Playboy Interview: Shirley Mac Laine

If it's true, as is suggested, that your entire life flashes before you when you die, when Shirley MacLaine's time comes, she'll have to sit through a triple feature.

And that's only for this lifetime: She will readily admit there have been others.

However, her present incarnations as a successful actress, dancer, writer, world traveler, political activist, advocate of world peace and spiritual believer have managed to keep her pretty well occupied for 50 years. Besides, MacLaine relishes the rush of doing four or five things at once. As she is fond of saying, "I do a better job at each than if I concentrated on one."

The past two years are a good indication. In 1983, she wrote her third book, "Out on a Limb." Filled with tales of clandestine love and metaphysical realization, it quickly rose on the best-seller list. At press time, it was Bantam's second-largest-selling hardcover, nonfiction tome and number one on the paperback list.

That was also the year she starred with Debra Winger and Jack Nicholson in the film version of Larry McMurtry's novel of mother/daughter angst and affection, "Terms of Endearment," and went on to win the Oscar for best actress.

On the heels of that, she starred on Broadway in a song-dance-and-talk show that packed them in. And somewhere within all that, she managed to travel to the Middle East to research her next book, and to her Mount Rainier, Washington, retreat, where she does her writing.

Apparently, MacLaine has been on the go since soon after the day she was born, April 24, 1934, to Ira O. and Kathlyn Beaty, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father was a real-estate agent, her mother a sometime actress and teacher. In her first book, "'Don't Fall Off the Mountain,'" MacLaine describes them as "a cliché-loving, middle-class Virginia family.... We were all Baptists and ... we lived according to what our neighbors thought, and I guess they were living according to what we thought."

MacLaine started ballet lessons at three as therapy for her weak ankles. Dance became her life. When the family moved to Arlington, Virginia, she attended the area's finest dancing academy. After graduating from high school, she headed for the chorus lines of Broadway. There, during an audition, she dropped her last name and adopted a variation of her middle name, MacLean. That left her younger brother, Warren, to carry the family name, though he soon added a T.

In New York, in 1952, MacLaine met Steve Parker, a part-time actor, director and aspiring producer. Although he was older and in many ways her opposite, they were married two years later.

MacLaine got the first of many fortuitous breaks in 1954, when, while understudying Carol Haney in "The Pajama Game," she was asked to step in when the star broke an ankle. Before the night was over, a new star had begun to shine. The next evening, producer Hal Wallis caught the show and quickly signed MacLaine to a Hollywood contract. He lent her to Alfred Hitchcock soon after for her first film, "The Trouble with Harry."

Since then, MacLaine has compiled an impressive body of work, including "Around the World in 80 Days," "Some Came Running," "Can-Can," "The Apartment," "The Children's Hour," "My Geisha," "Two for the Seesaw," "Irma La Douce," "Sweet Charity," "The Turning Point," "Being There" and "Terms of Endearment."

Here are a few other things she has managed to do: have a daughter, Stephanie Sachiko Parker, in 1956; establish a unique marital arrangement that allowed Parker to live and work in Japan (they eventually divorced on good terms); become a world traveler (Africa, Russia, India, Japan, etc.); visit China in 1973 and produce an Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir"; write three books; campaign for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968; be a Democratic delegate from California in that year's ill-fated convention in Chicago; star in an unsuccessful TV series, "Shirley's World," in 1971; work for George McGovern in 1972; return to the stage with a full-on dance revue in 1974; support women's rights and a variety of social issues; date newsman Sander Vanocur, writer Pete Hamill, Australian opposition-party leader Andrew Peacock and Russian film director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, among others; cultivate relationships with people as diverse as Madam Chou En-lai, Indira Gandhi and Bella Abzug; and publicly announce her spiritual beliefs, which include reincarnation, spirit guides and out-of-body experiences. In the middle of all this activity that passes for a normal life, we decided to see if MacLaine could squeeze in Contributing Editor David Rensin for a "Playboy Interview." She could. Rensin's report:

"To say that God made Shirley MacLaine and then broke the mold is, for once, not a cliché. She is complex, shrewd, brusque, spontaneous, sometimes curiously off-putting, often humorous, instinctively honest, intense, constantly questioning, genuinely caring and very busy.

"We met for a get-acquainted dinner at La Scala, in Malibu. She had just come from rehearsing her Las Vegas act and was dressed in jeans, sweat shirt and leg warmers. Her red hair was tousled, her make-up quickly applied. When I followed her car from the dance studio to the restaurant, I noticed that she never slowed down for speed bumps. That set the tone for everything that followed.

"During our six-course meal of Italian appetizers, we talked about everything from an epidemic of fish cancer to Jesse Jackson's effect on Democratic hopes for the Presidency. Hanging on the wall behind our booth was a caricature of her brother, Warren. She glanced at it only once and never mentioned it. I filled her in on my background but tried to keep the conversation light, because I had purposely left my tape recorder home in order to establish a casual atmosphere.

"I soon discovered it is impossible to talk with Shirley about the weather. She wanted to know why she should do the 'Interview.' I said that at its best, the 'Interview's' in-depth nature could take the subject far beyond most Q.-and-A. sessions. It would be something new and fun, especially since it would be her first comprehensive interrogation. Shirley said nothing, but her clear-blue eyes bored steadily into mine. I felt disconnected.

"Later, over the last glass of wine, she asked again. This time, I suggested that the experience could be a microcosm of the spiritual explorations she had underaken in her latest book. 'Do the "Interview" if you think it will contribute to your life,' I said. 'You certainly don't need it to hype your hopes for an Oscar for "Terms of Endearment."' Shirley nodded, then asked me to go to Las Vegas a few weeks hence to catch her show. 'Dancing is at the root of it all for me. You have to see my show to fully understand what I'm about.'

"A month after I'd seen her Las Vegas revue--we should all move as well at 50--we finally met for the 'Interview' at Shirley's East Side apartment in Manhattan. She wanted to sandwich the sessions into a marathon weekend. We managed to get most of it done--taking time out to eat her homemade chicken soup and salmon salad and, on Sunday, to see 'The Big Chill' (she was lukewarm on it) and 'Broadway Danny Rose' (which she loved) during our break--but didn't finish until a month later, at her Malibu apartment. Throughout; her new spiritual consciousness was evident, though never in a proselytizing manner. We saved its discussion until the end. We also broached the subject of the strange tension between us during our first dinner meeting--with surprising results.

"Her California home is decorated in an Indian motif, with assorted knickknacks from her world travels and photos of her and various friends. Stitched into a pillow on the couch is Leave me Alone, I'm Having a Crisis. The legend on the pillow either isn't true at all or is always true."

[Q] Playboy: It's been quite a year for Shirley MacLaine--onstage, onscreen, on the best-seller list. Did you plan it that way?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, on my 49th birthday--first, let me explain what a birthday is to me. Everyone's birthday is what is called the solar return: The sun and the planetary alignments are in pretty much the same positions as when you were born. So birthdays are important, because whatever you put out there on that day has a real chance of working. It's even good to have the exact time you were born, because the energy goes from five hours prior to five hours after. So for about a solid ten-hour period on my 49th birthday, I went to New Mexico and climbed a mountain and meditated and projected forward to 1984. I projected what happened with Terms of Endearment; I projected that it would help mother-daughter relationships. I projected the reaction to my book Out on a Limb. I didn't know for sure if this stuff would come to pass, if the individual really had that kind of power. But it happened. This year has come to pass for me exactly as I projected it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you project winning the Oscar?

[A] Mac Laine: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Was it important to win the Oscar? Do you think you deserved it?

[A] Mac Laine: It's not about deserving to win--because no one deserves to lose. It's just a recognition that comes in a little gold package. But, yes, I care about being recognized for a body of work over 30 years--some good, some bad, some in between and some really great. I'm a communicator, and being recognized for it is a good feeling.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't the five Oscar nominations you got before this one enough recognition to overcome any insecurities?

