- When I did "Exit the King,"
which was a very difficult play,
I wasn't feeling free and really on top of it.
I was so scared.
It's the difference between masturbation and making love.
Film, you only have to get something right,
one little piece almost by yourself.
You actually have a relationship
with the audience when you're on stage.
[bright upbeat music]
Hi, I'm Susan Sarandon, and this is a timeline of my career.
- Oh, Frank, please don't go. I don't feel very good.
- [Frank] Oh.
- Frank!
This is a discouraging story
for anyone who wants to be an actor
because I never thought I wanted to be an actor,
but I fell into acting, pretty much,
and I went to DC to go to college,
and I was working in the drama department.
And then I married very young to Chris Sarandon,
who was a graduate student and a big star on campus.
And when he was there, he was spotted by a manager,
and she saw him and she said,
"Why don't you come and audition?"
And he needed someone to do the scene with him.
So this shows you how stupid acting is.
I just went and got Jane Oliver to manage me,
and that's how I then got an agent.
And I was sent up for a film called "Joe,"
and they had been looking for someone
to play the female, young, troubled ingenue.
And this company had only done porn films up until now,
but there was one scene at the very beginning,
and I go into a store, and in one take,
I put lipstick all over my face and knock everything
off the shelves and have to be wrestled onto the ground,
and that was so much fun that I just thought,
"Oh, well, I'll do this again."
And because it was this huge hit,
not necessarily a brilliant film,
nor was I necessarily amazing in it,
but it definitely got me in the door
for other low level jobs.
And I think maybe because I wasn't desperate, that helped.
I guess I always saw my career
as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
So for the first I don't know how many years,
I just was paying off my school debt with acting.
- Take it. - No.
- I said take it.
♪ Oh Brad ♪
♪ Oh, dammit ♪
♪ I'm mad ♪
My agents definitely felt I was insane
to wanna do the "Rocky Horror Show."
I had another film which I left
to do the "Rocky Horror Show."
One of the reasons I got involved was because of Tim Curry.
When Tim came out in that opening the first time,
his entrance still remains one
of the most electric performances
and moments on stage history that I've ever seen.
And then they came back into cast the movie,
and I went by just to say hi, and he said,
"Oh my God, would you read for Janet?"
And I said, "Oh my God, I can't sing,
and I'm really phobic about it."
And they said, "Well, come on, you can sing.
Come on. Try hitting this note.
Can you sing, 'Happy Birthday'?"
And I thought, "You know what?
When I get there,
they'll give me alcohol or drugs or something,
and that'll help get me through."
Of course they didn't, and up until that point,
all the Janets that they'd had
who were singers weren't particularly funny.
I felt that Janet was the personification
of every ingenue that I'd played up to that point,
sweet on the outside but a bitch underneath.
So they loved it.
I loved hanging out with those people,
but it wasn't a situation where we had a lot of downtime
because the budget, I think, was a million dollars.
A very, very tough shoot.
It was freezing, and then there was no heat in the studio,
and we were obviously half dressed and wet a lot of times,
so I got pneumonia.
They put a heater with screens around it
for us to get warm in between, and then that caught on fire.
My trailer also caught on fire.
I didn't have anywhere to live.
They kept moving me every few weeks.
When you're in these situations,
you have to call your agent and have them do something,
but my agents didn't really respond at that time,
but anyway, it looked like we had fun, right?
♪ Let's do the time warp again ♪
- And then it just disappeared
when they tried to release it.
Everybody just was like, "What is this animal that we have?"
And thanks to two guys of Fox that started releasing it
to gay cinemas and art houses,
suddenly, that thing happened,
and I'm very proud to be part of that.
If only we hadn't made this journey.
If only the car hadn't broken down.
- God, he's gonna be here forever.
I was praying for something to happen.
- I was thinking the exact same thing.
- You were?
- I was thinking he was all wet,
and wouldn't it be nice if we could just get outta here?
- I was cast in Cher's part initially,
and I was living in Italy, and I went off to Italy,
and George called me and said,
"How would you feel about playing this other part?"
And I was like, "No, I don't wanna play the other part.
First of all, I can't play a musical instrument,
and she has to play one, and secondly of all,
those scenes with Jack are the best scenes.
No, I don't want to."
So that was the last I heard, and then I showed up in LA,
and I was no longer playing the part that I was cast at.
They wouldn't let me out of it,
and I had to learn to play the cello,
which my poor 18-month-old daughter was horrified
every time the cello teacher came over
because the noise that I was making was devastating.
