20 Questions: Patti D'Arbanville

It's said that living is the best preparation for an actor. If that's so, Patti D'Arbanville is better equipped than most. At 14, while a disc jockey in a Greenwich Village night club, she was discovered by Andy Warhol and cast in his movie classic "Flesh." At 15, she began modeling in Paris and London, where she worked with Francesco Scavullo and Richard Avedon, and met Cat Stevens, who wrote two songs for her: "Lady D'Arbanville" and "Wild World." She starred in the erotic film "Bilitis" and, back in America, had roles in such films as "Rancho Deluxe," "Big Wednesday," "The Main Event" and "Modern Problems." Most recently, she played John Belushi's drug connection, Cathy Smith, in "Wired." Patti is also Ken Wahl's continuing love interest on TV's "Wiseguy." In real life, she has been married twice and shares a son, Jesse, with Don Johnson. Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Patti at her Santa Monica home. He reports: "Her living room is cluttered with Catholic artifacts and all sizes of framed photographs, including one group shot of Patti, best friend Pamela Des Barres and Melanie (Mrs. Don Johnson) Griffith. She was dressed in jean cut-offs and a T-shirt and was surrounded by workmen who were remodeling her house. Outside, it sounded like the attack of the Mexican lawn blowers. She has amazing powers of concentration."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Your latest film, Wired, the John Belushi bio-pic, received enormous prerelease publicity--most of it critical. Even the actors who took roles have been chastised, in effect, for betraying one of their own. And it was a long time before the movie found a distributor. Did you think about any of that when you accepted the part of Cathy Evelyn Smith, the woman who gave Belushi the injection that led to his death?

[A] D'Arbanville: No, it's a relatively small part that I thought I really could do something with. I knew Cathy once, and I wanted to make an antidrug statement. The publicity has worked to my advantage, because I've been able to say what I feel about anybody's picking up a drug. Actually, I've made more antidrug statements doing interviews about it than the movie is ever going to make. It's a powerful piece, but as far as I'm concerned, they could have been a little bit stronger with what really happens when you use drugs. Otherwise, I'm sick of it all. Wired seemed like "the movie that never would be." And I just don't get it. I'm tired of talking about it. I wish people would judge this poor fucking movie on what it is instead of this big hoopla around it.

2.

[Q] Playboy: In 1975, you were Jeff Bridges' girlfriend in Rancho Deluxe. Since then, he has landed steamy roles with every beautiful leading lady in Hollywood. What about him first appealed to you?

[A] D'Arbanville: He can dance. Figuratively and literally. Jeff's way with women makes complete sense to me. We danced like crazy. We never stopped.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Which of your movies should all knowledgeable and hip video collectors have in their library?

[A] D'Arbanville: Wired! [Laughs] Nah. Bilitis, the one I did with David Hamilton. It's pretty, but it's a piece of kaka. I don't really like anything I've done except the Wiseguy episodes I've recently been in. I say turn on the video recorder Wednesday nights, because that's what I'm most proud of.

4.

[Q] Playboy: As the woman who was with Don Johnson in his early Miami Vice days, tell our female readers how to handle a stubbly man.

[A] D'Arbanville: It never bothered me. I don't like full beards or mustaches, but a little stubble here and there is fine. What I don't like is when men shave their bodies, like these muscle guys. I have an actor friend, a big Italian guy, and he's built. He's got a body that makes me say, "Please, yes, help." You puddle when you see him. But he shaves his body. I love hair. I love hairy arms and chests and legs and the whole area that's supposed to have hair--except on the back. I'm not too crazy about that. In other words, Peter Sellers would not have worked for me.

5.

[Q] Playboy: You and Don remain friends. You're also close to his wife, Melanie Griffith. Now that they've remarried each other, give us a short course in converting a love affair to a lasting friendship.

[A] D'Arbanville: It takes love and respect. Compromise. Accepting each other the way you really are and not the way you want each other to be. Lowering your expectations sometimes.

6.

[Q] Playboy: You've been married twice. What would it take for you to try again, and make it stick?

[A] D'Arbanville: Someone over thirty-five who has pretty much decided on what he wants to do in life; someone who understands what I want to do in my life; someone who wants to have four kids. [Laughs] Before, when I got married, it was just important to find someone to take care of me. And I wanted to walk down the aisle with my father, in a white dress. Now companionship is more important. I don't need anybody to take care of me. I've figured that out by myself. But now my independence gets in the way. Also, I have the attention span of a gnat. So the guy has to be pretty interesting. Basically, I like Italian men. I like big men. I like big, independent, strong men who won't follow me around like a puppy dog when they fall in love. I like men before they fall in love with me. After they fall in love, I don't know what happens. They get stupid. I don't get it.

7.

[Q] Playboy: What's the least amount of time it has taken you to say "I love you"?

[A] D'Arbanville: [Embarrassed] And mean it? A month. And it was a mistake.

8.

[Q] Playboy: There have been a lot of self-help books for women in the past twenty years. What's your best advice for women of the Nineties?

[A] D'Arbanville: Boy, you're really asking the wrong person. [Laughs] Hmm. OK. Just don't take any shit, ever. Just be true to yourself, and if they can't keep up with the program, then tell them to go away.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Say you've had your eye on a big Italian guy for a while, and now he's coming to your place for dinner. What do you cook to seduce?