[A] Mac Laine: [Deadpan] Yes, that was nice.

[Q] Playboy: Were you disappointed in previous years?

[A] Mac Laine: No. I never thought I would win before. I didn't think I was very good in Irma La Douce. I thought I might win for The Apartment until Elizabeth [Taylor] had her tracheotomy.

[Q] Playboy: Were there films you should have been nominated for?

[A] Mac Laine:The Children's Hour and Desperate Characters, but no one saw that one. I should have been nominated for Being There. If I had been smart, I would have reduced my billing to the supporting-actress category and then won. But, you know, those are all career moves and politicking and manipulation; I don't think about that stuff. Or I think about it too late.

[Q] Playboy:Terms of Endearment won it all--and much has been written about it--but what was its appeal to you?

[A] Mac Laine: The story, of course. The fact that it dealt with people beginning to examine their relationships with their children, and vice versa, in a way that allowed them to celebrate the defects in each. Terms makes it all right to yell at your mother. It makes it all right to want to make your daughter over in your own image. I adored my character, Aurora Greenway. It never occurred to me that she was a viper, though the reviews sometimes described her as cobralike. I might have been--a little bit. But I loved Aurora's honesty, her directness, her lack of censorship. I think the public picks up on the fact that the people in the movie--except maybe for the husband--liked who they were. And yet they were having this tearing examination of their relationship over 30 years. It's not just mothers and daughters who liked this film, it was everyone who's had a mother or a father or a child. That's about everybody.

[Q] Playboy: Was your performance as Aurora your best work?

[A] Mac Laine: It was the most committed work I've done so far, committed to spanning 35 years, committed to the challenge of being on the edge of caricature and still knowing I would have to make the transition into very subtle drama on the death of my daughter. There was a total commitment to emphasizing my worst assets so that you could believe in the disintegration of the mother: roots showing in my hair that were my real roots. But it was a total commitment to a character I loved; I threw the usual screen concerns to the wind.

[Q] Playboy: You've said you modeled her on Martha Mitchell. In what way?

[A] Mac Laine: Martha and I spent some time together in Boston. I was on the writers' circuit for my second book. She was doing some publicity there, some television appearances. She came on with a whole array of hairpieces, her own make-up kit, a manicurist, a pedicurist, a hairdresser, a face dresser, a lipstick putter--a retinue. She literally changed the room by walking into it. She was amusing, colorful, commanding, demanding, self-indulgent, funny. She was vain. She was beautiful. I never forgot the impact she had on me. She was kind of an unsung American hero because of what she exposed of pain and humiliation in Watergate.

[A] Somehow, we made a dinner date one night. At the restaurant, she must have changed tables five times because the lighting wasn't right or the angle wasn't correct on her face. Then she took to saying the walls were bugged, because she saw an air-conditioning grille above us: "No, no. The microphone is in there, so we have to move again." And we would. Eventually, we ended up moving not only to five tables but to three or four restaurants. That really happened. And all the time, I was studying her and thinking, This is a real person, an actual human being living this way. Even with her paranoia, she was a delight to be around. And she told the absolute truth in everything we discussed. Finally, I went back to her hotel with her. She had this big reception suite. By that time, maybe three A.M., she'd been drinking a little, and she got on the phone--just as I had read about her late-calls to the press during the Watergate days. I watched her call people for two hours.

[A] So when Terms came along, I was going through the process of associations in women that I'd known. A month before we started rehearsals, I said to [screen-writer-director] Jim Brooks, "Look, I've zeroed in on an image that I think is good for Aurora, and tell me if I'm on the right track." I didn't say "I've locked on to the energy of Martha Mitchell," because he'd have thought I was a cuckoo bird. When I said, simply, that I was thinking of Martha Mitchell, he said, "Great, great."

[Q] Playboy: How did you use that on the set?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, since I don't believe anyone dies, I figured the energy she was in her lifetime was still extant. I began to--now, understand what I mean when I say this--I began to try to ask Martha for her help. I asked her if she would be there, hover over me, cooperate, join me.... I was going through these things that don't seem outrageous when you're metaphysically in tune. In fact, they seem artistically liberating. So when the camera would roll and Jim would yell, "Action!" I would go into a space, which I've learned how to do--and I would feel as if I were plugging into Martha Mitchell. She and I worked together on the movie. You can say it's not true, but it worked.

[Q] Playboy: There's a bit of gossip we'd like to clear up before we get into the metaphysical. There were reports that you and your onscreen daughter, actress Debra Winger, didn't get along during filming. Once and for all, what happened?

[A] Mac Laine: Was it a hot topic? [Pauses] Well, we got along. We got along. We just had different approaches to working. This is the only picture I've done with her, but she apparently becomes her character--every time. Before the set call and after.

[Q] Playboy: But her character was the more solicitous one, the one who wanted to get along with her mother. And your character was the difficult one. Your explanation would make sense only if you stayed in character all the time.

[A] Mac Laine: [Long laugh] Very perceptive. Oh, well.

[Q] Playboy: So?

[A] Mac Laine: So ... it was difficult, but we got along. [Pauses] Look, Debra is 21 years younger than I am. She has very different interests and different ways of looking at life. Just because you work intimately with someone for three or four months on a film doesn't mean there's any breeding ground for friendship. I don't think there was much of one. It's just one of those things. It was the same thing when I worked with Bo Derek on A Change of Seasons. People wanted to know if she and I were friends. Well, no. I like her perfectly fine, but on what basis would a friendship like that flourish? I agree with Jim Brooks, who said that people seem to want to pit women against each other because of male-chauvinistic attitudes. I don't know if he was right or wrong, but I do remember the same sort of talk bubbling about Anne Bancroft and me during The Turning Point and about Audrey Hepburn and me on The Children's Hour. There's an idea that women should fight like cats for screen time and attention. But that is just not true.

[Q] Playboy: Did you try to interest Winger in your well-known spiritual pursuits?

[A] Mac Laine: No. We had that in common. Jack Nicholson, too. Debra is a student of Gurdjieff. But she didn't talk much about it. She read my latest book and was interested in it. [Pauses] But other than that, I mean, she loved to sit in her trailer in her combat boots and miniskirt, listening to real loud rock 'n' roll. Right there, I mean, what am I going to do that for?

[Q] Playboy: Enough said. Aurora Greenway wasn't the first risky role you've taken in terms of your image. Then there was your role in Being There, in which you did a memorable masturbation scene--

[A] Mac Laine: Oh, yes. Larry Olivier called me about that, because they wanted him to do the part Melvyn Douglas eventually played. He said, "My dear girl, are you doing this? You mustn't do this. This scene is immoral. Think of your stature as an artist and an actress! You should not be a part of this picture because of that scene."

[Q] Playboy: And you said?

[A] Mac Laine: "Well, you don't have to do it. I do. As a matter of fact, that's why I'm taking the movie. I like that scene." I wanted to see if I could pull that off with good taste and humor. I also like to go to the edge of unpredictability. He said, "Well, that scene is why I'm not doing the movie."

[Q] Playboy: Didn't it feel odd to do that scene on a set in front of all those people?

[A] Mac Laine: Hmm. We did it 17 times, until my make-up man finally said, "Mmm, mmm; good to the last drop." Seventeen times and Peter Sellers just sat there, changing channels on a TV set. [Laughs] Totally in character, always.

[Q] Playboy: He didn't peek?

[A] Mac Laine: [Long pause] He was so incredibly brilliant in that. Just to be a part of that picture with him was important to me, because I was working with a genius who had the role of his life.... Who won the Academy Award that year?

[Q] Playboy: Not Sellers.

[A] Mac Laine: [Sadly] No.

[Q] Playboy: Your other controversial roles included a fair number of prostitutes. Why so many?

[A] Mac Laine: God, I don't know. I'm certain I was a prostitute in some other life and I just have empathy for them.

