Playboy Interview: Susan Sarandon

The basic point about Susan Sarandon, 42, movie actress, political activist, world-class beauty, star of "Bull Durham," "A Dry White Season," "The January Man," "Pretty Baby" and "Atlantic City," is that no one has ever put her into a neat box. And if film stars are, indeed, expected to be narcissistic, career obsessed and dim, then Sarandon busts the stereotype by being intelligent, nonconformist and deeply involved in the world around her. She is the movie star who doggedly lives by her own rules: She owns a modest Greenwich Village apartment and eschews the cliquishness of Hollywood--a material girl she's not. She picks her movies with no particular career goals in mind but because she happens to like a part or need the money. She is about to bear her second out-of-wedlock child, whose father is Tim Robbins, her "Bull Durham" co-star, a man 12 years her junior.

Beyond her personal iconoclasm, Sarandon is a social activist. Count her in the forefront of those advocating a panoply of high-risk causes: for abortion rights, for the Equal Rights Amendment, for the nuclear freeze, against aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. "She has the best qualities of modern woman," says director Robert Allen Ackerman, who is a good friend of Sarandon's. "Strong, bright, capable, able to take care of herself, but there's room for you, too."

Adds Kevin Costner, her "Bull Durham" co-star, she could be the "Lauren Bacall of her generation. Susan is a throwback to the old actresses--feminine but tough. I don't think we've found out just how good she is."

Actually, Sarandon may well be the avatar of a new style in cinematic sex symbolism. The sex goddesses of the past tended toward youth, coyness and vulnerability; Susan Sarandon is seasoned, smart and self-defined. Men throughout the country seem smitten by her sassiness--and her great looks. Playboy, in 1981, called hers the "Celebrity Breasts of the Summer." Columnist George Will recently named Sarandon one of the earthly items he'd like to take with him on a voyage to another planet. Responded the red-haired actress, "I am very stunned and flattered and glad to learn that the rest of Mr. Will's body is not as conservative as his brain."

Clever one-liners come easily to this star of 24 motion pictures. But it wasn't always so. By her own account, she was a painfully shy child, nee Susan Tomalin, growing up as the oldest of nine in the New Jersey suburb of Metuchen during the Fifties. "I was the most inward, dreamy, suburban little girl there ever was," Sarandon says. "I think I played with dolls until I was practically married." Which she was at the age of 20. At the time a directionless undergraduate at Washington's Catholic University, she fell in love with an older acting student named Chris Sarandon. Shortly after their wedding, Chris asked his bride if she would accompany him to New York while he auditioned for an agent; he wanted someone friendly to read with him. At the tryout, the agent was impressed by Susan's looks and natural presence and decided to take on both performers as clients. Five days later, Susan was sent to read for a role in "Joe," a projected low-budget film about hippies. Instantly, the lead female part was hers for the taking; Susan Sarandon became a movie star after only five days of trying.

But the career that had come so easily hardly moved forward on a straight line. For much of the Seventies, Sarandon floundered through a weird selection of movies: She was Robert Redford's side-kick in "The Great Waldo Pepper," the high-camp heroine in "The Other Side of Midnight" and an ingénue in such disasters as "Dragonfly," "Crash" and "The Great Smokey Roadblock." The general Hollywood take on Susan Sarandon was that she was one of those good-looking creatures who would disappear from film in five years' time. Then she took the part of the naïve Janet in an odd gothic musical called "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." That film, released in 1975, quickly developed an underground audience of young people who declared it a camp classic. "It thrills me," she said, commenting on an important scene in the film, "that one day my grandchildren may see their grandmother in her half-slip and bra, seducing a monster." With "Rocky Horror," Susan Sarandon suddenly had a real following. "I'm the Helen Hayes of cult," she quipped.

In the Eighties, Sarandon began landing better roles: as the gorgeously sultry mother of Brooke Shields in "Pretty Baby"; as Brooke's mother again--this time wily--in "King of the Gypsies"; as the down-and-out clam-bar waitress in "Atlantic City." Her work in that last film was so impressive that without any studio campaign, her Hollywood colleagues gave her a nomination for the 1982 Best Actress Oscar. There followed choice roles as Catherine Deneuve's love interest in "The Hunger," as a suburban housewife/detective in "Compromising Positions," as one of Jack Nicholson's pretty obsessions in "The Witches of Eastwick." Then, last year, she won national hearts as Annie Savoy, the literate baseball groupie in "Bull Durham." As Annie says, "I won't sleep with a baseball player hitting under two-fifty, unless he has a lot of R.B.I.s or is a great glove man up the middle. A woman's got to have standards!"

In her own life, Sarandon has been linked to a series of interesting men in a series of untraditional relationships. After her marriage to Chris came apart in the mid-Seventies, she lived for several years with French film director Louis Malle, who was also her director in "Pretty Baby" and "Atlantic City." In the Eighties, she dated several actors--including Christopher Walken and David Bowie. Then, in 1984, she found herself pregnant with the child of Italian director Franco Amurri. Sarandon had always wanted to have children but had been told by her doctor that she was infertile. Rather than lose her chance at motherhood, she decided to have the baby and raise it on her own. "Listen, this is not so different from what most women have to do," she told an interviewer. "Most women have to raise their children pretty much by themselves." What Sarandon did was take her daughter, Eva Maria, with her to movie sets around the world--with stop-offs occasionally in Rome to spend time with Amurri. Then, last year, Sarandon fell in love with Tim Robbins, her "Bull Durham" co-star. She says that she and Robbins are determined to "become a family." They are expecting a child in May.

