20 Questions: Jennifer Jason Leigh

Jennifer Jason Leigh, 29, is an actress who considers the comment "Oh, were you in that film?" a compliment. It means she's doing her job well. Since her debut in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," as the sexually precocious Stacy, that job has included playing two very different hookers in "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Miami Blues" and straighter roles in "Backdraft," "The Hitcher" and "The Big Picture." Her latest excursion is "Rush," based on Kim Wozencraft's powerful book about an undercover cop who gets mixed up with drugs.

Contributing Editor David Rensin met Leigh and she served tea, strawberries and cookies. "True to her reputation for shyness, Jennifer began the interview scrunched up on the couch, arms folded around her knees. She confessed to having worried all day about what she would say. But by quitting time, she had become almost outspoken--and she had eaten all the strawberries."

1.

[Q] Playboy: What's so good about playing bad girls? What do you know about bad girls that good girls don't?

[A] Leigh: Bad girls don't know how to suppress anything. They act out a lot. They're living more sensationally than the good girl, who is responsible. And they're probably more tired. [Laughs] So they have more experiences than good girls, and probably a lot more pain. I was a very, very good girl growing up. My older sister was the bad girl. When my mother and my sister would be screaming at each other downstairs, I'd be cleaning my room. You take these roles when you're children and it's part of the family balance. So playing bad girls is a way for me to explore the dark side--parts of myself and of my sister, who I loved so much that I didn't explore my own life. Of course, my sister was never nearly as bad as any of my characters, but what interests me is the psyche that operates from the gut. I was very cerebral as a little girl, and my sister was all gut, all emotion.

2.

[Q] Playboy: As someone who has perfected the art of playing hookers, would you have liked Julia Roberts' role in Pretty Woman?

[A] Leigh: That was a recruitment film. It was like Top Gun for hookers: "Come to Hollywood, be a prostitute, meet a millionaire--a very handsome millionaire--and get married." [Laughs] And first you get to go shopping in Beverly Hills and spend a lot of money. It's a pretty amazing message, and millions and millions of girls are seeing it over and over again. I don't think the movie had anything to do with prostitution. I don't even know why they kept her a prostitute when they changed the script, which originally was a real downer. [Pauses] I met with the director, Garry Marshall, on that role. It was very dark. And I was really surprised that Disney was doing it. It seemed a bizarre fairy tale for them. I remember he said to me, "Now, she's really happy. She hasn't been doing this that long." And I said, "Well, how happy can you be after your eighth blow job in the back of a car? How happy can you be, Garry?" It just struck me as an odd statement to make.

3.

[Q] Playboy: After doing the play Sunshine, in which you played a woman in a Times Square peep-show booth, how did life behind the glass wall make you feel about men?

[A] Leigh: Sunshine doesn't understand how her life and job are screwing her. She thinks what she's doing is beautiful and that she's really kind of a star at it and that she's helping men. And then she goes home to an abusive husband who won't make love to her. It's a great problem for this character. But soon, even in the booth, she starts to feel degraded. When I was doing the research, watching the shows, I came home really hating men. You can smell the semen in the booth. You can see the stains everywhere. The first girl I saw was like a windup toy: The wall came up, her fingers were in every orifice over and over again, the same words were repeated over and over again. It was depressing to see a woman make herself into this ... hole, basically; and to know that a man goes in there and ejaculates and leaves. Obviously, there's such a fear of intimacy, or such a desire for intimacy. Confronting that--and not simply in an intellectual way--made me sad and angry. It's like the first time I saw Last Tango in Paris. I ran into a friend of mine, a guy, in the lobby, and he said, "Oh, this is a really sexy movie. You're with your boyfriend? When you get to the sexy part of the movie, touch him." And I sat through that entire movie waiting for the sexy part. It wasn't about sex, it was about death.

4.

[Q] Playboy: What do you know about yourself that might surprise us?

[A] Leigh: Noise makes me go to sleep. This is from childhood: If we went to a noisy restaurant, I'd be under the table in five minutes. It continues to this day.

5.

[Q] Playboy: When you go to the movies now, is it hard to stay awake?

[A] Leigh: It depends on the movie. I go looking for an experience: Can I become involved, lose myself, even if it's in absolute silliness? The last fantastic movie I saw was In the Realm of the Senses. It stayed twelve steps ahead of me and crossed all sorts of lines. They're really fucking on screen, but the film can't be termed pornography because it's clearly made by a genius. And very few love scenes are good. Before that, the last great love scene I saw was in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! It's a pretty rare experience to see a movie that presses all these buttons and goes past all these boundaries.

6.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that you're not aware of the intense sexuality of some of the women you play. Should we believe that?