[Q] Playboy: That's a familiar refrain.

[A] Mac Laine: It's all I can figure out.

[Q] Playboy: Were you ever concerned about being typecast or about the reactions you would get?

[A] Mac Laine: No. I wasn't thinking then, nor do I think now, about career risks in terms of jeopardizing myself. I think about career risks in terms of a challenge. If I'd worried about career moves, I wouldn't have done Cannonball Run II, for God's sake, right after Terms of Endearment.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you? Because it reunited the Rat Pack--Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and you?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, we all had a wonderful time. None of us read the script--at least, no one I talked to. I mean, I tried, but I couldn't get through it. I just wanted to work with all of them again. And it probably will show.

[Q] Playboy: Come to think of it, you've probably been in more movies with Dean Martin than Jerry Lewis has.

[A] Mac Laine: I've probably been in more movies with Dean Martin than even Dean Martin has.

[Q] Playboy: What acting risks are left for you to take?

[A] Mac Laine: I think I'd like to try some really wild, histrionic dramatic part bordering on insanity. I don't want to do Shakespeare or the classics.

[Q] Playboy: You want to move further toward the edge?

[A] Mac Laine: Probably, though in the past month, I've gotten three scripts: one about a woman who goes crazy because she's being murdered; another about a murderess; the third about someone else involved in a murder. But I won't do any of them. The reason is sociological. I don't want to contribute to the violence out there, especially since I'm on a spiritual path. I had never believed violence on film could incite violence in an audience until recently.

[Q] Playboy: What movie made you change your mind?

[A] Mac Laine:Scarface. It wasn't about drugs; it was about violence and the exploitation of it. The abuse of that kind of artistic freedom made me violent; it activated a violence in me that I thought I had worked out. I didn't want to go out and kill anyone the way the characters did, but I really wanted to have a talk with the people who had made the film and ask them what the fuck they thought they were doing! I didn't notice an examination of the cultural build-up to that violence; I didn't even see the first half hour--with the chopped-off arm in the shower. I was late to the screening and got locked out. Something must have been telling me not to go in. The violence in that movie was not put into perspective. The violence in Midnight Express I understood. In the Godfathers, I understood.

[Q] Playboy: And in your brother's movie Bonnie and Clyde?

[A] Mac Laine: I understood.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been violent?

[A] Mac Laine: Oh, sure. I've had arguments with a couple of the men I've been with. There was one who weighed 220 pounds, and I got so upset with him that I picked him up by the shoulders and threw him into the hallway. Never thought I'd do that. It's been infrequent, but I realized that what upset me most about the person who provoked me to violence were those little aspects of myself that I recognized in myself--from childhood on.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of childhood ambitions did you have?

[A] Mac Laine: Basically, I wanted to be an astronomer and a physicist. I was always looking through my telescope and reading about people who discovered things. My favorite book was called Heroes of Civilization. I still read it over and over. I was reading about the theory of relativity and chemistry and what bodies are made up of, as opposed to plants--all the while I was going to dancing classes. So I was walking down both of those paths.

[Q] Playboy: You took ballet lessons to remedy a physical problem, didn't you?

[A] Mac Laine: Yeah, but I loved dancing, because it allowed me to express myself. Otherwise, I probably would have internalized too much of my intelligence. So I got it out physically. And I loved the music, especially Russian, though I don't understand what that was about: When I visited Russia, I hated it. It was the most depressing period of all my travels.

[Q] Playboy: Your first book, "Don't Fall Off the Mountain," gives the impression that from early on, you had a sense of not quite belonging where you were.

[A] Mac Laine: That's right. Yeah. There was a feeling of another home somewhere, [Pauses] I think the feeling of home that I was longing for was myself and wherever I might have been. Meaning that I could have been many places, many cultures and maybe even other planets; I don't know. It was not enough to say that my home was Richmond, Virginia, and I lived with Ira and Kathlyn Beaty, and that was my identity. I knew that that wasn't all there was to me. I was longing to fill in the total picture of my identity. The memory of the many places I had been were sort of knocking on my brain. I know that now. But all I can remember as a child were very subtle kinds of memories trying to break through.

[Q] Playboy: When you first went to Hollywood, you didn't really belong, either. The press labeled you a kook. Your marital arrangements were unusual, as well. Did you feel like an outsider?

[A] Mac Laine: I never felt on the outside, though when I finished working on a film, I'd usually take off and go somewhere. I had my colorful fill of those dinner parties with all those flaming desserts and all the Bel-Air-circuit sociology, but I guess I never really was a part of it.... It was fun. Nice people. But my head was listening to a different drummer. Actually, it's sort of interesting that they labeled me a kook for silly little things. For instance, I didn't know what a limo was, so I would drive up to a movie premiere in my car, having just changed clothes in the back seat because I'd come from dancing class. I wasn't aware of any effect I was creating or that I was doing unusual things. When I started reading about myself, I felt I was usually described with good humor, with sort of a slant of a rebel about it. But that was Ok with me. I knew who I was.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't that give you a certain protection?

[A] Mac Laine: Yes. Every now and then, I wondered why nobody propositioned me--and nobody ever did. I've never had that experience in all my life in this business. But--you know, this is so boring to me. Sorry. I can't go back into the past like this. I can't even relate to that part of my life, my early Hollywood days. It's like another lifetime ago for me. I can't remember any of it, any of my reactions.

[Q] Playboy: Why not? You haven't had any trouble remembering other parts of your past when you've written about it.

[A] Mac Laine: My family, childhood, that's really important stuff. But not my early days in Hollywood. [Pauses] It's not that I'm like Marlon Brando: Interviewers want to know about his approach to acting, and all he wants to talk about is the Indians. It's not that I feel that way. When I say that this is hard for me, it's because I really don't remember the early stuff. It's just gone. Boring, finished. It's no longer interesting. Even the painful stuff. For example, a woman psychiatrist walked up to me a few nights ago at a party and said, "Your performance in Terms was brilliant because of all the pain that you showed. You must have had a great deal of pain in your life. True?" Right in front of a lot of people, I tried to answer her genuinely. I said, "No, not in this life. Some past lives, yes." I've come to understand that. That's why I'm opening up now. I've put most of this past away, especially the Hollywood stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's go further back. In your first book, you judge your parents pretty harshly: your mother for giving up her career, your father for not encouraging you to dare more.

[A] Mac Laine: I don't think I judged them harshly. I was just telling my feelings. They didn't react negatively. Mother said, "Did I really give that impression that I was sacrificing everything for my children?" I said, "Yeah." And she said, "I guess I did."

[Q] Playboy: What about your father?

[A] Mac Laine: Dad loved it. He thought he was the star of my book, which he was. He loves being the star of my books. They didn't feel judged. They are somehow secure and liberal and democratic about how Warren and I have decided to express ourselves, and if it includes them in the process, they don't take it personally.

[Q] Playboy: Do you now see them in a more positive light?

[A] Mac Laine: Um-hmm. In many ways, they're getting more difficult with each other. They're a vaudeville act. Neither one of them has ever melded into the woodwork. I've told them often that they ought to do a TV series. That's one I might watch. It's incredible, their relationship, like a comic George and Martha [in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]. I see why I have this capacity for both comedy and tragedy. It's what went on at home.

[Q] Playboy: People often find it odd that you and Warren Beatty are brother and sister--you seem very different.

[A] Mac Laine: I was once asked, "Do you think you and Warren chose your parents?" Yes, I do. My parents have no problem with us as their children. They don't look at us and ask, "How did we produce these children?" They say, "Of course." Sure, we're different. I think his approach is much more intellectual than mine, and by that I mean left-brain. He really needs to have things proved to him to believe them. But I'm a woman and he's a man. I'm operating with much more intuitive intelligence and trusting it. That's the great gift women have to give the world, except that men always ask us to prove we have the gift.