To get a closer look at this surprising performer, Playboy assigned journalist Claudia Dreifus (whose last "Playboy Interview" was with Daniel Ortega) to spend a few weeks with her. Here's her report:

"This was the third story in two years I had been asked to do on Susan Sarandon, and I was beginning to think that I might get labeled as her Boswell. But never mind. If one has to spend a lot of time around any one movie star, it may as well be Susan Sarandon. The thing that's most likable about her is that within the confines of a very strange profession, she has managed to hold on to who she is and not get blitzed out on all the glamor and hype--she definitely doesn't believe the press releases about herself. Many actors say that they are ambivalent about fame, but Susan really is. She's not crazy about seeing the most private aspects of her life--such as the news of her baby with Robbins--turn up in the tabloids. On the other hand, she's really quite glad to use her celebrity to publicize political issues she feels strongly about.

"Another likable thing about Susan is that she leads a real life: She goes to the supermarket. She picks up Eva Maria from school. She attends P.T.A. meetings. She has leaks in her kitchen. Her apartment is a chaotic two-bedroom place on a nice-enough block in Greenwich Village. It is not a huge or luxurious flat--not movie star--ish; Cher would think it a closet.

"Actually, I think Susan personifies many of the experiences that women our age have lived through. She grew up in the spiritual desert that was the Fifties, became a political activist in the Sixties and a feminist in the Seventies. For her, political liberation was sexual liberation--and one gets the sense of her as a free spirit who likes men but who also knows how she wants to live with them.

"In interviews, she doesn't like to talk specifics about her love affairs. Nor does she like to recount war stories from her life in Hollywood. 'I want to be the woman who doesn't tell all,' she has quipped. Still, with prodding and reasoning, she eventually gave more of herself to this interview than she expected to.

"But, actually, generosity is part of Susan's nature. Whenever there was a free moment during the weeks that we were doing the interview, she was serving food to the homeless at a soup kitchen, packing medical supplies at a warehouse to be sent to Nicaraguan hurricane victims, speaking at rallies to support Democratic Party candidates or trucking off to a meeting of MADRE, the woman-to-woman humanitarian-assistance organization that is her favorite charity. What was particularly nice about the way Susan functioned was that most of the time, she didn't do it as a star but as a citizen. Susan is really a Sixties person who hasn't given up. The fact that she happens to be a movie star is incidental."

[Q] Playboy: To start with what all America wants to know, what were your sincere feelings back in 1981 upon being named Playboy's "Celebrity Breasts of the Year"?

[A] Sarandon: I was named "Celebrity Breasts of the Summer." And I thought it was great. But I often wonder who held the title in the fall or winter.

[Q] Playboy: Why are people so obsessed with your breasts? Even Cher mentions them in interviews.

[A] Sarandon: I don't know. My breasts are highly overrated. I just read an article about Kim Basinger, in which the writer said that although she's fabulous, the best breasts in the business have always been attributed to me. The nicest thing I've ever heard about my breasts was said to me by a fan: "You have the kind of breasts I could take home to my mother."

[Q] Playboy: The scene a lot of men say they'll never forget is in Atlantic City, when you rub lemon juice on your body in front of a window as Burt Lancaster looks at you.

[A] Sarandon: Well, I guess voyeurism is always erotic. But, for me, that scene wasn't particularly erotic. Anyone who would rub lemons on her chest is completely insane. Believe me, it's very uncomfortable. I just tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible about it. I remember saying to Louis [Malle, the director of Atlantic City and, at the time, Sarandon's off-screen lover], "This scene should be shown as ordinary. It should be done only because she wants to get the smell of fish off her body."

I just wish I had rubbed something else on me so people would give me something other than lemons for the rest of my life. At restaurants, people are always sending me lemons. I get them in the mail. Now, if I had just bathed myself in Dom Pérignon or in money, my life would probably be much different today.

[Q] Playboy: How are things for you today?

[A] Sarandon: This is an interesting moment in my life. I've just turned down a movie job for a million dollars. It would have raised my fee to a level I've long been seeking. The timing would have been excellent: I'm pregnant right now, and I love to work when I'm pregnant. When I was pregnant with Eva, I did Compromising Positions, and that worked out terrifically. Afterward, there was all this time to rest and some money in the bank.

But this million-dollar film just offered me was another case of its really being the male actor's movie. The female part wasn't finished, and they couldn't tell me exactly what it would be. I just couldn't get into one more situation like that. It's scary, this decision. Believe me, I could have used that money. I also worry that I'm not making use of the heat from Bull Durham.

[Q] Playboy: Tim Robbins, the actor who plays the young pitcher in Bull Durham, is the father of your baby, isn't he?

[A] Sarandon: That's true, but if you'll forgive me, I don't want to say more. I'm superstitious about talking about relationships I'm in. I will tell you that we intend to be a family. I'm entering this expecting we will fight to the death to make this work, that we'll take no prisoners. That's my expectation.

[Q] Playboy: Are you and Robbins planning on marrying?

[A] Sarandon: Frankly, I don't think that has anything to do with being a family. We haven't even discussed it. It's certainly not high on my list of priorities. I'm someone who likes making commitments because I want to, not because I have to. I like in-the-moment, constant commitment. I think you take each other less for granted.

[Q] Playboy: Were you and Robbins together when you made Bull Durham?

[A] Sarandon: No. We weren't together at that point.

[Q] Playboy: You got together after the movie was finished?

[A] Sarandon: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Can we ask--

[A] Sarandon:No! You cannot ask.

[Q] Playboy: OK, let's switch from the men in your life to the women. Cher told us that you and she are kind of close friends. Is that true?

[A] Sarandon: Well, I consider Cher a friend, but I don't see her a lot and we don't have a lot in common. I respect her. And I know she would always be there for me. Certainly, when you go through an experience like Witches of Eastwick, there's a kind of trench-war friendship that's formed. All of us bonded pretty closely after that.

[Q] Playboy: Three years after the filming of The Witches of Eastwick, we still hear about what a horror it was to work on. Why?

[A] Sarandon: It was something. I don't believe in telling tales out of school, so I won't give you specific anecdotes. I don't believe in ratting--even on rats. Let's just say that they kept changing things: scenes, parts, endings. They kept trying to come up with a different ending. A movie that was supposed to take three months to make took six, and there was a certain amount of disagreement between the producers and myself about paying me overtime.

