From Imagination, Ability, and Altruism
By the time they turn 55, most Hollywood actresses see their careers start to fade. Not so for Susan Sarandon, who will help kick off the fall movie season with three films: Igby Goes Down, about a dysfunctional family; Moonlight Mile, the story of two parents coping with a daughter's murder and the fiancé she left behind; and The Banger Sisters, in which Sarandon and Goldie Hawn play two grown women revisiting their younger days as rock-music groupies.None of the movies are likely to be blockbusters, but Sarandon chooses her roles more for the stories they tell than for their commercial potential. "If we're very lucky, these films will raise questions that people will talk about," she says.
She's done her own share of questioning, and arrived at a place in life where she's not afraid to stand by her convictions -- and then follow through with action. The eldest of nine children in a New Jersey Roman Catholic family, she stumbled into an acting career when she attended an audition with her ex-husband, Chris Sarandon. Twenty-five years and five Oscar nominations later, she won a Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Sister Helen Prejean in 1995's Dead Man Walking, a searing film about capital punishment.
By then, Sarandon was practiced at using her celebrity to promote causes close to her heart. For instance, while presenting an award at the 1993 Oscars, she and longtime partner Tim Robbins, an actor and director, took 30 seconds of their podium time to speak on behalf of Haitian refugees with AIDS. "At the root of acting and activism is imagination," Sarandon says. "I've always had the ability to imagine being in someone else's shoes."
She is a supporter of end-hunger and poverty programs, including Heifer International, Madre, and Habitat for Humanity, as well as the Center for Constitutional Rights. In the aftermath of September 11, she cooked for workers at Ground Zero, did benefit performances, and befriended firefighters and victims' families.
Sarandon is equally hands-on in the role she calls her most important -- mother of three children. When Reader's Digest sat down with her, she'd just come from chaperoning her youngest son's school field trip to New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
RD: Tell us about your involvement in relief efforts after September 11.
Sarandon: Tim and I did a two-person play to benefit the AFL-CIO, which includes police officers and firefighters. Yesterday we did a performance at Lincoln Center for a huge gathering of firefighters and rescue workers. And I still visit firehouses near Ground Zero. This is the hardest time. As other people go on with their lives, it sinks in that you've lost somebody. There are a few families who lost their dads that our family has become close with. They go to hockey games with Tim. Being a New Yorker, it's easy to stay involved.
RD: Has it been hard for your children to have been so close to all that?
Sarandon: We live downtown, so on the 11th I saw the buildings fall as I was going to get my kids out of school. The other day, we were in the car and saw a plane coming in really low to the Westchester County Airport. Immediately my youngest said, "Why is that plane so low?" What is most heartbreaking is my children's realization of the potential for violence they'd never thought about before. I said [to my kids]: "We've joined the rest of the world. There is no country where there hasn't been some kind of violence. We have to find a way to make it safe for everybody."
RD: It's a big job, being a parent.
Sarandon: And it's impossible to ever feel like you're on top of it. I just want my kids to love who they are, have happy lives, and find something they want to do and make their peace with that. Your job as a parent is to give your kids not only the instincts and talents to survive, but to help them enjoy their lives. Because children come into the world joyful. They really do.
RD: Your partner and the father of your two boys is Tim Robbins. How long have you been together now?
Sarandon: Well, Jack's going to be 13, so at least 14 years. I don't know -- seems like forever. And we're still battling it out. It's not easy. I think that I just found a really great guy. We don't agree on a lot of the methods of child rearing, but our bottom moral line is the same. And I respect him as a writer, director and actor, so the promise of being able to be involved with each other when the children don't need us anymore is really strong.
Putting Celebrity to Good Use
RD: You and Tim are still not married, right?Sarandon: Maybe we're saving that for old age -- and a good party. Part of my reason for resisting is there's still so much of a tendency to treat married people as a couple, not as individuals. We certainly would get more of a tax break, wouldn't we?
RD: Is it difficult for your kids to have two famous parents?
Sarandon: I say to my kids, "On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the perks? You get to meet the Rangers after a game. You get to go to the Star Wars screening." And they say, "Maybe 8." "What's the downside?" "5." I say, "So we're still up by 3." Yes, it's a drag to be eating [at a restaurant] and have someone come over and say, "I never do this" and then interrupt your dinner. Or to have a problem in public, and people are watching you. Or to not know if people like you because of who your mother is. But I tell them, "Your job in life is to find people who like you for who you are. There are people who will like you for the wrong reasons -- not just because you have a famous mother, but because you have big breasts or a fancy car or whatever."
RD: Has celebrity been hard for you, personally, to deal with?