[Q] Playboy: Do you get a kick out of the press's fascination with him?

[A] Mac Laine: I think everybody is fascinated with him. You guys at Playboy aren't any different--and probably just because he won't talk to you.

[Q] Playboy: Since Warren refuses to talk to the press, do you resent being asked questions about him?

[A] Mac Laine: No. Except that people have this idea that we're not friendly.

[Q] Playboy: Are you?

[A] Mac Laine: People know that Warren and I know each other very well and we're very close. We don't travel the same paths in life, but we love each other. Everybody who knows us knows that.

[Q] Playboy: What qualities do you share?

[A] Mac Laine: The agreement that both of us see our childhood completely differently. Since we understand how really different we are, I think that's what's led people to think we are not close. But because we both happen to be famous and talented, I really hesitate to invade his privacy. About anything. And he'd do the same for me. I will never really discuss Warren. It's up to him to discuss him.

[Q] Playboy: Then why have you made such provocative remarks as "I'd like to do a kissing scene with him" and "I'd lock my daughter away from him" and "I haven't seen him nude since he was six years old; I'd like to find out what he's like now!"?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, I have a humorous and open relationship with the public and the press. I'm more outgoing, so I make jokes about Warren and me.

[Q] Playboy: Your glibness has gotten you into trouble. For example, you called New York City the Karen Anne Quinlan of cities and later apologized to her parents. Do you learn from those experiences?

[A] Mac Laine: Absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: Since you are, as you say, inclined to talk to the press, what was behind your resistance--which stretched out for months--to doing this Interview?

[A] Mac Laine: [Thinks a moment, makes up her mind] I know that you've felt this resistance of mine. It was--I sensed that this was no accident that you wanted to talk with me, because you sensed ... that this would be as therapeutic for you as it is for me. I felt I knew what would happen. I knew you were at the point in your life when you really needed to move on and were looking for some guideposts; some communication, some kind of interchange of understanding between the two of us that would help you progress more, beyond doing a great in-depth interview.

[Q] Playboy: Hmm. That's pretty much out of left field. Since we had never met before, isn't it more likely that this Interview is taking place because this is the most recent peak in a very rich career?

[A] Mac Laine: [Laughs] "Most recent peak"! Pete Hamill says I've had more comebacks than Roberto Duran. Oh, I know you're here because the movie was hot, because it's time. But I know that's not what you are here for. It's not merely an accident. But perhaps I am being presumptuous. I'm one of those people who are missionaries, right? I always do this. Always: If I can help, let me be there.

[Q] Playboy: Frankly, there was no reason other than the professional one to approach you. The idea to interview you just came to us.

[A] Mac Laine: [Long laugh] Sorry for laughing, but there's no such thing as an idea that just came to you. That's what I've been doing for the past ten years--getting past the notion that any idea just came to me. I want to know why Mozart could write that symphony at the age of six, seven or eight; why Einstein came up with the theory of relativity or that God was a giant thought. That's the nature of my curiosity. I don't think of it this way, but maybe it is a rigorous compulsion to give form to intuition.

[A] What happens is that the necessity for you and me to be talking comes in the form of an idea. But it's there for another reason. And I like to get to that reason.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that this Interview has a connection to some other dimension?

[A] Mac Laine: Ok, that's what it is. It's a connection to something else that needed to happen. And the something else is whatever comes out of this. I'm sure the whole thing is for you and me to figure it out. It's something special that comes out of this exploration of my head. Maybe I just needed you to do it with.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's continue exploring. You do so many things--where does your stamina come from?

[A] Mac Laine: Maybe it's just that I don't sit on a lot of my feelings. That takes more energy than anything, so you've got none left over. I pretty well say what's on my mind. My idea of the Chinese torture is not to be able to express myself to someone about what I feel about him or feel about him in relation to me. I believe that when you're afraid to tell someone something, it's really something you don't want to hear yourself. You're afraid he'll hurt you.

[Q] Playboy: Among the many activities we haven't yet mentioned is your involvement in politics--

[A] Mac Laine: Ah. The real entertainment.

[Q] Playboy: In 1969, you said politics were no longer relevant to you. Then you dived headfirst into George McGovern's 1972 Presidential campaign. Why?

[A] Mac Laine: Nixon was relevant. A major, basic reason I committed myself to the extent I did was that I didn't want Nixon to appoint three new Justices to the Supreme Court who might reflect his values; it wasn't so much about politics.

[Q] Playboy: Nixon did that anyway.

[A] Mac Laine: Yup. But now my point of view is that you do what you feel you have to do and then let nature take its course.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning?

[A] Mac Laine: Meaning we got rid of Nixon once and for all. I think the American people elected him just to get rid of him. It couldn't have happened unless George had lost that election. But, you know, I stuck with George; it wasn't just a passing thing. I continued to work for McGovern every day after the convention, even after it was clear that he'd blown it because of the Eagleton affair. My principles would not let me walk away. I stuck to the end. People began to wonder about my judgment. Teddy White said I had the best political instincts he knew, but why was I using them on losers? I think it was very hard for some people in my world, my community, to watch me do that in public, because most people jumped ship after the convention.

[A] Also, whenever I explained why I was working so hard for McGovern, I said it had to do with the character and value system of Richard Nixon. I approached it all on a personal basis. The Hollywood hierarchy--the money people--weren't pleased with my personal evaluation of Nixon. So when what I said about him turned out to be true a year later--during Watergate--some of those people had a hard time looking me in the eye, because they expected me to say, "I told you so." But I never did.

[Q] Playboy: That period in the early Seventies was concurrent with a five-year period when you weren't hot in Hollywood.

[A] Mac Laine: I don't think politics was the only problem. It was a double whammy: I had done two pictures in a row that didn't make any money--The Possession of Joel Delaney and Desperate Characters--and my TV series had been a disaster. I had spent almost two years "no"ing myself out of good scripts. Along with that, in the money people's eyes I had supported the wrong person politically and then turned out to be right.

[Q] Playboy: Did you suspect a black list?

[A] Mac Laine: No. Might have been gray but not black. The bottom line in Hollywood is profit and talent. If I had made a couple of great pictures, it wouldn't have mattered whom I'd supported.

[Q] Playboy: Since you were so very outspoken about Nixon's character during that period, did you experience any fear for yourself when he won?

[A] Mac Laine: No. I was so used to having my phone tapped by that time that I figured, What are they going to do--tap it some more? I ran a good part of the women's arm of the McGovern campaign from my apartment, and I had so many people coming to fix the phone lines that were being cut three times a week that the building managers finally got fed up. A lot of dirty tricks were played--throwing garbage into my hall, all sorts of things.

[Q] Playboy: Are those the ransackings you claim were done by the CIA?

[A] Mac Laine: They would come in and ransack the place, not steal anything. Just harassment. Just turn everything over, do the drawers, throw everything in the middle of the room, dump garbage and trash.

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel helpless?

[A] Mac Laine: No. Never. I thought they were defenseless and helpless if they had to stoop to such things with some poor little movie actress who was just being her idealistic self. Please, what kind of Government is this if it's scared of me?

[Q] Playboy: Can you see yourself getting politically involved again?

[A] Mac Laine: It's possible. Mike Wallace asked me on 60 Minutes if I were going to run for the Senate. An elevator man stops me and wants to have a chat about my political future, or a cabdriver yells, "Hey, Shirl, why don't you run?" What are these people picking up on? Maybe they're seeing that I've made my life better and I'm talking about it out loud. And somehow they translate that communication into leadership. It's come as a surprise to me, because I have not been involved in this election campaign. I only know what I read. And I don't spend a lot of time concentrating on that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a scoop for us, then, on your political plans?

[A] Mac Laine: I haven't thought about it. But everyone is asking.

[Q] Playboy: You were once asked seriously to consider becoming a candidate for the Senate but turned it down. Why?