As for Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and me, we weren't even called women--we were "girls." And "the girls" were all kind of lumped together. Looking back now, the whole project seemed out of control. The higher-ups couldn't vent any negativity on Jack Nicholson. So we "girls" were next in line.

[Q] Playboy: How could anyone "vent negativity" on three powerful actresses?

[A] Sarandon: Well, when you're an actress who works on a movie, you don't have a vote. I certainly bore the brunt of most of what went down. I was the one whose part and per diem were taken away. The part I thought I was going to play was taken away from me a few days before we started--against my will. Suddenly, I was a character called Jane and had to learn to play the cello. When we started, we didn't even have a script. I had no wardrobe.

[Q] Playboy: Did you at least learn something from the experience?

[A] Sarandon: Yes. There came a moment when I had to decide whether or not to leave the film--which would have meant I couldn't have worked for a while. Instead, I said, "Fuck 'em. I'm going to enjoy myself from here on." The production was totally out of control, but I just flowed with it. At one point, Cher said to me, "I don't understand. How can you be dealing with this? Have you lived with a crazy person before or something?" Come to think about it, I can't imagine how anything I learned there could be useful--except maybe for gun-running.

[Q] Playboy: There's a story going around Hollywood that whenever the Witches producers ran some unpleasant number on Jack Nicholson, he'd demand that another telephone be installed in his trailer. By the time the movie was over, he was falling over a pile of phones.

[A] Sarandon: Jack's great! There's no getting around it. Jack has some bold moves. I want my daughter to grow up and be just like him [laughs]. He has heart and he's original. He's generous. He's courageous. I mean, I can't think of any better role model--though [laughs] I'm glad I don't live with him.

[Q] Playboy: With all the madness that went on during Witches, why didn't you do what many movie stars might have done--toss your weight around, make a few unreasonable demands of your own?

[A] Sarandon: That's not my style. I'm not very comfortable with stalking off sets and keeping people waiting. But I did it with Witches. We had gone into weeks of overtime. Things were pretty much out of hand. My daughter and her father came to the set for lunch. [Producer] Jon Peters threw Franco [Amurri] and my child off the set during the lunch break. Peters then sent out a memo about how the set was completely closed, how no one was allowed on it because we were losing so much time.

Not too long after that, one of the MGM executives and his wife and some other people came through. I said, "Hey, what's this?" And Peters said, "Yeah, but that's so-and-so." So I walked off and left the set.

[Q] Playboy: Despite the fact that there's no love lost between you and Peters, you are frequently confused with his ex-wife, actress Lesley Ann Warren. She has said she constantly gets your fan mail.

[A] Sarandon: Oh, does she? [Laughs] I wonder if she answers it. She's probably better at being me than I am.

[Q] Playboy: Why the mix-up?

[A] Sarandon: I guess we look like each other. We once did an AIDS benefit and we spent the whole evening standing next to each other, so that people would see that there were really two of us.

[Q] Playboy: If Witches has been your worst professional experience, what has been your best?

[A] Sarandon:Bull Durham. Without question. Working on that movie restored my faith in passion, poetry and team playing. In the past few films I had done before that, I'd been pretty badly treated. On Bull Durham, the team worked together and refused to become susceptible to manipulation from the outside. Everyone was treated as an equal. We were respected. We were generous with one another.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think that was?

[A] Sarandon: Perhaps it had to do with the mentality of the project itself. In Witches, there was the Devil and then there were these three gals, who, put together, made one leading lady. Bull Durham was about full, actualized people. I loved that movie. Ron Shelton, the director, really trusted me with a lot of his heart. Annie Savoy, my character, is a composite of a lot of the real women in Ron's life.

[Q] Playboy: Annie Savoy was considered a movie breakthrough. She is an older heroine--already unusual--and she is aggressively sexy without being punished for it. In the old movie cliché, the sexy woman pays for her sexiness with some kind of punishment.

[A] Sarandon: Yeah, it's strange. I've read that Annie is every man's fantasy. But I think she is a female fantasy, too. I mean, it has always been my fantasy to be everything--sexy, smart, fun-loving and fragile--all at the same time. The way I saw Annie was as a ... high priestess. She is as straightforward as any guy. At the same time, she is fragile, because she really wants to believe.

[Q] Playboy: Believe in what?

[A] Sarandon: In everything from the Church to baseball to love. Annie is some one who always keeps looking.

[Q] Playboy: Of the characters you've played in your twenty-four movies, is Annie the closest to your own character?

[A] Sarandon: I'd love to think so. Yes, she's certainly the first character I felt was large enough for me to just jump in, fill her up and let her take me somewhere. What I usually have to do is take a smaller person and put in a lot of myself to expand her.

[Q] Playboy: There's some fairly explicit sex in Bull Durham. Would Annie use condoms?

[A] Sarandon: That came up as an issue. Actually, I'm sure she uses them, though the movie wasn't about making such a point.

[Q] Playboy: Well, this is the age of AIDS--and Annie Savoy gets around quite a bit.

[A] Sarandon: No, she doesn't! One guy a season! That's not so much!

[Q] Playboy: OK. Let's talk about what Annie does with one guy. Those sex scenes with Kevin Costner turned a lot of viewers on.

[A] Sarandon: That's what we had in mind. They are not Kevin and me futzing around, groping each other. We knew what we were trying to say. That's why I touch his bruise and that's why I kiss his face and that's why he doesn't rip my clothes off. What we're saying is, "These two people have really found each other!"

We put the sex into an emotional context. There's a wonderful scene in the kitchen. Kevin and I eat together, we laugh together, we read together. He carries me upstairs and then he starts to undress me. At one point in the filming, Ron thought maybe we should do all the sex scenes downstairs, because we were under incredible time pressure to finish the movie. At first it was suggested we stay downstairs and that Kevin should just throw me on the floor. But God bless Kevin, he said, "No, no, no. This has to be romantic." He was completely right. Kevin will make a great director someday. His instincts are wonderfully on target.

