Inside Out(35)

I’d always been in awe of Jack Nicholson, and working with him only magnified that feeling. The now-classic payoff line in the movie, which is about two young Marines being court-martialed for murder, comes at the end of what was a long day of shooting the court scene: Jack, playing a Marine colonel, turns on my legal partner, played by Tom Cruise, and snarls, “You can’t handle the truth.” We had to be on the set all day while they shot the “reverse side,” meaning the camera was always on Tom in the courtroom. But Jack delivered that speech all day long, for everybody. You often hear about actors who hold back on their lines when they’re not on camera, and save it for their close-ups, but not Jack. I was sitting at the legal table on the set, looking straight at him, and I watched him give 100 percent to his performance all day, to the point where I thought he was going to lose his voice. I was so impressed with that level of generosity: he was giving to his fellow actors at the same level that he gave for the camera when it was on him—which is especially hard to keep doing over and over again in a big, emotional scene.

He was not as gracious a few days later, as we waited and waited for him to show up to shoot a scene at a location that doubled for Guantánamo, where the story takes place. The light needed to be in a certain spot for the shot to work, and the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky. Rob Reiner was muttering that it was going to be a disaster and no one could understand why we couldn’t just get Jack out of his trailer. Jack appeared at the last moment of light: he is a serious Lakers fan, and he’d been glued to the television set waiting for Magic Johnson to make the announcement that he was HIV positive. Jack knew the announcement was coming, though nobody else did.

What I admired most about A Few Good Men was the originality Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner showed by not having my character and Tom’s get involved in anything romantic, or even unprofessional. There was an expectation at that time on the part of studios and audiences that if an attractive woman showed up on film, it was only a matter of time before you saw her in bed with the leading man, or at least half naked. But Rob and Aaron had the nerve to buck that convention: they thought this story was about something else, and they were right. Years later Aaron told a film school class: “The whole idea of the movie was that these young lawyers were in way over their heads and two Marines were on trial for their lives, so if Tom Cruise and Demi Moore take time out to roll in the hay, I just didn’t think we would like them as much for doing that.” Sorkin said he wrote to an exec who had been lobbying hard for a sex scene. “I’ll never forget what the executive wrote back, which was, ‘Well if Tom and Demi aren’t going to sleep together why is Demi a woman?’ and that completely stumped me.”

I loved that my character didn’t rely on her sex appeal, which was certainly something I hadn’t encountered very often in my roles. They presented a woman who was valuable to her colleagues—and to the story itself—because of her competence. The movie was nominated for four Academy Awards and five Golden Globes.


MY HEART SANK as I read the script for my next picture and noted the number of sex scenes I had ahead of me. I wanted to do the movie because it was a great story: a young couple go to Las Vegas in the hope of winning enough money to finance their dream home, which the husband, an architect, wants to build. Instead, they lose all their savings. But the wife, Diana, catches the eye of a billionaire, who makes them an offer: he’ll give them a million bucks to spend one night with her. They are conflicted, but they accept, and the story goes on from there.

It was called Indecent Proposal, and a great director was making it. Adrian Lyne was known for his moody, sexually charged films—Fatal Attraction, Flashdance, Jacob’s Ladder. He insisted on every one of his actors auditioning, no matter what. I had actually met with him on almost every film he’d done, including one called Foxes when I was still underage—Jodie Foster got the part—but he had never cast me. This time, I made the cut.

Woody Harrelson was going to play my husband. Woody was one of Bruce’s best friends, and I knew him really well, too, by that point. That seemed like it could be awkward—kissing him would be like kissing my brother. On the other hand, there was a comfort to working with a friend whom I trusted completely. When Adrian got Robert Redford to play the billionaire, it solidified my feeling that this film would be something unique.

I made a deal with Adrian: he would be free to shoot the sex scenes however he wanted, but in the end I could review the footage and if there was anything I felt was too invasive or gratuitous, he would cut it. It was an arrangement that required a lot of trust on both our parts, and I appreciated his willingness to collaborate like that.

Still, I would be on display again, and all I could think about was my body, my body, my body. I doubled down on my already over-the-top exercise routine. I cut out carbs, I ran and I biked and I worked out on every machine imaginable in the gym we’d installed in the house in Hailey. I was actually feeling comfortable with how I looked when I went in to see Adrian about a month later to talk about costumes. I finally had my body where I wanted it.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” Adrian said immediately when I walked in for our meeting.

Initially, I took that as a compliment, and I explained that I didn’t want to feel self-conscious in all the love scenes coming up, so I’d been working hard on my body. I don’t think he listened to a word I was saying. He just kept looking at me with a disturbed expression on his face. Finally, he spat, “I don’t want you looking like a fucking man!”