Bo is Back

In these dry, dusty days of August, we knew you'd enjoy seeing a photographic record of one wet afternoon in the life of Bo Derek. She's bathing in a traditional Japanese bathhouse on the Izu Peninsula just south of Tokyo. You may remember that when we last left Bo (in our first pictorial on her, Bo, last March), she and husband John were headed for a vacation in Japan. Now it turns out that the Japan trip was more than a vacation; it was a time of decision making for a young woman whose sudden fame had startled her as much as her beauty had startled millions of people who saw her in the movie "10." "I didn't expect "10" to cause such a reaction to me," she says, "and I wasn't prepared to see myself described in print as a sex goddess, 'the most beautiful woman' and all that." (text continued on page 222)Bo is Back(continued from page 111) Husband John, recognizing an incipient anxiety attack when he saw one, suggested that they get away so that Bo, in his words, "could begin to figure out who Bo was."

And that, Bo frankly admits, was a tough one. "Before I met John, I didn't have many interests other than boating and motorcycles. John used always to ask me, 'What are you thinking, Bo?' And I'd say, 'Well, I don't know.' "

John says: "Ignorance is bliss. Bo didn't want to open a single can of peas in her head. The reaction to her in "10" forced her to take stock of herself."

"Suddenly," says Bo, "I found myself continually confronted by people in the media asking me, 'Who are you?' "

They retreated. First to Japan, then to a half-dozen other countries, including Australia and Switzerland. But they quickly discovered that there are few places in the world where Bo Derek can go unnoticed by the press. In Sydney, the media were so obsessed with her--"10" had just opened there--that, with a nudge from Warner Bros, (distributor of "10"), she and John granted a press conference. It didn't go well.

"We didn't mind going through answering questions." Bo says, "but we didn't want any photos taken, because the photos would haunt us through the rest of our trip, all over Europe. So Warner Bros, had asked the press not to bring cameras. Well, when the press showed up at this little restaurant where we held the press conference, they were all carrying cameras. We said, 'Hey, you guys knew in advance that there were to be no pictures.' John was trying to explain our point of view when one of the photographers interrupted him, saying, 'Mr. Derek, how long do we have to listen to this? Let us speak to your wile.' Well, that made John furious and it made me mad, too. But John told me, 'Let them take their pictures and then let's get the hell out of here and go home.' "

And that was the turning point, the beginning, she says, of finding Bo Derek. "I couldn't do it. They started taking pictures of me and I told them to stop. John was telling me to go ahead and cooperate, to do it for him. But, at the same time, everything that I'd learned from him about being assertive cried out against staying for the interview and the pictures. So I ran out of the restaurant. John was shouting at me, the photographers were following me, clicking away, and I didn't have any idea where I was. I mean, I was in Australia, right? A lady who works with Warner Bros, was there and she caught up with me and tried to get me away. The photographers were so close that we decided to jump into a car. A photographer jumped in with us and started taking pictures. The lady and I started trying to push the guy out and shouted at him to leave us alone, but then he informed us that we'd jumped into his car! It turns out that the car we'd come in had been moved. So we jumped out and ran another block until we found our car. Finally, we escaped, but I was nearly in hysterics.

"When I got back to our hotel," Bo continues, "John was there and I immediately broke down, shaking and crying. I was so mad, and at the same time I thought he'd be mad at me because I didn't do what he told me. But John said he was proud of me and that he'd been trying to tell me--with his eyes--to go. I was confused, but so happy." She had finally done what Bo wanted to do. "It was a good lesson for me," she says.

By the time she returned from the ten-week vacation, Bo was sure she could handle the pressures of being a star, including the press. Her new-found as-sertiveness first showed up on the set of A Change of Seasons (due to be released in December), in which she co-stars with Anthony Hopkins and Shirley MacLaine.

"Ordinarily, when I get mad, I don't scream or yell; I cry, because I usually feel it's my fault. But one day in Vermont [where A Change of Seasons was filming], a combination of pressures built up. They made me really mad and I blew up in front of the crew. I actually yelled. When I got home, I started shaking."

As she recounts the story, Bo sits in a rocking chair in the high-ceilinged living room in the Dereks' cozy Marina del Rey apartment. She's not wearing make-up, which verifies for us that she owns the rosiest cheeks in Hollywood. Her sandy blonde hair hangs loose, except for one long beaded braid reminiscent of her role in "10." She's dressed in a large red T-shirt, blue jeans and her favorite black hand-knit socks (from Afghanistan). Her T-shirt says Moscow, 1980. In view of the Olympic boycott, we ask her why she's wearing it.