[A] Mac Laine: Some California people with a lot of money came to me and said they would support me if I ran. Is that being asked seriously? I said that if I could play six weeks in Vegas and do two pictures a year, I'd do it. I had more to do and feel in the art world. I wanted to continue my work where my creativity lay at the time. I didn't know about the future.

[Q] Playboy: Did you seriously think you could continue a creative life in the arts and also be in politics?

[A] Mac Laine: It's possible. I was kidding about Las Vegas, but if I criticize our leaders for not integrating a spiritual view into their lives, then I have to also say, "Do I do it in my own life?" I'm trying to. That's one of the things I'm trying to share in my writing and in interviews like this. Ok. So if all politicians are supposed to do is help us make better lives for ourselves, maybe one day I'll have some good ideas that can be utilized practically. But they would be centered on this spiritual realization I'm beginning to have.

[Q] Playboy: Any practical or spiritual thoughts about the '84 campaign?

[A] Mac Laine: [Pauses] I'm not positive Reagan is going to be in the race at the end.

[Q] Playboy: What? He has already announced; by the time this Interview appears, he'll be running strong.

[A] Mac Laine: I know. But I keep seeing Bush. I don't know why.

[Q] Playboy: To what do you attribute Reagan's appeal?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, you can disagree with him all you want but, let's face it, the man is playing the role of his life, with his ideology as his screenplay.

[Q] Playboy: Are you being cynical?

[A] Mac Laine: No. Aren't we all playing the roles of our lives? But is there any doubt in your mind that he's having fun with this role? The public knows he's having a good time being President. I think it's real. I think it's genuine. People are too smart--smarter than you think. So I think that if you do anything sincerely, you're going to succeed. That's the secret of Ronald Reagan. I really think that Ronald Reagan is an enlightened human being. Coming from me, a liberal, democratic socialist, that's something to say. But I believe it. He is coming from where I'm coming from these days: He believes in himself, he believes peace is possible, he was seemingly forgiving of the boy who tried to assassinate him--he cares for the family; he cares for the boy's mental health--he cares for the souls of the unborn. He speaks to the higher values.

[Q] Playboy: Quite a campaign speech. So could a liberal, democratic socialist actually vote for Reagan?

[A] Mac Laine: I doubt that seriously. I disagree with his corporate materialism, which is to balance the budget at the expense of human poverty. I disagree with his calling the Soviet Union the focus of evil in the world--at the same time that he says he wants peace. How can you call the opposition Satan? How can you then sit down with Satan to negotiate peace? What would he do, sell his soul to the Devil? So there is a conflict in his enlightenment. But the reason he's a popular individual is that he, of all the candidates, is speaking from his heart. I don't think he's acting. This is genuine.

[Q] Playboy: Was there a conflict in Jimmy Carter's enlightenment as well?

[A] Mac Laine: No. But he didn't have the American concept of strength and administrative assurance. He didn't have it at all. But he may be extremely underestimated as a President. I don't think we've heard the last of him. He is coming into his own if he continues to progress as a spiritual commentator on the times. I think he saw himself that way, and that is why I liked the man and still do.

[Q] Playboy: As a self-styled individualist, you've taken some strong stands over the years on important social issues, including women's rights. Many women regard you as a symbol, because the way you've lived your life has presaged advances in women's causes by about ten years. Would you describe yourself as a feminist?

[A] Mac Laine: I didn't do those things because I felt they needed to be done; I was just being myself. I'm surprised when people say those things about me. [Pauses] I think most women had more damage done to their creativity than I had. My parents allowed me to be me. Yes, they were concerned that if I dared too much I'd get hurt, but it wasn't based on my being a woman, ever. My dad had great respect for my mind from the time I was a little girl. I remember him saying it and complimenting me over the Swiss steak and Birds Eye peas.

[Q] Playboy: In your friend Oriana Fallaci's Playboy Interview, she said she had trouble getting along with feminists, because in order to maintain the feminist struggle, they had to accomplish things in spite of men. How do you react to that?

[A] Mac Laine: There are some people who would say that Oriana is a man. I don't feel I've done things in spite of men all my life. But my life has been different from most women's. I've been a star since I was 20 years old, with people letting me do what I want because of my talent. Some of my pursuits along the lines of intellectual freedom were, of course, colored with "You're just an emotional woman." Some. But when I stopped and wrote a book, when I disciplined myself to put my thoughts down in an organized fashion and it appealed to people, I no longer got the feeling that my talent was all that anyone would respect. Also, I haven't been colonized as most women have. I have depended on men in my life and have wanted to live up to a man's expectations of me in certain ways, in certain relationships; but, at the same time, I was consciously rebelling against what a man expected of me. But it was never something that so overwhelmingly contaminated my happiness that I had to say, "I'm going to join a feminist movement and protest the male enemy." But most women, if they are to be believed, say that is their experience. And I accept it.

[Q] Playboy: So you'd agree that women's rights still have a long way to do?

[A] Mac Laine: Human rights still have a long way to go.

[Q] Playboy: Were you saddened by the failure of the E.R.A.?

[A] Mac Laine: Sure. But I don't think it was a big blow to the women's movement or ever will be, because women are one half of the human race. In many ways, the failure of the E.R.A. has so pricked the conscience of the males who defeated it that they're learning more from having voted wrong.

[Q] Playboy: So what is the most important issue today?

[A] Mac Laine: It's ironic, but it's God. We are involved in a planet-wide holy war. We are all pissed off either at Satan or at one another. The Second World War was about the religion of fascism versus those who wanted to live in freedom. Americans are anti-Communist because Communists don't believe in God the way we do. The whole Islamic uprising is about people who disagree with the Moslems' interpretation of the Koran. The same with the Jews and the Old Testament. And the only way we can stop it is to realize that we are all God. We are all part of that force. I see no difference between my supposedly metaphysical search and the future of socioeconomics and politics. That's what Anwar Sadat, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Pope and Lech Walesa are talking about. When Mother Teresa was asked by an American journalist, "When did you start doing what you do?" she said, "When I woke up one day and realized I had a Hitler in me."

[Q] Playboy: Let's turn to another part of your personal life. You were married for 29 years to Steve Parker. Even though you eventually settled, separately, in different parts of the world and you saw other men, you insisted you wouldn't get divorced. Last year, you did. Why?

[A] Mac Laine: It was time.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that before. Why was it time?

[A] Mac Laine: That's all I want to say. [Tightly] I don't want to talk about it right now. I'll write about it one day. But I can't--don't want to--talk about that. I'll have a lot to say about it somewhere else. But I'm going to say it when I want to, in my own pages.

[Q] Playboy: Will you discuss marriage?

[A] Mac Laine: Sure.

[Q] Playboy: What does it mean to you?

[A] Mac Laine: Never having really been conventionally married, I don't know. I've lived with people, but I guess it makes a difference if you don't have a piece of paper. The whole idea of marriage and swearing before a judge or God-promising to love in sickness and in health till death do you part--almost promises to program hypocrisy into society. It's not something I would feel comfortable promising.

[Q] Playboy: You did, once.

[A] Mac Laine: Yeah. I was 21 years old and did it for emotional security. But you asked how I feel about marriage, and since I'm trying to live the truth as I see it, I couldn't in all good conscience make those vows to anyone today.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Mac Laine: Because I don't know what changes will occur in me from now on. If my life up till now has been any example, I guess it will be more of the same--and I change all the time. Maybe my partner wouldn't want to. Then what do you do--stick together anyway, because you've promised to? That kind of idealistic legal promise is a program for pain. I don't like to make promises that I can't keep, and I don't expect anyone to make those promises to me. My priority in life is to try to fulfill my potential and my own instincts and motivations to share love and creativity. That includes more than one person.

[Q] Playboy: When you got married at 21, did you find emotional security?

