The Girl Who Had None Of The Luck
May. 4th, 2002 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penpusherThere are people you look at and wonder how or why they got to be stars. There are also people you look at and wonder why they aren't. Samantha Mathis is in the latter category for me.
Frequently, second generation actors get a leg up on the star thing. Samantha's mom was noted actor Bibi Besch who always played capable, solid parts, no matter if the role was in a nighttime soap like Falcon Crest, a popcorn movie like "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan" a romantic comedy like "Betsy's Wedding" or a tearjerker like "Steel Magnolias." In fact, Sam's grandmother was a star in Austria, so she's actually a third gen actor.
I think I first glimpsed Samantha when she was on a series called Aaron's Way, a show starring Merlin Olsen as an Amish patriarch, with Sam as one of his kids. Not an auspicious start. Obviously, the target audience would never see the show! That's bad luck.
She got another break when she did the ABC drama Knightwatch (co-starring Benjamin Bratt and Harley Jane Kozak), which was a fictionalized story based on New York's famed "Guardian Angels." The bad luck here? It was on opposite The Cosby Show.
But things got better fast as she crossed over into film and did the clever and meaningful "Pump Up The Volume" opposite Christian Slater. Her performance as a smart, sexy badass poet to Slater's jaded shock jock is quite notable and definitely showed her as an actress to keep an eye on in Hollywood. What didn't help was that with her short dark hair (she's actually a natural blonde), she reminded people of Winona Ryder, who of course also starred opposite Slater in another smart teen film, "Heathers."
Sam put together a string of critically acclaimed (but poorly attended) films, including "This Is My Life," where she plays a character with absolutely no self-confidence as convincingly as she played the willful writer in "Pump."
There was "FernGully: The Last Rainforest," where Sam is the voice of the animated Sprite trying to protect her friends from developers set on destroying the ecosystem. Robin Williams being part of the cast should have helped boost attendance, but Robin did another animated feature film that same year, a little project called "Aladdin."
Then there was the ill-conceived "Super Mario Bros." where Samantha played Princess Daisy to Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo's Mario and Luigi. Video games generally make for poor movies. But even in that disaster, Sam gave a convincing performance.
Perhaps the most fateful moment in her career came when Sam accepted the part of a New York songwriter who had the desire to go to Nashville to be a country star in Peter Bogdanovich's "The Thing Called Love." This piece of dreck was so bad, it closed in all theaters in NYC after one week!
However it wasn't so much the film itself, but it was the two lead actors that made this a notable turning point in Sam's life. River Phoenix was her romantic interest in the movie, and soon became so in real life. In fact, Bogdanovich admitted that River took the film so he could work with Sam, making this one of the unarguably legitimate "Movies Made So The Stars Could Do It!"® Meanwhile, her friend and co-star in the film, an unknown actor named Sandra Bullock, was barely scraping by.
Despite all of this, Sam moved on to the all-star remake of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." She finally played opposite Winona and worked with a remarkable cast of women who were anything but "little," including Susan Sarandon, Trini Alvarado and Claire Danes.
But Sam's problem this time was the PR for the film. Because she played the role of Amy March as an older girl, she was left off of the film poster. The younger actress who appeared on the one sheet was Kirsten Dunst.
To say what happened next was "bad luck" is hardly correct. Something beyond what we can understand took place that Halloween Eve 1993, when River Phoenix lost his life. It was a devastating event to deal with, and Sam left the country, not speaking to any media about any of it.
When she finally resurfaced, she returned as the co-star of a gentle comedy set in London called "Jack and Sarah," playing an American Au Pair in a film chock full of heavyweight actors like Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, and her co-lead, Richard E. Grant. Again, Sam held her own with these top notch Brit actors and turned in quality work, even in the wake of her personal pain.
Still, when the time came to promote the film, the media wanted her to talk about River, and she was neither prepared nor interested in going back to that. So, in part because she turned down so many interviews, the film didn't do well in the States.
Then, in what should have been her "star making moment," Sam was once again paired with Christian Slater in "Broken Arrow," a film about a fighter pilot (played by John Travolta) who hijacks his own plane and the nuclear warheads it carries and threatens to set them off if not paid a vast sum of money.
The bad luck here is that audiences were not terribly interested in seeing Travolta as a "villain" (apparently, he never got this message, as he went on to make "Battlefield: Earth" anyway), and though the film was action-packed, it didn't go very far.
As bad as Sam's luck had been with movies, it was even worse with television. Her Fox series, Harsh Realm was almost removed from the network's schedule before it even aired. And the NBC legal comedy/drama titled First Years was very badly counter-programmed opposite the Emmy winning Ally McBeal. It never knew what hit it.
Maybe Sam found the role that best suited her life story when she played the part of Gwenwyfar in TNT's miniseries The Mists Of Avalon, based on King Arthur's Camelot. In yet another cast of big names, like Angelica Huston, Joan Allen and Julianna Margulies, Sam, as usual, held her own.
Still, she never got the role that would turn her into a star. Where was her "Pretty Woman," or "Speed?"
