Inside Out(36)

My head was spinning when I left his office. I completely lost it when my agent called later that night and told me, “Adrian is going to fire you if you don’t gain at least ten pounds.”

We had another meeting, this time with my agent and the head of the studio, as well as Adrian. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” I tried to explain to him. “That’s like saying to a heroin addict, ‘Go do drugs.’” I did my best to make him understand my struggle, to see how important it was that I not feel self-conscious during the sex scenes, and that I needed to be slim to be comfortable naked on camera. Very reluctantly, Adrian backed down. In fairness, it was his film, and he wanted the leading lady to have a soft, sensuous look, whereas my ideal for myself was to be delicate and svelte like a ballerina. On the one hand, it was my body. On the other, it was his film. There was a little bit of tension and antagonism between us after that—I didn’t want him to win, but I knew that a seed had been planted and that it was only a matter of time before my need to please was going to do battle with my desire to be thin. In the very first scene we shot for Indecent Proposal, I was rolling around in my underwear on a bed covered with money.

I knew Glenn Close, and she’d warned me that Adrian was an odd guy to work with on love scenes: she told me he was yelling out encouraging obscenities the whole time she was humping away with Michael Douglas all over that loft in Fatal Attraction. Glenn hadn’t exaggerated. Adrian is a true voyeur, which is part of why his films are so interesting and potent. But on set it’s very kooky: he literally didn’t stop talking—practically hollering!—the whole time we were shooting the sex scenes. “Fucking raunchy! Oh God, got a boner on that!” he’d yell. “Come on, grab his dick!” At first it was creepy: here was this guy with this sort of long-haired, British-rocker look, getting all sweaty and worked up, yelling about boners. But once I got used to it, I saw its advantages: having Adrian carry on that way took the focus off my own awkwardness because he was so over the top. Once I knew not to take his outbursts at face value, it was actually pretty hilarious having him yelping on the sidelines while Woody and I tried to simulate lust. And the fact is, when I saw what Adrian had pulled off in the end, I thought it was beautiful. I didn’t have to rely on our deal; there was nothing he’d shot that made me uncomfortable, or that seemed prurient or excessive. His movies are erotic, but they aren’t sleazy.

The filming was a slog, though. The shooting schedule in Vegas was from four a.m. to four p.m., so every morning I got up at one thirty to start training by two. I ran or biked or worked out in the gym at the Mirage. I finished just in time to jump in the shower and go through hair and makeup. At night, I took care of my little girls, who’d come with me, along with their nanny and my trainer. Then I would get up at one thirty the next morning and do the whole thing all over again.

It caught up with me halfway through the shooting when I felt as if I was coming down with the flu. Adrian wanted to call a sick day, but I said no; I didn’t want people talking about how the production had to be stopped because of me—I was still paranoid about being seen as “difficult.” Over my objections, Adrian called a doctor to come and see me, and it turned out it wasn’t the flu: I had walking pneumonia. This time I had no choice, and neither did Adrian. He had to take an insurance day on my behalf, which is something actors never want to have on their records.

A medical crew came and gave me intravenous antibiotics. I felt better right away, but it was a little scary, so I eased up a bit on my workouts—though not enough for Adrian. The look on his face every time he saw me in sneakers or on a bike was disapproving, bordering on disgusted, and as much as I pushed back, it began to get to me. By the time we finished the movie, he had succeeded in getting inside my head—to the point that I had put on all the weight he had wanted me to gain at the beginning. I was almost unbearably uncomfortable about it. I could see it in the last scenes we shot for the film: I was in this cream dress and my belly was a little “poochy,” and I remember Adrian coming over to me while we were watching the takes and noticing it. I told him, “Do not say one more word to me about my body.”

As crazy as Adrian and I made each other, I have to say that I’ve never been shot more beautifully. Everyone looked golden in Indecent Proposal, as if we were lit from within. The DP—director of photography—would do the lighting, but then Adrian would come in and rework it himself. His level of focus in terms of lighting and storytelling was incredible: he paid attention to everything, down to the details of the costumes. I remember I suggested a black shantung silk dress of my own for the first “date” between my character and Redford’s billionaire, and Adrian loved it. He wanted that initial encounter between them to feel elegant, despite the fact that my character had basically turned into a call girl for a night; he wanted to create a situation so romantic, so classy, that it transcended their deal and felt, actually, seductive to the viewer. Adrian even got Herbie Hancock to play piano on the Redford character’s yacht while we slow danced in that scene. (I just kept thinking about that iconic moment in The Way We Were, when Barbra Streisand takes her gloved hand and brushes Redford’s hair out of his eyes. It’s not easy being spontaneous with a screen legend, but he couldn’t have been more gracious throughout the shoot.) Gone was the raunchy Adrian, and in his place was Adrian the Romantic. He was a perfectionist with a clear vision, and while our ideas about my body clashed rather violently, I don’t think he was ever intentionally cruel. He just wanted what he wanted. Good directors always do.