[Q] Playboy: Actors often say sex scenes are actually boring to do.

[A] Sarandon: Well, these weren't boring. Kevin and I were good friends, too. Kevin's a fairly modest guy, so it wasn't easy for him. But no, it never got boring, because we were doing a lot more than just rolling around on the bed. What's wrong with most movie sex scenes is that they are not scripted; they have no purpose. Actors are just photographed in embarrassing positions. But we were really acting--and what we were doing was important in the context of the story.

[Q] Playboy: How did Tim Robbins feel about those scenes?

[A] Sarandon: As I said, we weren't together at that time. But I remember my brothers came to visit me on the set; and there were a bunch of people watching the dailies of those scenes. Everyone was uncomfortable watching them--including Kevin, who couldn't sit down. In the dailies, you could see a lot of things that were edited out later. So we were all looking at this footage and it was too erotic, too exposed, and we all went, "Oh, nooo!"

[Q] Playboy: We're surprised by your shyness. Bull Durham wasn't your first movie sex scene. Movie fans remember The Hunger, in which you and Catherine Deneuve made love--and film history. Very explicit, wasn't it?

[A] Sarandon: Yes, it was. But, again, it was justified. Actually, that was the first sex scene I'd ever done in a movie. I'd never been touched on screen before. Yes, I'd been in some pretty famous erotic scenes in terms of images--Pretty Baby, Atlantic City--but I had never been touched. As you may remember, in Pretty Baby, I was just sitting there talking about my breasts, touching my nipples, with Brooke Shields sitting at the end of a divan.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any reluctance about doing an explicit lesbian love scene?

[A] Sarandon: Not with such a scene per se. Rather, with how it was first presented to me. When we began shooting The Hunger, I said to Tony Scott, the director, that it seemed to me that what happens before and after sex is more interesting than what people do in bed.

Now, in The Hunger, what the script originally had was a scene where we were talking and, next thing, we were deep in bed, doing something to each other. I complained: "This isn't real. When do they first touch?" So I constructed a little scene where I spilled something on my blouse and handed it to Catherine; she handed me something to put on and that was the first time we touched. People tell me that they've found that little moment quite memorable.

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel any inhibitions?

[A] Sarandon: No. But certainly, if I was going to sleep with a woman, it was nice that it was someone as beautiful as Catherine Deneuve. What I objected to was in the original script: They made my character drunk and she was "taken" by Catherine. I objected to the writers' apologizing for the sex. I didn't want my character to be a victim. I felt it would be much more interesting for it to be mutual. So I changed that scene.

Actually, this was a first time for both of us and we were somewhat nervous. But we liked each other and we did our best to kid each other. Interestingly, after a few days of shooting those scenes, not only did the crew get bored with us--completely uninterested--but it got easier and easier for us to do. It was not so aesthetically difficult. There have been scenes I've had to do with men that were much more difficult. No, don't ask: I won't say who and when.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if you've always felt free to tell your directors of the changes you've wanted in your roles.

[A] Sarandon: I've always had my mouth open. Whether people listened to me or not, I don't know. But I've always made suggestions. On the first film I ever did, Joe, in 1969, I did my own make-up, my own hair and I rewrote the part. There was a scene where I was supposed to suddenly cry that made no sense to me. So I added a line that triggered something. I never knew actresses weren't supposed to do that.

[Q] Playboy: You and Louis Malle lived together for several years. Some people in the film business say your career would have gone more smoothly if the relationship had lasted.

[A] Sarandon: Well, what about his career?

[Q] Playboy: The two of you made some great movies together, don't you think?

[A] Sarandon: Yes, I think we worked pretty well together, though I don't know about my career. Certainly, for my life, it was a necessary experience. And I think it's unfortunate that ... I mean, if everyone in this business stopped working with people they'd lived with or had affairs with, we'd be at a complete standstill! But I guess it's simpler this way. It's unfortunate. He's a very talented man.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the good work you both did in that period was the result of your living together?

[A] Sarandon: If you're with someone who's your director, there are pluses and minuses. It's great to work with somebody you're in love with. It's exciting if you can feed him and he can feed you. If you trigger ideas in each other, there's nothing more sexy or interesting. But it's also difficult when you're with The Director. If the going gets rough on the set, the person he'll lash out against is one who won't walk off. You find yourself in a situation where, if you didn't have to go home at night with that person, you might walk off the project. Instead, you go home and make the tuna melts.

[Q] Playboy: Are you and Malle [who is now married to Candice Bergen] still friendly?

[A] Sarandon: I haven't spoken-- No, I wouldn't say we were friends. Not at all. I haven't pursued it and I don't think he has, either. I'm still very close to his children.

[Q] Playboy: People who know you say you've remained on good terms with all the important men in your life--except Malle.

[A] Sarandon: I guess that's true. But with Louis, it wasn't my doing. I don't hold grudges. I don't know how he feels. I do think he is a gifted director.

[Q] Playboy: So, no regrets?

[A] Sarandon: No. I'm someone who thinks that one's life is like a quilt; you have chapters, different panels, and each panel is valuable and necessary. I value that time, however frustrating or intense, because I learned from it. But as for kissing and telling on each panel, I've sworn never to write a book.

No, maybe I will write a book--about all the men I could have slept with and didn't.

[Q] Playboy: An interesting idea. Who might be the stars of such a book?

[A] Sarandon: Well, for starters, guys who rejected my friendship because they only wanted sex. There's one guy in particular who was forever trying to get me into bed, and I remember once saying to him, "Listen, can't we just be friends?" And he kept pressuring and pressuring me. Now, this was someone who was wonderful and very funny and everything. So I said to him, "All right, look: I will sleep with you once and then I'll never see you again." He said, "Fine with me--let's do it." I thought, What a jerk! You're not smart enough to see that you're throwing away an incredible resource in exchange for one night.

[Q] Playboy: Did you end up keeping your end of the bargain?

