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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.
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