[A] Leigh: Yeah. I've also never had a problem with the sexuality in the roles, but I've never seen it as a focal point. My hookers are three very different women, and it's the woman that I wanted to play, not the occupation. [Smiles] Of course, it happens to be a pretty interesting occupation in terms of the psyche that gets involved. On the one hand, you're given all this money and this great sense of power. On the other hand, you're being degraded and humiliated. So it's a total mind-fuck. They're opposite ends of the spectrum in one transaction. Yet they don't balance each other. They destroy each other. They destroy the person. There's just no way that you can compartmentalize your life like that and stay whole. Still, a prostitute chooses this life and I'm not about to make a moral judgment here. There are a number of real issues of why a woman would prostitute herself. Eighty percent of the time it's because the person has a drug problem and it's an easy, quick way to make money. I know a girl who prostitutes out of a market in Venice. She does a blow job for fifty bucks, and she makes about three hundred bucks in four or five hours from men shopping in the market. It's like those bad porn films, in the vegetable department. She's rubbing the cucumbers and looking at guys. It's hard to imagine, but for her, that's normal life. She has a cocaine addiction.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you draw the line in letting yourself be absorbed into a character?

[A] Leigh: I'll go as far as I feel I need to go for the character. I've never actually prostituted myself. I played a cocaine addict, but I never shot cocaine. Where I go really far is psychologically. I'm in pretty deep. I might endanger my health. I might endanger my mind, but that's why I have a therapist.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you take her on location?

[A] Leigh: [Laughs] No. I call her from location. I don't fly her out. [Smiles] What? I'm her only patient? Isn't it fabulous what can be done in Hollywood? God! Look, it's not like some huge deal. I am in therapy. It helps keep me sane. Not that I'm insane. Therapy is not about problem solving for me, it's about stuff that's much deeper. And I love it. It's made me a better actress.

9.

[Q] Playboy: In Rush, you play an undercover police officer who gets seduced by the drugs that she's trying to eradicate. Since you didn't do the drugs, what tricks did you employ to simulate being high?

[A] Leigh: I tried a bunch of things. For the cocaine, I drank six cups of coffee in the morning for the extra edge and didn't go to sleep for a couple nights. For the heroin, I talked to heroin addicts, who were very lyrical about it. Some say it's like being a baby, like being in the womb; you feel all warm and soft, and everything's fuzzy around you. You itch a little but you don't care, you vomit but it feels great. Then I had all the technical data: what happens to your pulse, your stomach, your eyes, your tongue. I also saw tapes of people shooting up. I found out that if they can't find any heroin, sometimes they'll take Tuinal. Tuinal is like Percodan. I had an operation and I was on Percodan for ten days. I remember Percodan very well. [Smiles]

10.

[Q] Playboy: Which was the toughest character to shed after filming, and what extreme measures did you take to get rid of her?

[A] Leigh: A hard one was Tralala [the hooker] from Last Exit to Brooklyn. I loved her innocence. She's living in a pile of shit and thinks she's a movie star. She thinks her life is great. And it so clearly is a hellhole. That was so tragic. She had no idea what love is, had never been raised in it, had never been cared for a day in her life. But she had to go pretty quick because I had another job. And I had to lose the extra weight I'd gained.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you based Susie Waggoner, the dim prostitute in Miami Blues, on your dog?

[A] Leigh: I based a part of Susie Waggoner on my dog, Bessie, and a part of her on these girls I met in Okeechobee. But it's true: When I walk in the door, Bessie will lie on her back with her paws in the air, waiting for me to rub her tummy. That's sort of how I saw Susie--just wanting unconditional love and constantly telling you that you're the boss. And there's this look Bessie gets when I'm mad at her. When I saw the film, I realized I look exactly like my dog when Alec Baldwin yells at me.

12.

[Q] Playboy: In The Hitcher, how'd you prepare for being pulled apart by a tractor-trailer?

[A] Leigh: All the preparation I did could not have helped me more than what actually happened. [Grimaces] They had it all set up, the tractor-trailer and me on this pulley thing, and then another huge semi. And then they said, "We're gonna have a rehearsal now. Do you want to get up on it or should we put your stunt double up there so you can watch it first?" I said, "I think I'd like to watch it." And they said, "OK. Now the truck's just gonna move a little bit." So they put her up there, and she's a mighty girl. But you cannot control precisely the movement of a truck that big. Then they stepped on the gas and her body went like this [stretches]. If it had been me, my arms would have been torn out of their sockets. It was terrifying. As soon as it happened, of course, everyone started screaming and hollering and promising, "The truck's not gonna move! The truck's not gonna move!" They took the tires off and jacked it up to make sure it couldn't move. They had people pulling my legs. But I had seen a terrifying vision--and that was pretty much my prep. It really scared me.

13.

[Q] Playboy: You worked on Flesh and Blood, much of which was shot in Spain. For the summer Olympics-bound, describe the joys of life on the Iberian Peninsula.