[A] Mac Laine: Yeah. But when you look at the marriage itself, we were apart most of the time. Steve went to Japan in the second year. So my emotional security was a symbol, somehow. I really developed my own emotional security within myself. That's why the marriage worked for so long. I was essentially free the whole time, because neither of us wanted a conventional marriage. That was clear.

[Q] Playboy: It seems as if your emotional security made the marriage unnecessary.

[A] Mac Laine: Yeah. It's a paradox, I know.

[Q] Playboy: But you stuck with it because you take promises seriously?

[A] Mac Laine: Um-hmm.

[Q] Playboy: So if you're released from your promise--

[A] Mac Laine: When you finally get to the point where you say "It was time," that's when you say the promise was a mistake.

[Q] Playboy: Was it?

[A] Mac Laine: The marriage wasn't a mistake. But now, to go any further would be.

[Q] Playboy: How important are men to you?

[A] Mac Laine: As important as women. Human beings are very important to me. I'm having a really great time now, because I don't feel like going into a committed relationship. And if I see a person over a short period of time and he indicates that he would like to be more serious and committed, I explain right off the bat that it's not a part of what I want to do right now.

[Q] Playboy: Does your caveat work?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, I find that if things have gotten even that far with a man, as has happened a few times, my openness will deepen the relationship. The man will then tell me about his problems with other women or with a wife he may or may not have, and then we start pursuing a relationship that's much more mature and sharing. It seems to be the direction people who are attempting to be themselves in this society are going.

[Q] Playboy: Really? Isn't that do-your-own-thing gone with the Sixties and Seventies, while more traditional forms, such as marriage, are on the rise?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, what are your rules for commitment? Are you sure there's no difference between commitment and restriction? I'm saying there can't be rules for human interplay and sharing--keeping in mind at the same time, and always, that you treat someone with love and respect.

[Q] Playboy: Of course. But you're talking about the restrictions accepted in the traditional marriage. Apparently, it's just a line you won't cross.

[A] Mac Laine: It's not as if it's a line. It's a feeling. I am enjoying so much in my relationship with myself these days. It's the most important thing to me.

[Q] Playboy: Can't it also be a way of making sure no one gets too close?

[A] Mac Laine: Sure. But you know what I'm talking about here. You cannot really get close to anyone unless you are close to yourself. The more I know my nooks and crannies, the more I can respond to the nooks and crannies of another person. Maybe I'm working toward an ultimate, total relationship. That's possible. Maybe I'll even get married again. But right now, I think the strongest commitment is to work along your own track, being honest with yourself, with another person. Commitment doesn't even come up.

[A] But let me address myself to possible accusations that this is self-indulgent. You are ultimately going to get to these issues whether or not you are in a committed marriage, because you can't hold down the human spirit. The human spirit wants to experience love in many ways, sex in many ways; adventure; probably destructiveness in many ways; jealousy, too. So these problems that plague us will all come up whether or not we've promised someone to live with him forever. Most of my life, I put the cart before the horse. Now I'm putting it the right way round.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel sexual jealousy?

[A] Mac Laine: Not anymore.

[Q] Playboy: You said recently that "sex is a nonissue." What did you mean?

[A] Mac Laine: The issue can be sexual jealousy, possessiveness, propriety--the issue is everything but sex. I would not be comfortable in a sexual relationship with someone who was not pursuing the depths of his character the way I am now. It would be too superficial. And I used to think that having sex was something like having dinner. I went through that in the Sixties and Seventies, when it seemed to be the progressive way of thinking about sex. I don't think that now. Sex is a serious undertaking with someone. My view is more spiritual. It has to be part of it. When you really go to bed and make love with someone, it is the most intimate exchange of human energy in which you can indulge. You live with the interaction of those sparks for a long time afterward. It's not wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. But I'm not saying those deep, intimate exchanges can or must happen only with one person. You know what I'm saying? Every time you choose to do it is not a casual choice. Frankly, I don't think what you have to eat is a casual choice, either. Everything becomes important when you reach the vista of freedom of choice in your life. It can be very frightening.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you feel simple, pure, chemical sexual attraction anymore?

[A] Mac Laine: I used to. I can't anymore. The parameters of my desire have expanded. Casual fucks are not casual fucks to me anymore, based on the knowledge of all the unconscious stuff that's going on between me and whoever it is. As a matter of fact, I've tried a couple of times since this realization and it wasn't pleasant.

[Q] Playboy: If you've become more conservative about sex, you've stepped further into controversy in your latest book with your claim of reincarnation and spirit guides. First, why do you write?

[A] Mac Laine: I probably write as an excuse to be alone. Writing is my crutch.

[Q] Playboy: Do you enjoy writing?

[A] Mac Laine: Yes, because I really dig myself a lot and I get to be with myself totally. All the men I've lived with have told me that I am not as much fun to be with when I'm not writing.

[Q] Playboy: Do you prefer any particular setting for your work?

[A] Mac Laine: I can write anywhere. I've written under hair driers, at a red light, on airplanes; definitely between scene setups on a movie. I write with the crew milling around and talking. But my preference now is to write in total silence somewhere where there are trees.

[Q] Playboy: Why trees?

[A] Mac Laine: This is going to sound wild and I'm not sure that it's true, but I'm examining the whole thing: Trees have more crystal in them than moving water does. There's crystal in the leaves, in the sap, in the trunks. Pine trees, especially, have more silica. I think the silica content may act as a thought amplifier for me.

[Q] Playboy: Amplify that for us, please.

[A] Mac Laine: Well, there's a reason why psychics look into crystal balls; why Venus or imaginary planets are usually depicted as crystal cities; why NASA is putting crystals in its space capsules [a NASA spokesman denies this]; why all of us into this spiritual work wear crystals. They're a thought amplifier. You can feel it. If I take off my diamond necklace--and diamonds are just high-pressure crystals--I feel a depletion of energy. I'll tell you this for certain: The tree outside my hotel room in Houston, where we shot Terms of Endearment, got me through that movie. I talked to that tree in my mind--not actually verbalizing, of course, but just knowing the tree was there. It had a white-sound effect when other noises were happening around the hotel. I could focus on that white sound, and it obliterated other noises. I used a white-sound machine when I wrote my second book.

[Q] Playboy: When we began this Interview, you said that on your 49th birthday you "projected" the reactions people would have toward your book Out on a Limb and its claims. What did you mean?

[A] Mac Laine: It means I knew that the people who understood what I was talking about, because they had been walking down their own paths in terms of these questions, would palpitate to it. Those who didn't would just leave it alone.

[Q] Playboy: Or deride it. The book is a best seller, but some people have made fun of your beliefs about specific past lives and spirit guides.

[A] Mac Laine: No one likes to be publicly humiliated. I knew there would be some resistance to this, so I began to experiment by bringing my interests up at small gatherings; or people would ask what I was doing and I would lightly broach the subject I was writing about. I found the receptivity quotient much higher than I had expected. People had been thinking about these things in the privacy of their own hearts. I hadn't known only because they hadn't said them out loud.

[Q] Playboy: How did your friends react?

[A] Mac Laine: Some of my best friends thought I would be held up to public ridicule, and a couple thought it would ruin my career. Seriously. "Career buster" was the line I heard from close, trusted friends.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Mac Laine: Bella Abzug and Pete Hamill went down once to Atlantic City when I was playing there, and they had made a pact with each other that they weren't going to leave until they had talked me out of it. Instead, we sat around talking about what this all means: why the movie E.T. was so popular; why protests that celebrate the potential of life over the destruction of life are spiritual experiences; John Lennon's death and Yoko Ono's belief that his energy is now part of the universe. We talked about why so many millions seem to be responding to that stuff. They seemed to be engaged in the talk. They never said it, but it's my impression that they wanted to understand.

[Q] Playboy: Hamill, with whom you lived for seven years, has said your beliefs are intellectual nonsense. Were you developing your beliefs during that relationship?

[A] Mac Laine: No. He didn't know I was thinking about them.