I couldn't deal with them suing me,
so I stayed and became friends with everybody.
Thank God for Cher giving me her wig and her clothing
'cause that gold dress was Cher's.
The wig was Cher's.
That helped me figure out my character
because my character didn't even go
to the end of the script when I got it, so thank you, Cher.
[bright whimsical music] [women laugh]
- Oh, Louise. - Uh huh.
- Will you take care of this gun?
- What in hell did you bring that for?
- Oh, come on, psycho killers and bears and snakes.
- I initially got involved with "Thelma & Louise"
because Ridley Scott asked me to and said,
"Which part would you like to play?"
And I had a lot of questions
because I told him, "I don't wanna do a revenge film.
I don't think that's what it's about,"
and so I changed a few things
in terms of the way it was played.
And initially, it said in the script she takes a posture
like a policeman to,
and I felt that this person who'd been raped
and was trying to figure out why men feel this
is okay when they have mothers and sisters,
and why would they say things to women this way?
It was just great to be working with another woman
and in a story that the women were dictating
what was going on.
Being outlaws is always fun.
That's the other thing Ridley did was I think it's iconic
because the script didn't read like a John Wayne.
It was a tiny little film,
and by putting us in John Wayne's backdrop area,
he made it into this iconic, bigger than life story.
And the joke was while we were filming
that we would find out that we were just a voiceover
and it was just all these great shots of everything
'cause that's what we were doing every morning.
Every sunset, we would be shooting exteriors with Ridley
with these guys off bare chested with their shirts
on their heads and smoking cigars, and Gina and I were like,
"I'm sure that we're not even gonna be in this movie."
He said, "Well, you definitely will die,
but I'm not sure about the other character.
You may push her out of the car."
By the time we got to that, the very end of shooting,
the one take that we had,
we had earned that moment to be together,
and that's when I said to Ridley,
"I wanna cut a lot of this dialogue,"
and by that time we're finishing each other's sentences,
and I wanna kiss her, and he said, "Great."
[moving slow music]
[Thelma and Louise cry]
- [Man] I am so sorry.
- Are you absolutely sure? - Yes.
- Originally, George Miller,
who had done "Witches of Eastwick," cast Michelle Pfeiffer.
Meanwhile, my Italian baby daddy knew about the story.
He's a director and a writer,
and he started interviewing the Odones.
I got on a plane that coincidentally had George Miller
and the DP on it.
They had just come from visiting the Odones,
and Michelle was in the process of dropping out.
And we started talking, and he said,
"Well, I was just in Virginia talking
to this family whose child has adrenoleukodystrophy,"
and I said, "The Odones?"
And he dropped to the floor on his knees and was like,
"What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?"
And then he said to me later, "Michelle has dropped out.
Do you wanna do it?"
I said yes, and then the weird thing that happened
was once we got to location,
much to my surprise, I was pregnant.
So we filmed "Lorenzo's Oil"
about this sick kid into my fifth month.
I had a difficult pregnancy also,
but I was very inspired by the Odones
and how they fought for their kid,
and Nick Nolte, who knew that science inside out,
really helped me, so I tried to remember to go back to that.
But truly someone somewhere must be working on this now.
- We would go anywhere. - Yes.
- It was wonderful.
I was absolutely inspired by the love scene.
- You look flushed, Meg, dear. Was the theater overcrowded?
- I got "Little Women."
Of course, the book is great,
and it sounded like a fab project.
We had a very unusual setup
because the house was a working set.
So there was bed baking and candle making,
and I had a real homeopathic kit, and, of course,
all those gals, even though they were so young, were lovely.
- Oh, look out.
You're leaving out the best part
when Lady Zara succumbs to the duke's wrath.
- Oh right, yes! So Hugo.
- I found all the girls mind blowing,
but Claire Danes, who was 15 at the time,
had to do the scene where she comes down the stairs
and sees the piano and burst into tears,
and I don't know how she did that.
She was just great.
Kirsten was spending a lot of time making lemonade
and selling it with my daughter.
I loved all those girls.
I would love to have a reunion just to see them all grown up
with their own babies at this point.
It was a special time and a special place.
Tell Meg she may borrow mine.
- [Jo] Meg!
You can take Marmee's!
- Oh dear. Oh.
- More tea? - No, thank you.
- Have you been in a prison before?
- No, father.