Sarandon: I don't feel guilty about being a celebrity because I use it. My youngest, Miles, who's ten, said to me the other day, "One of the things I like about you, Mom, is that you use it -- it doesn't use you." I'm glad that he could figure that out without my having to explain it.
RD: Do you worry much about the pressure put on actors to stay young in Hollywood?
Sarandon: I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't matter. If you're aging on a screen that big, it's harder to make your peace with it. But I've been incredibly lucky to have a career that actually became more interesting as I got older. I have no idea how I managed to do this.
RD: Are there enough roles in Hollywood for women, especially those over 40?
Sarandon: No. But are there good roles for men either? No. If [the writers, directors and producers in the business] told stories they were interested in instead of following the polls, there would be more roles for all kinds of people, including minorities.
RD: What are your thoughts about Hollywood's fare in general?
Sarandon: Dead Man Walking made a lot of money, but no one expected that. The debate that film started cut across into the mainstream. And I'm still seeing the ramifications. So imagine the ramifications of films that reinforce women liking violent sex, or war films that say the only way to become a man is to kill in cold blood.
The movies I just did all had writer-directors with a story they felt they had to tell. If that was how [films were] made instead of just trying to duplicate a previous hit, you'd have entertainment at its finest. You just don't find original pieces very often. My daughter, Eva, who's 17, has just started to do films, and with most of the scripts she gets, she can tell what's going to happen after the first five pages.
RD: How do you feel about Eva going into this career?
Sarandon: What's always worried me as a person blessed with privileged children is having a child who's not interested in anything. I've seen kids of famous people who grow up and are just bored. So any time a kid of mine has a passion for anything, I'm there. If she'd wanted to be a soccer pro, I would have been there.
And the pressure is on these kids. I'm asked to visit high schools sometimes and talk to them. They have this fear of making a mistake. It's not about finding your passion, your strength or voice. They want a guaranteed job. And the scary thing is, the world the way it is today, there are no guarantees. So you might as well follow your heart.
RD: What about your sons? Do they feel that pressure?
Sarandon: When I had children I knew what the problems were for a girl and was set to deal with that. What I didn't understand was how the socialization process steals those sweet boys from us, tries to turn them into people who are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with their emotions.
RD: As a mother, how can you combat that?
Sarandon: It has so much to do with listening and watching and giving them the opportunity to be comfortable with who they are, encouraging them to be thoughtful and respectful, and probably limiting TV.
Being Awake in This Life
RD: Do you and your family go to church?Sarandon: No. I think we have a spiritual family and would have no objection if we could find a church that was connected to the real world and not exclusive.
RD: Having attended Catholic schools for years yourself, how do you feel about the recent abuse scandal facing the church?
Sarandon: There's pedophilia in every section of the populace, I'm sure. For me, the complex sin was committed by the people who allowed it to continue, because they felt entitled as members of the church to do this. This is not to say that there aren't fabulous religious people, like Sister Helen.
RD: Are you still an emissary for Unicef?
Sarandon: Yes. I've gone to India and Tanzania. I learned that 60 percent of the rural population in Tanzania doesn't have decent water to drink. So I've started a project on my own raising money for about 50 wells there. I'm going to take another trip to do outreach, but it's a tricky time to be flying to certain parts of the world, and my family wants to make sure that I'm safe.
RD: You believe in being a participant, not just letting life pass you by.
Sarandon: Yes. To be awake in your life.
RD: You once made a comment about Prozac, that we were drugging people out of their emotions. Do you feel there's too much pressure for people to be content?
Sarandon: I don't want to go on record saying nobody should be on it, but it's like George Orwell or something. Where are the artists going to come from? The writers? I saw a great sticker the other day that said: "Stop Whining, Start a Revolution."
RD: Is that what's behind your commitment to service and volunteerism?
Sarandon: I'm in touch with so many grassroots people much more selfless than I, and they see results, one story after another. Change never happens from the top down. Power always yields because it has to. So my work is self-serving. It keeps me from being incredibly depressed and despondent when the world is in the state it is. Watching people in service and reaching out to help gives me hope for the future.
RD: So your message is "Speak out and do something."
Sarandon: Absolutely. This is an amazing country, for all of its faults. My feeling is, dig in and let's try to change the world. Dissent is not only your right, it's your duty. When we were doing a celebration at the U.N. for Earth Day, we met these 12-year-old girls from Georgia who were working to clean up the dumping in their water. It was so beautiful to see these young women empowered like that. There should be a section of the news that's just today's story of encouragement, the story of one person who stuck it out and changed someone's life. It's happening everywhere.