[A] D'Arbanville: Oooh. He can cook for me. [Laughs] I would make a sauce that my girlfriend Maria told me about. Anne (continued on page 233)Patti D'Arbanville(continued from page 139) Francis gave her the recipe; it's excellent. You use pork neck bones and sausage, hot sausage, and lots of garlic, fresh tomatoes, and you cook it for, like, three days. And then fresh pasta that you make yourself with a little machine. Spaghetti, please. Keep it simple. And green salad: radicchio. No tomatoes, because of the sauce. Scallions, three kinds of lettuce, garlic. Roasted green peppers in olive oil and some wine, if you want. And a big loaf of Italian bread.

10.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of gift from a guy makes you immediately suspicious of his intentions?

[A] D'Arbanville: Oh, God. It depends, really, on whether or not you like the guy. The same gift can have a different effect. The oddest gift I ever got was from a guy I stood up once. He had been to the house and had brought me a St. Michael's candle. And a bottle of wine. Well, first of all, I don't drink. And second, it was just too intrusive. It was like he thought he had figured me out. It was too intimate right away. Also a little cocky. Or wimpy, depending on how you look at it.

11.

[Q] Playboy: What's a better teacher of commitment--career or relationship?

[A] D'Arbanville: Career. God, how horrible to say that, but it's true. I'm so much more committed to my career than I've ever been to any relationship outside of that with my son. [Pauses] Actually, he's number one. I would leave everything tomorrow if I had to for him. So maybe the best answer is children. They are the source of the unconditional love that is hard to find in a man--woman relationship.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Your parents never married. When did you most wish that they had officially tied the knot?

[A] D'Arbanville: [Laughs] Well, the thing is, I never knew they weren't married until I was twenty-one years old. I'd just come back home from Europe. It was a holiday, a hideous Christmas--that's the only holiday I hate--and my mother told me she had gotten a divorce. I was stunned. I said. "Gee, thanks for telling me beforehand, Mom," and I stormed out of the house. She ran after me and we had a dramatic scene on the street corner. To make me feel better, she said, "Actually, we were never married!" [Smiles] I said, "Why didn't you tell me that? It's so much more interesting than 'We got a fucking divorce.' Take a walk."

13.

[Q] Playboy: You've been part of many scenes: modeling, Warhol's, acting, music, drugs. Which would you rather have sat out?

[A] D'Arbanville: I wish that I had sat out my second marriage. He was abusive. I was just looking backward. He had been my first boyfriend. I was obsessed with him from the time I was thirteen years old. I found him in Florida thirteen years later and I married him two months after that. But, actually, I was in love with this nineteen-year-old boy that I remembered. He was not the same guy. I appeared one day where he was working and said, "Yo, this is it. Yo, I'm ready." Thirteen years later. I was fulfilling some adolescent dream I had about the love of my life and it turned out badly, though, in retrospect, it was probably good that I got that out of my system. Except that I could have done without the black eye.

14.

[Q] Playboy: You were mentioned in the Warhol Diaries. Did he get it right?

[A] D'Arbanville: Yeah. He said that I was the cream of the crop but that I didn't know how to dress. [Points to her cutoff jeans and T-shirt] I still don't.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What's the title of your autobiography?

[A] D'Arbanville: Only Saints Can Sleep with Scorpions. When I was a year old, my family moved to Miami. We were very poor and my mother didn't have a crib, so she put me on the floor in a closet, and when she woke up in the morning, I was covered with scorpions. But none of them had touched me. She said only saints can sleep with scorpions.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Take us on a tour of your tattoos.

[A] D'Arbanville: I have them on my left shoulder, my thigh, my spine, my right ankle, my left hip and my right butt cheek. The one on my right ankle is a rose piercing a heart with blood dripping down, and that's the first one I got. It denotes an emotional state. [Smiles] On the left hip is a heart being pierced by a dagger, with blood dripping. Another heartache. I got the black rose on my spine and the little heart on my cheek in 1986. I got the Bengal tiger on my thigh because of a dream. I had a power dream about a tiger and afterward, it seemed important to have that on my body. I woke up with tattoo fever.

17.

[Q] Playboy: How much like a shampoo or soap commercial is your bathing routine?

[A] D'Arbanville: [Laughs] Zest. Yeah, I use all the soap. I lather myself profusely. I don't take showers. I take baths. I just like the way the warm water feels caressing my body. Some people say, "You're bathing in your own filth." I don't care. Baths take more time. They're more relaxing. If I have to take a shower, it's because either there is no tub--in which case I change the hotel room--or I'm in a real big hurry. I can talk at length about some baths I've had. One time, I sat in the bathtub for seven hours and read the whole of Mila 18, by Leon Uris, in between turning on the hot and cold water. I use my feet or hands, depending on what part of the book I am into at that particular point. I also like candles, but only when I'm alone. Otherwise, you run the risk of catching on fire.

18.

[Q] Playboy: How do you put a screen lover at ease?

[A] D'Arbanville: No one has ever seemed nervous to me. [Laughs] The only time I felt a bit nervous was when I did Real Genius. I had to make it with a fifteen-year-old boy. To calm things down, we laughed a lot and talked about Nintendo games--I've got a six-year-old, remember? It worked. But how often do you have a fifteen-year-old boy in a love scene? That happens only in real life.

19.

[Q] Playboy: What should someone your age know about life?

[A] D'Arbanville: To stop repeating patterns that are bad for you. I'm self-destructive. I had to recognize when that was imminent, when I started to lack self-esteem. I saw a chain of events. I'd do something bad, feel shitty and want to hurt myself more for doing it. Self-worth is probably going to be the theme of the Nineties.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Last summer, the Rob Lowe tape caused quite a stir. Is there a tape of anyone you'd like to get as a gift?

[A] D'Arbanville: Maybe Dolph Lundgren's.

tv's wisegal on body hair, tattoos and why men in love turn stupid