[A] Sarandon: No, because I was so disillusioned, I wasn't interested.

[Q] Playboy: But to get back to the question, how do you manage to stay good friends with your ex-lovers and ex-husband?

[A] Sarandon: Please--there haven't been thousands. Yes, my ex-husband, Chris Sarandon, and I are very good friends. He was my first time out. Whatever changes we went through, we left behind our youth. In general, I don't see the end as The End. It can grow into something else.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] Sarandon: Like a special jewel in your life that you value and adore but don't necessarily.... For instance, there's a man now I'm passionately in love with. It was just impossible when we were together. It's much easier now to talk to each other and even say, "I love you." I hear from him constantly. And because we're not dependent on each other, we're able to care for each other more than we did when we were thrashing around, trying to figure out what we were doing. Ours was one of those romances that are completely unavoidable and yet cannot happen, for a number of reasons. But now he'll call and say, "You're the only one I've ever loved," then he'll hang up.

[Q] Playboy: How does this mysterious Mr. X, who loves you so much, feel about your being with Tim Robbins?

[A] Sarandon: He's supportive. I think everyone has to have confidence in the fact that he is uniquely special to you--and that's it. The man I'm with certainly knows that and understands it. Besides, I think you have to allow people those jewels in their lives. You can't take that away from people.

Life goes by so quickly. Jealousy is something everyone feels, but you don't have to act on it. I'm not a very possessive person. In order to have my freedom, I back off to make sure that I'm not being possessive. I just don't indulge in it myself, because it doesn't lead anywhere. And I'm not in any way talking about open marriages or wife swapping, the logistics of which I've never understood. I just think I should be able to go to lunch or dinner with someone I've been with in the past. That shouldn't be a big deal. Nor should I have any objections to my partner's doing the same thing.

[Q] Playboy: How does all this work out with a child? You and Franco Amurri have a daughter, Eva. Does she understand these relationships?

[A] Sarandon: I think it's very important for her to have her father in her life, and however frustrated either Franco or I get with each other, she's never seen us be anything but warm and affectionate to each other. When she gets older, she will want an explanation of why things are the way they are and what happened. And we will have to deal with it then.

[Q] Playboy: Is that arrangement satisfactory to Amurri, too?

[A] Sarandon: No, I think it's difficult for everyone concerned. But it's just something grown-up people have to be able to take.

[Q] Playboy: Will he be able to take it now that you're pregnant with another man's child?

[A] Sarandon: Well, women seem to be able to do this all the time. I was living with a man who had two children with two women. And while I was with him, we would all be together in this enormous house for the holidays. It took me a while not to be intimidated by the children. But we were incredibly generous with one another. We all understood that on the holidays, it was important for everybody to be together. And it never occurred to me to demand anything different, because it was clear that these kids needed their mother and father during the holidays. So it was up to us to accommodate.

[Q] Playboy: Did you and Amurri plan your child together?

[A] Sarandon: When I found out I was pregnant, I was absolutely determined to go ahead with it--with or without. So I basically said, "This is what I'm doing. You think about it, because if you want to participate, it would be great." That was how it started--it was pretty loose. Was I ever frightened about doing it alone? I think probably no. I wasn't supposed to be able to have children. I just felt that I was enormously lucky to be pregnant. Eva was a miracle. I also think that, in these times, any woman who decides to have a child has to know, in her mind, that she would have it with or without a man. Because, in the end, you're the one who's the mainstay for that child.

[Q] Playboy: But this pregnancy is different for you, isn't it?

[A] Sarandon: Yes. Now, with another baby coming, and a man who is going to take responsibility, I'm faced with the question of becoming a part of a family. That's much more frightening to me. It's more frightening to me to try to make it work.

[Q] Playboy: Since you are a feminist, have you and Tim discussed matters such as sharing roles within the home?

[A] Sarandon: Tim and I don't really have to talk much about that stuff, because he has an advantage--he's not my age! He was raised by a very strong woman and received the benefits of a feminist upbringing. Tim's not sexist in the least. He was raised by a working mom, a strong mom, and I think he has great respect for women. Besides the obvious reasons women may want to be with younger men, this is one of them. There's a remarkable difference between men in their thirties and men in their forties.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us more. Your feeling that younger men are more compatible seems to be shared by other women.

[A] Sarandon: And why shouldn't it be? Any person who's of a different generation from you has an ear to different sounds, different art, different everything. It's like getting an infusion, in terms of ideas. There's no point in being with someone younger if his favorite group is the Beatles, is there?

[Q] Playboy: Or if he thinks of you as some kind of wonderful Sixties relic.

[A] Sarandon: Right. I wouldn't want that. I just think there are some people in their twenties and thirties who are remarkable. Tim is a great combination of irreverence and traditional values, which is great!

But I happen to have found an exceptional younger man. It's very hard to find someone in one's own age bracket who's available, sane, open-minded and undamaged. And I don't think this is all the fault of guys in my age bracket. They've lived through confusing times. Their mothers spoiled them. They also had to bear the brunt of some of the more strident aspects of the feminist movement. So these poor guys have been getting mixed signals. They were used to women who used backhanded manipulation to get their way. Then, suddenly, women said, "We don't want that, we want to be out front!" Suddenly, women were giving up everything that they could get by cajoling and whining and fainting.

Women, too, have been bewildered by all the changes. Women have not presented a unified front about our changing roles. So I think men are bewildered and angry about the changing rules of the sexual game. "What does a woman want?" as Sigmund Freud asked. That's really what Witches of Eastwick is about. On the other hand, a lot of men aren't listening.

[Q] Playboy: Some moviegoers are going to see your relationship with Robbins as ironic. In Bull Durham, the Costner character warns the Robbins character about you, "She only wants you because she can boss you around."

[A] Sarandon: Well, I couldn't be with a man I could boss around! There wouldn't be any fun in it at all.

[Q] Playboy: You used to pick older men, genius types, to be with. When did that stop being interesting for you?

