn’t care. We had to go on strike to finally get them to stop using it.” Hannah fared only slightly better on the set of “Splash.” Although she claims to harbour a lot of affection for director Ron Howard, Hannah suffered

through tremendous pain during filming because of a costuming error. “They made the tail that I was wearing in the beginning of the shooting a size too small. They had made moulds of me to make three tails and the producers wanted to save two of them for the filming in the Bahamas.

“The first one was made too little and it cut off the circulation in my legs. I would take it off after shooting a scene and it would take me an hour to move again. Finally I had to call a doctor on to the set,” she says. Despite the experience, Hannah says she’d love to make a sequel to the smash comedy, provided the script was a good, self-contained story Although she made early appearances in a number of films, including the forgettable “Summer Lovers” and the startling “Blade Runner,” it was “Splash” that revealed her potential as an actress — especially a comedic actress — and which launched her to fame.

Originally from Chicago, Hannah moved to L.A. as a teenager to pursue an acting career, a dream she’d had since a child when, at age 11, “I’d watch Shirley MacLaine movies and think, ‘l’ve got

to hurry up and do this. I’m already getting too old!’ ”

Her parents were less than enthusiastic about an acting career, so Hannah assuaged their fears by attending college in the city. Privately she would attempt to break into the business while in school and if, by the time she graduated, she hadn’t succeeded, she would consider choosing another career.

Hannah was never faced with that choice. Although she lacked an agent — and remained unrepresented until after she’d made "Blade Runner” — she had accumulated enough credits from her brief forays into filmmaking in Chicago, including a bit part in the film “The Fury,” to make casting directors at least consider her resume. And her appearance — long blonde hair and tall, lean legs, didn’t hurt.

Ask Hannah about her appeal, and she blushes, turning her head to the side in a way that seems much like her character Madison in “Splash” — shy and natural.

—Copyright “Los Angeles Times.”