[Q] Playboy: You kept them from him?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, he wouldn't respond to the little things I threw out, so there was no point. I don't think it was the reason for the end of the relationship, though. We had just gone as far as we could together. We visualized different futures for ourselves. We're still great friends.

[Q] Playboy: Has your brother ever said anything to you about your book?

[A] Mac Laine: It's one thing we never discuss. I don't know what he thinks. However, he's told me how much people have related, as he put it, to my book; he says they were really deeply influenced. But he didn't tell me he was.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't a version of the book turned down by Random House, the original publisher?

[A] Mac Laine: Jason Epstein, the editor there, thought I had a psychological dislocation. He said, "This won't sell at all. We don't want to be a party to it." It went to Bantam instead. That was Jason's truth at the time, but intellectual cynicism is a sickness. It makes you bitter and caustic and sarcastic. Intellectual cynicism can give you extraordinarily rococo, eloquent arguments, but does that make them more intelligent than someone who believes in goodness?

[Q] Playboy: In your book, you describe your own past lives, including one in Atlantis.

[A] Mac Laine: Yes, I remember that lifetime. There was a high technological level. There were spacecraft, cultural exchanges that included artists from other planetary dimensions, scientists, genetic experts, teachers of the meaning of energy.

[Q] Playboy: How was that past life revealed to you, by a spirit guide?

[A] Mac Laine: No. It's in my cellular memory. In my soul memory.

[Q] Playboy: When do those memories come to you?

[A] Mac Laine: Sometimes it flashes at the strangest moments. But it usually happens when I writes when I meditate or when I'm in that alpha state right before I fall asleep. And then I check out the pictures with a spiritual guide--who is not in the body then--and it confirms them. Sometimes, if a guide says things that don't sound familiar, I don't go with it--only with what I resonate to. You know, there is a whole body of metaphysical literature--read Francis Bacon's New Atlantis Part One; Bacon is the father of science--that says most Americans are reincarnated Atlanteans with the task of not making the same mistake twice.

[Q] Playboy: What mistake?

[A] Mac Laine: [Dryly] The Atlanteans blew themselves up.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever know your parents in a past life?

[A] Mac Laine: Very definite heavy relationships. We've talked about that a lot. [Pauses] But I'd really rather not discuss specific past-life incarnations, because that will be picked up; it's too sensational. I'll put it in another book. I know how your press agent would treat that.

[Q] Playboy: Based on what you said earlier, is that why you felt we had to work something out in this Interview--because we'd met in an earlier life?

[A] Mac Laine: Sure. Of course. There's no question in my mind. That's what you meant when you said the idea to interview me "just came" to you.

[Q] Playboy: You really believe that?

[A] Mac Laine: That's what it was all about.

[Q] Playboy: Does that happen with everyone with whom you make empathic contact?

[A] Mac Laine: Yeah. It means there's more stuff to work out.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still speak with the spirit guides you describe in the book?

[A] Mac Laine: Oh, yes. I miss Tom McPherson--he's an Irish pickpocket, one of my spiritual entity's favorite incarnations--if I don't talk to him for a while. There are also several others I learn from and work with now. But I don't like to use the guides as crutches. The early explorative phase was phenomenal to me, so I wrote about them.

[Q] Playboy: Are you conscious of being watched, cared for?

[A] Mac Laine: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: You've mentioned remembering beings from other planets. Have you ever seen a UFO?

[A] Mac Laine: No.

[Q] Playboy: But you'd like to.

[A] Mac Laine: Oh! One of my fondest desires is for one to come over my house on a starlit night, hover there, send down a little ladder and take me for a ride.

[Q] Playboy: But you do believe, on faith, that there's a close relationship between extraterrestrials and spirit guides, don't you?

[A] Mac Laine: First, as Carl Sagan says, to think we are alone in the cosmos is the ultimate pomposity and arrogance. OK. Now, of these UFO craft that are spotted, I'm sure some are fake and some are natural phenomena and some are weather balloons--but a large portion are not.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know?

[A] Mac Laine: They're really unexplained. From the people I've talked with who have had contact with other beings--either by going aboard crafts or by being taught by individuals who came out of crafts--it seems the same message was given every time: Higher knowledge is the knowledge of mind, body and spirit. The eternal triangle. The craft's vehicular motion is the knowledge of mind, electromagnetic waves in the universe and the ability to manipulate gravitational pulls from one planet to another. But even more than space-age technology, what the extraterrestrials seem to be teaching is the need for understanding of the soul, which is "Do not be afraid of death. You do not die; you just change form. You are part of the giant thought, which is God. You are divine, as is everything. You are your brother's keeper. And attempt to dispel judgment."

[A] It's the same message from all of them. It's the name message as the Bible. It's the same message as the prophets gave. It's the same message as the spiritual guides and teachers coming through transmediums give. It's the same message as born-again Christians'. It's the same message from Mother Teresa. It's the same message taught by Gandhi, Sadat, King, Walesa.

[Q] Playboy: When all beings--including extraterrestrials--die, do their souls go to the astroplane and hang out with souls from all over the universe?

[A] Mac Laine: Um-hmm. Hang out together. I think that's one reason why we are so attracted and, indeed, haunted by the idea of extraterrestrial life. I believe we've actually been there in other incarnations.

[Q] Playboy: We don't necessarily have to come back to this earth?

[A] Mac Laine: You choose wherever you want to go. Imagine how much work we've got to do, huh? [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: So no one really has anything to fear? It all works out in the end?

[A] Mac Laine: Right. Exactly right. That's why this realization totally changes your life when you begin to resonate to it on an everyday basis.

[Q] Playboy: Do other people who resonate approach you about this?

[A] Mac Laine: Well, one day on the set of Terms of Endearment, right after there had been some press about my beliefs, our production manager came to me and said he had read a wire-service story about my book and my beliefs. He said, "So, Shirley, your daughter was your mother?" with this sarcastic expression. And at that moment, because it only happens in a beat, I said, "That's right, Austin. I feel that. Sachi does, too. We have discussed it, and as far as we're concerned, it's a truth of ours. And it's not the only relationship we've had in past lives." It must have been the way I said it. His whole face changed. And he said, "You know, I've had the same feeling about my own son." He had just been afraid of admitting it.

[Q] Playboy: What about those critics who insist on seeing your spiritual search as a movie star's far-out, faddy recreation?

[A] Mac Laine: It's not esoteric, abstract or inapplicable to everyday life. It's not inapplicable to politics or economics or mental health. In fact, the opposite. It speaks to materialism, death, the fear of death, egalitarian reform, revolution, human change, successful family life, successful interpersonal relationships. It's an applicable course of exploration. And when you become more enlightened to the possibilities of this notion that there is no death--it's a truth to me--it changes everything.

[Q] Playboy: But some people still will not believe it.

[A] Mac Laine: Well, everybody goes at his own pace. What do people think happens when you die? It gets back to that question. When you die, is that all? If you don't die--that is, if the spirit lives eternally--then there's a natural connection. It's easy for me to accept.

[A] And, you know, you didn't find those hang-ups or defense mechanisms in Sadat, Gandhi, Walesa, King. They are, to me, the great leaders of the 20th Century. And we always bemoan the fact that we don't have great leaders going for us today. It's because the people professing to be our leaders don't have that trust.

[Q] Playboy: With the exception of Walesa, the leaders you mentioned were killed.

[A] Mac Laine: But you never really die. If you really read Martin Luther King's writing--and I went to his library in Atlanta and did, the handwritten stuff--you'd see he was quoting Thoreau, Gandhi. And I've read Gandhi and Sadat, and all they talk about is that they don't die. So their knowledge makes them fearless and makes them contribute in an altruistic way. That's real leadership.

[Q] Playboy: They don't care about getting killed?

[A] Mac Laine: I think they knew their deaths would probably have as much meaning as their lives.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think John Lennon was on the spiritual path?