Sister Clemen and I sang at the juvenile detention center
in New Orleans.
We sang "Kumbaya," and the boys really liked it.
They started making up their own verses, singing.
♪ Someone's escapin', my Lord ♪
[laughs]
Well, doing "Dead Man Walking" made me much more accepting
of nuns because growing up Catholic in a grammar school,
which was...
[soft piano music]
What's the best way I can say it without going to hell?
I think very often, religious people aren't full of love,
[soft piano music]
and they get carried away with bigotry, exclusion.
Any religion that starts excluding people based
on who that person is or what they believe
isn't really following in a compassionate place of love.
I knew sister Helen Prejean very well
before I did "Dead Man Walking."
I met her in New Orleans when I was doing "The Client."
She didn't really know who I was,
and I remember when she saw the first screening.
I was so worried that she would hate it
or not like what I did or be really upset,
and after the screening, I said, "Are you okay?"
And she said,
"Susan, it was much harder doing it than watching it."
And I thought, "You asshole. You're [laughs] so stupid.
Of course it was."
And I just want you to know I'm here to listen
and whatever you wanna talk about, that's fine.
- You're very sincere.
- What do you mean?
- You never done this before. - No.
- Never been as close to a murderer before.
- Not that I know of. - Hmm.
- I was already questioning the death penalty for years,
but then doing that film,
I could actually defend that position,
and really, Tim's brilliance was making,
like the book, something that questions everything
but doesn't tell you what to believe,
and I think that's what films should do who are political.
I think all films are political.
I think "The Nutty Professor"
is one of the most political films
'cause you're rooting for her to get the fat guy.
But obviously, "Dead Man Walking"
was gonna be called political
because it wrestled with a very important question.
I think the beauty and the strength of "Dead Man Walking"
is it really explains what people go through.
It explains both sides of the picture,
and then you can decide if, within your moral bottom line
or even your economic line,
it makes sense for the state to murder people,
and her book sold all over the world.
I think it has helped that discussion,
and so I'm very proud,
and I'm still very much involved with Sister Helen.
She's a big part of my heart.
You look at me when they do this thing.
You look at me. I'll be the face of love for you.
- Yes, ma'am.
- Thought we might need one of these.
- I do. It looks great.
[soft music]
I don't think "Stepmom" was really
about older versus younger,
although anytime you have two women in a film,
they have to find some reason
why they automatically hate each other,
and the age difference is something that always comes up.
Sometimes as a mom, you don't wanna give up control.
[soft piano music]
At one point, Ed says.
- What are we supposed to do without you?
- You'll be fine.
Still gets to be very upset thinking of those kids
who I'm still very much in touch with.
Liam had lost his father when he was two.
The whole script took a whole other rewrite, and I was like,
"What would you have wanted to hear from your dad?"
And I talked to friends of mine who'd lost their wives
when the kids were tiny.
"What were your kids concerned about?"
How to braid my hair, how to do really practical things.
But I've had so many people come up to me and say,
"I'm in that situation of being a stepmom,
not necessarily with losing the mother
but still being a stepmom."
And I watch that film, and it really means a lot to me,
or kids who have step parents of some way,
trying to find out how they make that transition,
and it demands a huge amount of generosity.
♪ Oh baby, there ain't no mountain high enough ♪
♪ Ain't no valley low enough ♪
♪ Ain't no ♪
- I hear you not singing tonight.
- Mm-mm.
- You are so stubborn and strong and know who you are,
[laughs] and I just love that about you.
It's funny when people say,
"You play so many strong characters."
They don't feel like they're strong
when you're playing them.
They're all fighting just to stay alive.
And in terms of "Monarch" and Dottie,
her family is everything.
Her legacy is everything.
So she's pretty ruthless on both those counts
in terms of defending her family and making sure
that that dynasty which she started continues.
I may be not so strong with my own boundaries,
but where my kids are concerned, ooh, [laughs] I'm a killer.
I get that about Dottie.
I'm not as committed to my career as Dottie.
It's amazing that I'm even here today.
I think the bravest thing that anyone can do
is to be vulnerable to another person
and to open themselves up to love.
And so films, for me, are generated by the stories
that I wanna tell, that I want people to see on the screen,
are the ones that encourage you
to be the protagonist in your own life
and to love yourself and to be open to love
and to give love because let's face it.
That's the most pleasant life to have
and the most pleasant feeling.
So why not? Why not do that?
Why not just drop all the other stuff and focus on that?
[bright music]