"I was thinking just before the interview," she laughs, "that maybe I shouldn't wear it. But I decided, why not? It's a comfortable T-shirt. On the other hand, I wore it to the supermarket the other day without thinking and I was worried the whole time that I should cover it up, that someone would recognize me, see the T-shirt and scream, 'You traitor!' But no one did."

(We reflect for a moment on what kind of man might spy Bo Derek in his local supermarket and think only of criticizing her T-shirt. Probably not the kind of man who reads Playboy.)

Wearing what she wants is also a part of Bo's new self-awareness. For the 1980 Academy Awards ceremony (at which she and Christopher Reeve presented the Oscar for Best Film Editing), she scorned the starlet's standard low-cut dress and, instead, opted for a plain white, almost pristine A-line dress with a shallow scoop neck. For that she may wind up on Black-well's worst-dressed list again (she made it last year, to which she commented, "It's far better than being on his best-dressed list"), but neither she nor John cares. John helped her hem her Oscar-night dress but stayed home to watch the ceremony on television because, as he says, "I've been through it before." Perhaps it's good that John didn't go, because it gave Bo a chance to test her new-found moxie vis-à -vis the media.

"After the ceremony," she tells us, "I was to escort the man who won for Best Film Editing backstage to meet the press. There were two rooms, one for still photographers and one for television cameras. I was taking him to the one with the television cameras and we passed the other room on the way. Inside, photographers were taking pictures of the various Oscar winners, and suddenly, they all ran out of the room to follow me, leaving the other people behind--which I thought was terribly rude--and I felt embarrassed, since I was just there as an escort, not as a winner or a nominee. They started crowding around me, shouting, 'Bol Bo! Turn this way, Bo! Look up. Bo!' I kept my head clown. They weren't even photographing the man I was with, who'd won an Oscar. Just me. I wouldn't pose for them, so at one point this photographer, an older man, said loudly, in a very stern voice, 'Bo, you are invited here as a guest, and to have your picture taken, and you will look up.' You've got to realize that until recently that sort of thing would have paralyzed me, because I would have felt that this man was a grownup and I was only a child, and who am I to say no to an adult? But instead, I asked the man I was escorting if he minded if I left. He said he didn't, so I walked out. And as I left, you should have heard the boos from the photographers. 'Boo, Bo! Booooo.' "

If you get the impression that Bo's a reluctant superstar, you're only half right. She wants success, but on her own terms--not an unreasonable expectation when you consider that she's been offered literally millions of dollars to perform in movies she doesn't want to do and to endorse products that she doesn't use.

And why should she? Alter all, with only one hit movie under her belt, she's already so well known that she receives fan letters addressed "Bo Derek, Hollywood," and sometimes just "Bo Derek." And it's probably a reflection of her aristocratic image (a real 10 is a girl you wouldn't think of belching in front of) that "I've never had an obscene letter. Not one. They've all been very nice. A few have been erotic, but more poetic than vulgar. I haven't heard from one weirdo." However, those who fancy themselves Cyranos of the erotic couplet should be forewarned that Bo's grandmother answers most of her fan mail. "She seems to enjoy it," says Bo.

Bo and John have planned her immediate future rather well. Their main concern at the moment is the production of Me, Jane ("Tarzan the Ape Man from Jane's point of view," says John), starring Bo, produced by Bo and directed by John. It will be, according to John, "Sexy, exotic, funny, everything."

We ask Bo why she elected to produce her own film and she answers, "Because John will be too busy to worry about the details."

John adds, "And Bo is very good with details." After completing Me, Jane, the Dereks plan to make a film John tentatively titles The Cowboy and the Crazy Lady, which will star Bo as a teenaged girl and co-star John's ex-wife Ursula Andress as Bo's mother.

"I love Ursula," Bo says unaffectedly, "and I'd love to work with her."

After that, who knows? Perhaps another vacation in Japan. If there's one country whose press Bo likes, it's Japan.

"We held a press conference, and when we walked in, everyone was so quiet, it was so formal. We had an interpreter who, for some reason, suddenly couldn't interpret, and there I was, standing in front of these people who were all so quiet, not knowing what to say. Finally, someone asked me a question. I answered it, and then it was silent again. They all just sat there and looked at me. I looked around at the Warner Bros, people and asked, 'What's wrong? What's wrong?' Finally, one of the Japanese writers who spoke English said to me, 'If you want to answer more questions, you have to ask us to ask them every time.' They're so formal, it's wonderful. We just had a lot of fun in Japan, even though John and I don't particularly like Japanese food. John ate rice and sugar and milk the whole time. But we really enjoyed the people."

In Japan, they call Bo "Ju," which means, of course, ten.

" 'They started crowding around me, shouting, "Bo! Bo! Turn this way, Bo." I kept my head down.'"