[A] Sarandon: Oh, a few years ago. My experiences with geniuses is that good people can be clever and somewhat gifted, but "genius" seems to apply mostly to those who don't have integrated personalities, who are not burdened by other people's feelings. Which allows them an incredible amount of concentration on their own goals. Some of those people become so predictable, because they are locked into their own self-indulgent behavior, that, really, there's no sense of cause and effect. So, eventually, it becomes boring.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you stay too long in relationships?

[A] Sarandon: I guess as you get older, you start to recognize the wrong things more quickly and you leave more quickly. But certainly, yes, I do have a tendency to try to make things work and I try to stay. Then I cross over a line and there's absolutely no way to remedy the situation.

[Q] Playboy: Is Robbins the first person since Chris with whom you have felt safe enough to make a serious commitment?

[A] Sarandon: I don't know if I ever felt safe. Well, maybe in my marriage ... I don't know. We'll see. I think one of the big problems a lot of women have is defining why they would want to share the medicine cabinet with anyone. A lot of us don't really need men the way we did. We're economically independent. We know who we are.

I think the question of "why" has to be redefined. In my case, I need somebody who helps me feel safer, who keeps me honest--but most of all, a companion. The man I'm with has to be someone who's up for The Adventure, who brings you the odd idea--it's not just you taking care of him. There has to be real give-and-take in terms of rejuvenation, or there's no point. I think if the hard times are interesting hard times, that's fine; if they open doors, that's OK. What you owe each other is to make the world more interesting, because I don't think you're ever less alone when you're with someone.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you marry Sarandon?

[A] Sarandon: It was a friendship marriage, definitely a friendship marriage. He was about four years older than I. We met in the Sixties at Catholic University in Washington, where we were both studying. He really introduced me to everything from foreign black-and-white films to poetry. And he was gentle. When we met, I thought he knew everything. He was a real guide, a true teacher. That's why I've kept his name, which may be rather unfeminist of me.

I've always been grateful to him for his love and support at that time in my life. I've always felt that we were a little like Hansel and Gretel in the forest. For a while, we had a perfect little house, a garden. I baked bread. It was lovely. I credit him with providing a nurturing atmosphere where I could finally step out and start to explore.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you have to marry to get that? In the Sixties, many people were rejecting traditional forms.

[A] Sarandon: It would have been very hard to stay at Catholic University if we had been living together. It just seemed like the easiest thing to do. And we went into it with the understanding that we would renew every year. So I suppose it was a contract made by two people who weren't really qualified. But we made our own special contract.

[Q] Playboy: You really never planned to be an actress, did you?

[A] Sarandon: I was studying all kinds of things at college: military strategy, theater. I did some modeling in those days--not because I wanted to be a model but because it was a good way to pay off debts. I had never had acting lessons or anything like that. But I got my first movie job when Chris went to New York to audition for an agent--and he asked me to read with him at the audition. The agent ended up signing both of us. I must have been twenty at the time.

Not too long after that audition, they sent me out for a reading for this movie, Joe. There I was asked to do an "improvisation," and I said, "What's an improvisation?" Then they explained it to me, so I did something about drugs. On the spot, they told me I had the job. So I thought, Forget about modeling; this acting thing is fabulous--it's so easy.

[Q] Playboy: And you had it easy, compared with most actresses.

[A] Sarandon: You're right. Compared with most. And, as you know, Joe was a big hit. From then on, I worked on a soap opera and a lot of work just came to me. I got the ingénue part in The Great Waldo Pepper, with Robert Redford. I never really went to California, even after I had made a number of films. I thought it all was a lark and fairly amusing. It wasn't for many years that I started to want to get my hands on really good work and that I understood that acting was what I wanted to do.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you were lucky that you didn't take your career too seriously?

[A] Sarandon: Oh, yeah. After all, being a movie star is not world disarmament. It's certainly not like finding a cure for the HIV virus. And it is something where maintaining a life, maintaining some kind of integrity, not becoming a joke to yourself after twenty years in the business, is real tough.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Sarandon: When you're an actress, your value system comes under close scrutiny, because you're getting paid a lot of money to do something that's quite special and, at the same time, quite silly. If you become difficult--which often makes you powerful--people respect you, and you can find that you are no longer listening to others, no longer learning. It's easy to repeat yourself over and over until you become a paler version of who you originally were. A lot of actors have become caricatures of themselves, because that's what America does: The culture gets a product that works and then makes it bigger and bigger. No one examines the model.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your early success, did Chris say, "What's this? I took you to that audition to help me and now you're a bigger star than I am"?

[A] Sarandon: Not at all. Chris was working constantly in the theater. He was doing musicals. His first film was Dog Day Afternoon. But he always worked. He did The Rothschilds on Broadway and Two Gentlemen of Verona. I made more money than he did because I was doing movies, but that hardly was a problem.

[Q] Playboy: When did you have what you call your "identity crisis," your emotional breakdown?

[A] Sarandon: Around the time I did The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975]. Now, I've always said, if you're going to have a nervous breakdown, you should get sick first, because it really helps to lose a lot of weight and not be sleeping and be very thin and things like that. That gets you really primed. And that's what happened to me. I had pneumonia.

In fact, I fell into an abyss. I felt I was in a world that suddenly had no absolutes, and the structure of the world, the whys and wherefores of how things worked, were completely challenged. It didn't feel to me as if I were letting myself go crazy. It felt to me as if I'd had my eyes opened. I had to learn that love doesn't conquer all. People can actually be evil. And there are things you don't have control over, no matter how good you are.

[Q] Playboy: Was there someone in your life who was evil to you?

[A] Sarandon: That doesn't really matter. A lot of things happened. You know, one of the things I'm being very careful not to press upon my daughter is the idea that if you're a good little girl, everything is going to turn out all right. She has to know that if something goes wrong, it's not necessarily her fault. But if you're raised thinking that the system is controllable, that if you do everything right, you will be rewarded, it is very upsetting to find out that's not true.

