‘Littlest woman’ Mathis grows up on and off screenActress
discusses her acting career
and friendship with River Phoenix
By Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Samantha Mathis watched her Little Women costar Winona Ryder
weather the pre-release interview process for the film with mixed
emotions. She can’t decide if she’d like to be a star of that
status or not.
"I go back and forth," she says. "On one hand I’d love to be as
successful as she is and she can be involved in so many wonderful
projects. She’s worked with some of the best directors already at
such a young age, I certainly would like to do that.
"But then I see her go through this whole process today, all
these interviews and all they want to ask her about is her
relationship with Johnny Depp. It’s like ‘Hello! That was a long
time ago!’ and ‘What about Dave?’ All these personal questions,
people don’t know when to leave it alone."
Yet her role in Little Women was hardly meant to raise her
celebrity standing, she merely worked on the picture because she
felt strongly about the piece. This is the same strategy she is
pursuing with How to Make An American Quilt, also starring Ryder,
where she portrays a woman from ages 17 to 37. Mathis tells the
Bruin she’s tired of trying to help make herself a star; now she’s
just going to pick her movies for herself.
"I think about those things," she admits, "but ultimately it’s
going to happen the way it’s going to happen and I can’t control
it."
Career control in Hollywood is certainly an ephemeral thing. The
two movies that had the greatest chances of transforming Mathis
into a Ryder-esque starlet were undone by things beyond her
control.
The first was Super Mario Brothers, her agent’s ingenious plan
to enshrine her in an ultra-commercial film. Maybe she’d even get
to have an action figure of herself.
"My agent said, ‘You should do this! It’s going to be a really
big movie and you need to be in a big commercial success!’ and I
was sort of convinced to do it," she says, but things were not
meant to be. The mega-budgeted production ended up a mega-flop.
"I did it and it was a total nightmare," she laughs, but Mathis
did learn a thing or two about performing on a picture of such
production values. "It’s a different kind of work that doesn’t have
to do a lot with the acting," she says. "There’s not a whole lot of
emotional connection. It’s about reacting to things exploding. You
end up feeling like a prop, along with everything else on the set,
you’re just there to be moved around."
The next film was a whole lot closer to her heart, but was going
to be seen by even fewer audiences. Peter Bogdanovich’s gentle The
Thing Called Love with River Phoenix was Mathis’ first leading
role, yet the film itself was to become a footnote to the
experience.
Midway through the film’s shoot, Brandon Tartikoff left his job
as the head of Paramount, and the new team was never enthusiastic
about the small-scale country music story. "Paramount would have
preferred a ‘Hi, how ya doin’? We’re all playin’ country music!’
kind of movie," says Mathis in full hick drawl, "and that wasn’t
Peter and that wasn’t us. Maybe we made a darker movie than they
had anticipated."
It was through her work on The Thing Called Love that she ended
up making many of the friendships she now holds dear. From the
mutual friendships she shared with Phoenix, an amorphous group
including Michael Stipe and Adam Duritz has pulled together over
the last year and a half to fill his emotional void.
Stipe and Mathis had been friends for a few years before the
shoot, but it was his set visits on The Thing Called Love that
bonded the three at a greater level. "Michael and River were very
close," she says. "We’d hang out in his trailer and play music.
Really this last year after River died we became very close. We
were two people who were very close in his life and obviously it’s
been a hard year so we try to be there for each other."
A careful viewer of last year’s MTV Video Awards would have
caught a passing reference to Stipe and Mathis, who were supposed
to pick up the Counting Crows’ award for Best New Artist.
Adam Duritz, Crows’ frontman, is another member of this
tightly-knit mixed media friendship. Mathis, Phoenix and Duritz met
when the latter was recording For August and Everything After …,
the first Crows album.
When Phoenix and Mathis were in the studio recording the music
for The Thing Called Love, they shared a producer with Duritz, who
recorded next door. They soon began dropping by on their neighbor.
"Riv and I came in and sat down when Adam was working on ‘Rain in
Baltimore,’" she says. "He called me after River died and said that
‘when you guys came in and sat down, that’s when I got the
song.’"
"It’s really strange," Mathis says, "because I have these
wonderful new friends in my life, and I wouldn’t have met them if
it wasn’t for River." This group can border on "incestuous," she
says, but in the end it’s in the interest of mutual emotional
maintenance. "When R.E.M. went on "Saturday Night Live," we all
flew out and went together," she says. "It’s this nice little
support team."
The team was vital for Mathis, who needed people to help her
sort out her feelings after Phoenix’s tragic death two Halloweens
ago. She certainly wasn’t interested in speaking to the media.
"Intentionally I haven’t talked about it after River died," she
admits, "because I was so angry at that time, so conflicted, I was
afraid of what I might say. I didn’t know how I really wanted to
say it. I was just a jumble of emotions."
"And I was really offended by the press," she says. "So many
people were so disrespectful. The kind of things they did. People
showing up at his family’s house, the Enquirer actually went into
the funeral home and took a picture of him in his casket. The
depths that people will go to."
Yet when the subject is tenderly approached, she’s willing to
open up: "I’m sure there are people out there who still wonder,"
she smiles.
"He was a really gifted actor," she says, "and he was willing to
take risks and play strange characters and be really
vulnerable.
"He really had a vulnerability that no one else had at his age,"
she says. "A wisdom and a sensitivity to him that was beyond his
years."
It was this powerful emotional openness that is evidenced in one
of his most passionate works, Gus Von Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.
Phoenix’s campfire scene with Keanu Reeves is revered as one of the
best moments of cinema in the last 10 years.
"What he did in My Own Private Idaho had such a profound effect
on so many people," she says, "not necessarily just people who were
gay, but god, it certainly made a lot of young people feel okay.
That was a beautiful thing."
"I think that’s one of the great things about a good film, you
walk out and you feel a better understanding of yourself and the
world, you feel better connected to something, you’ve been
moved."
Ultimately, these are the roles that Mathis is shooting for
herself. "I want to be a part of things that make people feel
good," she says, "movies that make people feel less alone."