[A] Leigh: On Flesh and Blood, we all thought we were going to die. It was a tough, tough shoot. It was colder that year than it was in Russia. We were shooting at a castle and we had only these little gas heaters. My feet were blue at the end of every day. I was working seventeen hours a day, six days a week. We had no stand-ins. During the rape scene, which took five nights to shoot in zero-degree weather in a ravine outside, they wouldn't even let me wear underwear--forget about a parka--to cover myself while I was lying on the ground standing in for myself. I got huge welts, cuts and bruises from five nights of this. But [co-star] Rutger Hauer was great. I'd be shaking on the ground and he'd put his hands over the fire and then come and put them on my face and my ears while they were lighting me.

14.

[Q] Playboy: What clichés about actors do you find particularly offensive? Are there any that are true?

[A] Leigh: Actors are stupid. Actors will fuck for a part. But the biggest cliché is that all actors are liars and you can't trust them because they lie for a living. It's so bad that it's funny. Actually, I'm a terrible liar, and I don't lie for a living, either. Actors are pretty self-involved. Which isn't always a bad thing. Some clichés are true for some actors, but they could be true for some plumbers, too.

15.

[Q] Playboy: For what household emergencies are you currently prepared?

[A] Leigh: Not very many. I have bottled water. I have a fire extinguisher somewhere. I don't know where my flashlight is. I don't have a medical kit. I have some canned foods, but they're not really canned foods, they're more like soup. That's about it.

16.

[Q] Playboy: You have always described your off-screen life as boring. You're a movie star. Just how boring does your off-screen life get?

[A] Leigh: I say that so that my private life can remain my own. But by your standards, it may actually be boring. I don't go skiing, I don't go trail blazing, I don't go to parties, I don't go to premieres. I don't like group situations at all. I go out to eat, perhaps. I walk my dog. I go to a movie. I read. I clean my house. I organize a drawer. I talk on the phone. I read some more. If it's Sunday, I'll watch In Living Color and 60 Minutes, and that's the only time I watch TV. Then I walk my dog again, maybe to the magazine stand. Then I'll come home, sit on the couch, stare at a wall. If I'm researching a part, then I'm reading constantly and I'm interviewing people. I'm very active. I also try and work out every day with my personal trainer. This is a new thing I started on Rush.

17.

[Q] Playboy: When you do go out, say to a Hollywood party, we hear you like to hang out by the food table. What are some of the more successful edibles you've spent time with?

[A] Leigh: Moroccan food is always good. It's finger food and interesting-looking. There's salad, cucumbers and tomato sliced up. And there's this chicken in a beautiful pastry with powdered sugar on top and scrambled egg in it. Greek is also good. Tabbouleh and hummus. Grape leaves. What I don't like is when I stand by the food table and there's nothing I can eat. [Laughs] Just chips and dip is very distressing to me. I'll eat them, but I won't be happy about it. Not only will I not enjoy the party, but I'll start to hate myself. Not only am I not talking to anybody, I'm gaining weight.

18.

[Q] Playboy: What's the strangest thing you've ever put in your bath besides yourself?

[A] Leigh: I don't have many bath toys anymore, but I used to have some windup things: boats and floating camels and ducks. Now what I really like are smelly things: beautiful bath oils or bath salts.

19.

[Q] Playboy: At your age, what can you still learn from your mother?

[A] Leigh: I learn from her all the time. For example, for the last couple days I've had this terrible pain in my chest on my left side. I immediately thought, It's cancer. I'm gonna have to go through radiation. Oh, my God. This because I had a friend who, at 23, got cancer. It was behind the sternum, it was inoperable, she went through radiation. So I started to obsess and get frantic. I called the doctor; he wasn't in. Then Mother called. She said, "How are you? You sound awful." She can always tell what mood I'm in. I said, "Oh, I'm feeling horrible. I have this thing." She said, "Does it feel like it's your heart?" and I said, "Yeah." She said, "And it's just like a dull pain? In your chest on your left side?" Anyway, she knew everything. She said, "Oh, I've had that. I used to get that for years and years. It's tension. It's just tension." And, sure enough, an hour later the doctor called me and you know what he said? "Take two Advil every three hours." [Laughs] My mother always tells me when I'm feeling particularly strange or something's upsetting me that wouldn't normally upset me, "It's this character you're playing. In two months, it won't affect you that way." She's really understanding of the process.

20.

[Q] Playboy: If you saw an issue of Money magazine with a story about investing in mutual funds, would you pick it up, call your broker and tell him, or figure he knows more about it than you do?

[A] Leigh: I'd be at a total loss. I'm bad with money. I would never pick up a magazine like that. Even at the dentist's office. It's like a foreign language. So I have a business manager whom I trust. But maybe someday, I'll play an accountant and learn about it. But it would have to be a complicated accountant. Mixed up and neurotic. I don't like doing successful and competent people. She'd have to be successful but unhappy.

hollywood's reluctant star holds forth on risks, rewards and what she allows into the bathtub with her