[Q] Playboy: Were you raised, as a Catholic, to be a little saint?

[A] Sarandon: No, to be a big saint. But also with this idea that there was a plan, that God knew what He was doing, that He took care of the good people and punished the bad.

[Q] Playboy: So when you encountered evil, what happened to you?

[A] Sarandon: You want to know the actual manifestations of what happened when I had my breakdown?

[Q] Playboy: Well, it may help others who find themselves in a similar situation.

[A] Sarandon: I lost my hearing. I lost periods of time. I didn't know how I had gotten where. I lost a lot of weight. When I looked in a mirror, I didn't know who was looking at whom. I saw myself outside myself. I talked about myself in the third person. It was fairly dramatic.

I had never allowed myself the time to really fall apart before. So when it finally got hold of me, it was very strong. Before that, there had always been someone for me to be taking care of. I kept postponing my own crisis, so it became very large.

[Q] Playboy: So how did you get out of your identity crisis?

[A] Sarandon: I had a fabulous doctor who didn't hospitalize me--and who didn't drug me. I did go to a hospital at one point, but I didn't want to stay. I just thought it would be too easy. I was also afraid of--losing my magic, which, strangely enough, I learned later is what Blanche Dubois felt.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning that if you were taken care of in a womblike world--

[A] Sarandon: You'd never leave. Actually, once I came face to face with the demons, I got better pretty quickly. I have very close friends who've had similar serious breaks. I think it's a voyage that needs to be taken.

[Q] Playboy: How did you know that you'd come out of it--or that you'd want to?

[A] Sarandon: I thought, ultimately, it would be boring to stay in. Also, I knew it wasn't completely within my control. When you find out that you don't know what you've done for the past two hours, that you've been walking somewhere and haven't been able to hear a thing....

The scary thing was finding out if there were any absolutes. Was love an absolute? Because it became very clear to me in that heightened state that I could make just about anything happen. I could even see events that were happening far away. I thought I was having psychotic episodes, but we verified that in several cases those things were actually happening. So it was kind of a mind-expanding drug, in a way. It was quite an extraordinary trip.

[Q] Playboy: Are you religious?

[A] Sarandon: Well, I was raised Catholic and I went to parochial schools. Now I'm religious in a very pantheistic way. I have problems when religion gets institutionalized. Attending parochial school definitely killed it for me. I had problems with original sin, for instance--I was told I had an overabundance of it.

When I was in the third grade, I remember being made to stand out in the hallway because they were teaching us that anyone married outside the Catholic Church was not really married. I had said, "How could Joseph and Mary be married if Jesus didn't make that up till he was grown up?" I wasn't trying to be a wise-ass. I really wanted to know!

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about your family, the Tomalins of Metuchen, New Jersey.

[A] Sarandon: I was a suburban kid. There were nine kids and I was the eldest. We're all pretty eccentric and individualistic, and we've all fought our demons, each in individual ways. As I was growing up, I wasn't incredibly close to my brothers and sisters. The next one down was three years younger, so I was like the parent. It wasn't an unhappy childhood, but I did feel isolated.

[Q] Playboy: Was that because there were so many of you?

[A] Sarandon: There were a lot of us, sure. Nine kids is a lot of kids. It was chaos.

[Q] Playboy: When did you realize you were beautiful?

[A] Sarandon: I don't think I ever felt that way. That I had presence was something that came to me only in college. I was in a play--Shakespeare. They needed people to fill the scene when the king said something. I remember going down center stage, and when I was revealed, the audience went, "Ohhhh...." That was the first inkling I got that something could happen between me and anybody watching. Now, I always saw myself as symmetrical and being blessed with a fairly good figure, naturally. I've never worked out. I never did any of those things.

[Q] Playboy: So you never felt burdened by too much beauty?

[A] Sarandon: No, I'm not the person to talk to about that problem. As I've said, I've never really seen myself as knockdown gorgeous. You should talk to Michelle Pfeiffer. She's someone who's been burdened by being extraordinarily beautiful from the time she was a skinny kid. Me, I was just a skinny kid. I think of myself as the kind of person who grows on you after a while, not a head-turner on the street.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like your looks better now in your middle age?

[A] Sarandon: In my maturity. I like the fact that I look like some living has gone on there. Oh, sure, there are times when I think, Oh, God, why didn't they use more filters on that shot? They could have helped me out a bit. But, at the same time, I'm very pleased that my reviews mention some mixture of intelligence and sensuality. I'm so flattered and proud, because this seems to be a wonderful way to come of age. I remember seeing Melina Mercouri for the first time when I was a kid. And I thought, Who is this woman? She was so completely un-Hollywood. And then I discovered Anna Magnani, and I remember thinking, God, if I can grow up to have that much going on and be that strong and, at the same time, that vulnerable. You know, isn't that what a woman's about?

[Q] Playboy: Those women are European. Not many American movie stars have those qualities.

[A] Sarandon: Well, for years, everyone has been saying that I'm a European star. I always thought that meant I was in movies for which I didn't get paid a lot.

[Q] Playboy: You're also well known as a political activist. You are outspoken on a lot of unpopular causes. What is the source of your social concern?

[A] Sarandon: Selfishness! My political involvements stem from a position of survival--and I define survival in a fairly broad way. It's not that I have a big heart, I just have a large fear. I fear my civil rights' being removed. I fear nuclear war. I fear American democracy's being worn away by illegal, undeclared wars. I fear losing friends to a terrible disease like AIDS. That's where my activism starts.

[Q] Playboy: Have you lost friends to AIDS?

[A] Sarandon: Oh, certainly. I remember early on, when people were calling it a "gay cancer," I found myself in front of a march down to New York's City Hall, and I was the only woman there. I was stunned. That was years ago.