[A] Mac Laine: I don't think he was committed to the principles of nonviolence, no. Not after what I heard about him on the Sunset Boulevard.

[Q] Playboy: That was at one point. But his death elicited an incredible reaction.

[A] Mac Laine: Yes. People were resonating to his inner understanding that he was part of everything. That's what his music was about and what his role change with Yoko was about. It was a graphic example that there is no difference between male and female. He was absolutely a spiritually evolved person.

[Q] Playboy: What did you feel when he was shot?

[A] Mac Laine: The breath left me. I immediately wondered what karma was being worked out with him and Mark David Chapman. I understood that it wasn't an accident, that on a soul level, we all participate in everything.

[Q] Playboy: You knew President Kennedy. Was he on the spiritual path?

[A] Mac Laine: Possibly. And at the end, that's possibly what pissed off whoever it was. I believe one reason all those people were assassinated was because it's inevitable; those are the people who are most effective. Which speaks to the importance of the spiritual dimension. Someone had to kill those people because they could really move the world.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say that again?

[A] Mac Laine: It was necessary to assassinate them, which, to me, proves how important they were.

[Q] Playboy: So you're handing out a death sentence to all enlightened leaders?

[A] Mac Laine: No. No one ever dies.

[Q] Playboy: On a higher level, perhaps. But we miss them here and now.

[A] Mac Laine: That upper level is the only level. Besides, Kennedy, for one, is not dead. We resurrect him every year. We have celebrations to him all the time. He lives more now than if he had made a botch of the White House. Sadat, too. King. That's the miracle of all this.

[Q] Playboy: "All this." What is all this?

[A] Mac Laine: I believe the world is in a transitional period. We're slowly gliding into a new dimension, actually vibrating on a higher frequency. I've personally experienced that. In the past three years, I've been checking out these things that have been happening to me with other people--for example, flashes of intense heat that bathed me in perspiration at the most incongruous moments in the middle of cold weather; a sense of clairvoyant imagery that turns out to be true the next day; ESP, knowing someone who just walked into a room somewhere is trying to reach you and you pick up the phone and call and he was. In fact, sometimes the phone does not even ring. Almost involuntarily giving up meat. It's happened to me and many of my friends, some of whom aren't even aware of being on a spiritual path. Those are the little clues that you get along the way. Those who are not going with this harmonious flow of the body's subatomic structure vibrating to a higher frequency are getting sick. Dis-eased.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be saying you believe that spirits are sort of amassing at the dimensional border and vibrating us toward them.

[A] Mac Laine: That's your imagery; but, yes, let's put it that way. Yes. We're getting help from everybody: spiritual guides and teachers who are not in the body, extraterrestrials, spacecrafts. And it's all very simple--love and light.

[Q] Playboy: Why us? Why now?

[A] Mac Laine: Because the earth needs help. The earth needs to make this transition into its new dimension: the age of light, the age of Aquarius, the feminine age, the right-brain hemisphere that responds to the love intuition, the light intuition and the principle of nourishment.

[A] But I don't view these times as calamitous or apocalyptic at all. It's an opportunity to know ourselves and others totally in relation to the God, Love and Light principle. We're being given the opportunity to choose a path that recognizes that there is no positive or negative, no good or evil, just an "isness." We are all on Bucky Fuller's Spaceship Earth and there aren't just two points of view but six billion.

[Q] Playboy: It seems that your message is simply that peace on earth can be achieved if individuals are open-minded enough to be aware of their own enlightenment. Why, then, haven't you just emphasized the message and left what many consider to be the mumbo jumbo of UFOs, reincarnation, trance channeling and out-of-body experiences behind?

[A] Mac Laine: Peace on earth is what motivated my search in the first place. It became clear to me about 15 years ago that we had attended to the needs of the mind and body but that the third dimension--the spirit--was missing. And without it, there is no way to effect peace. As for concentrating on that and leaving the other stuff out--people just didn't seem to be listening. The basic message wasn't getting through. Most people are too afraid to think that those things are possible, because one of the big things they're afraid of is dying. But people are less afraid to talk now about what you call the mumbo jumbo. If I could tell you the number of people in this industry who've come up to me and said, "Oh, my God, we've got to get together and discuss it," well--

[Q] Playboy: Have you?

[A] Mac Laine: I have.

[Q] Playboy: With whom?

[A] Mac Laine: John Travolta, Carol Burnett, Marilu Henner. Many more in the entertainment business who are less visible: studio heads, bank presidents. I've gotten letters from three Senators who agree with everything I've been saying.

[Q] Playboy: All right. But, as you said about Brando, people are often more interested in your work than in your beliefs. For those who are still a bit more earth-bound, how about a final run-through of some of the people you've known in this incarnation? Would you give some quick, spontaneous reactions to a list of names?

[A] Mac Laine: Ok.

[Q] Playboy: Jack Lemmon.

[A] Mac Laine: A tea party with my best aunt. He felt like a close relative. [Pauses] Don'task me to explain these.

[Q] Playboy: Dean Martin.

[A] Mac Laine: A sandal in a piano that he picks up, saying, "Was Victor Mature just here?"

[Q] Playboy: Alfred Hitchcock.

[A] Mac Laine: Lifting his leg to a rung of a chair so fast for such a rotund little body.

[Q] Playboy: Gloria Steinem.

[A] Mac Laine: Movie star.

[Q] Playboy: Madam Chou En-lai.

[A] Mac Laine: Crying and tears, because we made a contact on a female level.

[Q] Playboy: Peter Sellers.

[A] Mac Laine: Past lives leaking through and confusing him in this life.

[Q] Playboy: William Peter Blatty--who reportedly used you as the role model for the mother in The Exorcist.

[A] Mac Laine: Determined to institutionalize evil.

[Q] Playboy: John F. Kennedy.

[A] Mac Laine: Uncomfortable in a convertible under a starlit night in California.

[Q] Playboy: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

[A] Mac Laine: An elevator opening in Bergdorf's and her walking out and my not realizing her eyes were that wide apart.

[Q] Playboy: Frank Sinatra.

[A] Mac Laine: Vulnerable, moody, friendly.

[Q] Playboy: Clint Eastwood.

[A] Mac Laine: Slugging his horse in the nose because it wouldn't obey and my saying, "You must be a Republican."

[Q] Playboy: Nikita Khrushchev.

[A] Mac Laine: Upset because I wore panties in Can-Can instead of none.

[Q] Playboy: Pete Hamill.

[A] Mac Laine: Brilliant wit. Caustic. Soft hair.

[Q] Playboy: Henry Kissinger.

[A] Mac Laine: The top half of his face saying one thing, the bottom half saying something else.

[Q] Playboy: Anne Bancroft.

[A] Mac Laine: Sophistication. One can never be too thin.

[Q] Playboy: Your daughter, Sachi.

[A] Mac Laine: Dandelions and daisies and fresh, open fields.

[Q] Playboy: Oriana Fallaci.

[A] Mac Laine: Self-destruction.

[Q] Playboy: Jerry Lewis.

[A] Mac Laine: Sexy.

[Q] Playboy: Marlon Brando.

[A] Mac Laine: Unpredictable, emotional reactions.

[Q] Playboy: Debra Winger.

[A] Mac Laine: Curls bouncing around liquid, dancing eyes, and she's forgotten it.

[Q] Playboy: Steve Parker.

[A] Mac Laine: Depth.

[Q] Playboy: Early life in Hollywood.

[A] Mac Laine: A red Plymouth, blinding-white sound-stage walls, sunlit white walls.

[Q] Playboy: Warren Beatty.

[A] Mac Laine: Wait a second, now ... translating life into folk art.

[Q] Playboy: Shirley MacLaine.

[A] Mac Laine: I see a photograph of her: head up and eyes open, mouth agape--and trying to remember to shut her mouth.

"I'm certain I was a prostitute in some other life and I just have empathy for them."