That year, I did Extremities, and I had this friend, Bobby Christian. He was a wonderful actor. We'd worked together in An Evening with Richard Nixon on Broadway. It was Bobby's experience with AIDS and dying from it that galvanized me to march for AIDS awareness. When he died, I decided to learn everything I could about this disease. I started marching. Well, at that time, if you talked about AIDS, people didn't even know what you were talking about. Since then, I've given a lot of time to this cause.

[Q] Playboy: People are more forthcoming now, aren't they?

[A] Sarandon: Not really. There still aren't a lot of straight actors who will go out for benefits. Recently, someone called me for an AIDS benefit and said, "We need a guy. We need someone from the real Hollywood community." And they couldn't find anybody. There's still great prejudice. A lot of male actors are afraid that if they support AIDS fund-raising, they'll be known as gay and then they won't get work. The horrible thing is that it's a legitimate fear.

[Q] Playboy: Has anyone ever turned you down when you've called for help?

[A] Sarandon: No, but then, I haven't called any of the really big male figures. Richard Gere, for instance, is very good. But Richard's very special. He's fearless.

[Q] Playboy: How did you get involved in Central American issues? You are one of the few actresses who are willing to associate themselves with support for the Nicaraguan Sandinista government.

[A] Sarandon: That was a long process and it was something that came to me through reading, meeting people and learning from them. In 1983, I filmed a program called Target Nicaragua for PBS. It was a history of American involvement there and I am not sure it aired. But anyway, through that, I met some Nicaraguan victims of the Contra war who were suing the American Government for their injuries.

One of the people I met was a woman named Dr. Myna Cunningham who was a Mosquito Indian and who'd been kidnaped and raped by the Contras. We became friends. She said, "Come to Nicaragua and see what's really happening." I decided to go. Right around that time, my friend Kathy Engel formed an organization called MADRE, which was trying to get woman-to-woman support for women and their children in Central America and the Caribbean. So I decided to make a trip with MADRE to Nicaragua to do something practical: take baby food and milk to women who needed it.

[Q] Playboy: What did you see there?

[A] Sarandon: Things I wasn't prepared for--kids who begged for pencils and not money; mothers in every town who'd lost children to the Contra war. I wasn't prepared for a heartfelt revolution where people were prepared to fight to the death if you tried to take it away from them. I wasn't prepared for day-care centers that had been bombed with my tax money.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you worry that your trip to Nicaragua might look like something similar to Jane Fonda's visit to North Vietnam?

[A] Sarandon: A bit. But this really was quite different. I went to Nicaragua in a specific way: to take food and milk under the auspices of a women's group. I didn't go under the auspices of any government. I didn't go with celebrities.

Sure, I was afraid of being called a Communist. But I was more worried about not really seeing the truth, because I don't speak Spanish and I was there for only two weeks. But, in the end, I came back more committed than ever to fighting against Contra funding. You can tell if something is genuine. Later, when I got back, People magazine ran a story about my trip to Nicaragua; in effect, they called me Hanoi Susan.

[Q] Playboy: Did that anger you?

[A] Sarandon: Sure. But I was also glad that I got to make some points. Because in the same story, I was able to show that there were women and children in Nicaragua--and that they were suffering. At first I was upset, but then I felt, Well, if people understand that there's a parallel with Vietnam, it is actually constructive.

[Q] Playboy: What are your politics?

[A] Sarandon: They are hard to classify. Let's say I'm a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U. Now, if someone sees me as some radical lefty because of these things, then they are uneducated and misinformed. Perhaps what is happening here is that anybody who opens his mouth is considered a leftist and anyone who follows what the powerful say is politically correct. Now, if that's the atmosphere we have in this country right now, then I'm definitely a leftist. And I pray to God that my daughter will be the same.

[Q] Playboy: To get back to movies, you've just finished a film in Africa about apartheid, A Dry White Season, with Marlon Brando and Donald Sutherland. Was it an amazing experience to work with the great Brando?

[A] Sarandon: Well, he is amazing. He walks into a room and, definitely, everything stops. But I can't tell you what it's like to work with him, because I didn't. We didn't have scenes together, not really. One could see, though, that he's a completely charismatic and interesting man. I don't think he uses what other actors are doing at all. He creates his own scenarios. It's interesting. When Brando works, his ears are plugged. So he doesn't always hear you when you're trying to have a conversation.

[Q] Playboy: Whom does he work off of in a scene, if not the other actor?

[A] Sarandon: I don't know how relevant the other person is; that's what I'm saying.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any actors whose lives and careers you envy?

[A] Sarandon: Oh, I think everyone is jealous of Meryl Streep. You know, you're always reading about her having this perfect life. She doesn't have to have a nanny and she gets her pick of the best parts. Her mother stays with her kids and she has a husband who stays at home. Her life seems so pulled together compared with most of the rest of ours--so smooth. Oh, I'm sure she has her share of difficulties, but she has certainly come to stand for the woman, the supermom, who's able to do it all. I think about my own life; it's so disorganized.

[Q] Playboy: You don't seem disorganized. You seem to be balancing a lot: career, kids, lovers, ex-lovers, activism. Name an area of your life where you feel less than capable.

[A] Sarandon: Money. I've been embezzled twice, and a business manager I once had was so incompetent that it came to about the same conclusion. I would have done better just to keep my money under my bed. So I've been wiped out two and a half times. When people start to talk to me about money and investments, they might as well be speaking Hungarian for the amount of energy it takes to understand. It's not that I can't. It's that my mind goes blank. And it's stupid to be that way.

[Q] Playboy: OK, this is nearly a wrap. How do you sum up--at this point in your life--your sense of Susan Sarandon?

[A] Sarandon: That I'm someone who feels passionately about feeling passionately. More and more, as things get demeaned and deadened, and as the public climate gets stranger and stranger, I feel that political commitment is what can save us all. I really see that it is so important to just keep wanting whatever it is that you want and to fight for it, desperately. I try to do that in every aspect of my life: personally, professionally and politically.

"It has always been my fantasy to be everything--sexy, smart, fun-loving and fragile--all at the same time."