Finally, Sam did what actors do. She moved to the stage. Again, working with a heavyweight actor, Linda Lavin, she performed the play Collected Stories at the South Coast Reperatory in Costa Mesa, California. The cleverly written two person piece about an author mentoring a fledgling writer was transferred to the small screen on PBS earlier this year. The problem here is that people seem to have missed it entirely!
And now, today, Sam is doing it again. Chris O'Donnell appeared on a couple of talk shows to promote his new Broadway play, Arthur Miller's The Man Who Had All The Luck. What Chris neglected to mention was that his co-star is Samantha Mathis. How a propos to both this story and the play, about a guy who somehow gets everything, while fate deals a bad hand to those around him.
Luck opened just in time to qualify as a potential Tony Award nominee. We'll see.
Perhaps fate deals us a hand because we can deal with it. Or maybe it helps us become better, more understanding, more seasoned, more capable of telling a story.
No matter what, Samantha is still an actor to keep an eye on.
Frequently, second generation actors get a leg up on the star thing. Samantha's mom was noted actor Bibi Besch who always played capable, solid parts, no matter if the role was in a nighttime soap like Falcon Crest, a popcorn movie like "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan" a romantic comedy like "Betsy's Wedding" or a tearjerker like "Steel Magnolias." In fact, Sam's grandmother was a star in Austria, so she's actually a third gen actor.
I think I first glimpsed Samantha when she was on a series called Aaron's Way, a show starring Merlin Olsen as an Amish patriarch, with Sam as one of his kids. Not an auspicious start. Obviously, the target audience would never see the show! That's bad luck.
She got another break when she did the ABC drama Knightwatch (co-starring Benjamin Bratt and Harley Jane Kozak), which was a fictionalized story based on New York's famed "Guardian Angels." The bad luck here? It was on opposite The Cosby Show.
But things got better fast as she crossed over into film and did the clever and meaningful "Pump Up The Volume" opposite Christian Slater. Her performance as a smart, sexy badass poet to Slater's jaded shock jock is quite notable and definitely showed her as an actress to keep an eye on in Hollywood. What didn't help was that with her short dark hair (she's actually a natural blonde), she reminded people of Winona Ryder, who of course also starred opposite Slater in another smart teen film, "Heathers."
Sam put together a string of critically acclaimed (but poorly attended) films, including "This Is My Life," where she plays a character with absolutely no self-confidence as convincingly as she played the willful writer in "Pump."
There was "FernGully: The Last Rainforest," where Sam is the voice of the animated Sprite trying to protect her friends from developers set on destroying the ecosystem. Robin Williams being part of the cast should have helped boost attendance, but Robin did another animated feature film that same year, a little project called "Aladdin."
Then there was the ill-conceived "Super Mario Bros." where Samantha played Princess Daisy to Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo's Mario and Luigi. Video games generally make for poor movies. But even in that disaster, Sam gave a convincing performance.
Perhaps the most fateful moment in her career came when Sam accepted the part of a New York songwriter who had the desire to go to Nashville to be a country star in Peter Bogdanovich's "The Thing Called Love." This piece of dreck was so bad, it closed in all theaters in NYC after one week!
However it wasn't so much the film itself, but it was the two lead actors that made this a notable turning point in Sam's life. River Phoenix was her romantic interest in the movie, and soon became so in real life. In fact, Bogdanovich admitted that River took the film so he could work with Sam, making this one of the unarguably legitimate "Movies Made So The Stars Could Do It!"® Meanwhile, her friend and co-star in the film, an unknown actor named Sandra Bullock, was barely scraping by.
Despite all of this, Sam moved on to the all-star remake of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." She finally played opposite Winona and worked with a remarkable cast of women who were anything but "little," including Susan Sarandon, Trini Alvarado and Claire Danes.
But Sam's problem this time was the PR for the film. Because she played the role of Amy March as an older girl, she was left off of the film poster. The younger actress who appeared on the one sheet was Kirsten Dunst.
To say what happened next was "bad luck" is hardly correct. Something beyond what we can understand took place that Halloween Eve 1993, when River Phoenix lost his life. It was a devastating event to deal with, and Sam left the country, not speaking to any media about any of it.
When she finally resurfaced, she returned as the co-star of a gentle comedy set in London called "Jack and Sarah," playing an American Au Pair in a film chock full of heavyweight actors like Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, and her co-lead, Richard E. Grant. Again, Sam held her own with these top notch Brit actors and turned in quality work, even in the wake of her personal pain.
Still, when the time came to promote the film, the media wanted her to talk about River, and she was neither prepared nor interested in going back to that. So, in part because she turned down so many interviews, the film didn't do well in the States.
Then, in what should have been her "star making moment," Sam was once again paired with Christian Slater in "Broken Arrow," a film about a fighter pilot (played by John Travolta) who hijacks his own plane and the nuclear warheads it carries and threatens to set them off if not paid a vast sum of money.
The bad luck here is that audiences were not terribly interested in seeing Travolta as a "villain" (apparently, he never got this message, as he went on to make "Battlefield: Earth" anyway), and though the film was action-packed, it didn't go very far.
As bad as Sam's luck had been with movies, it was even worse with television. Her Fox series, Harsh Realm was almost removed from the network's schedule before it even aired. And the NBC legal comedy/drama titled First Years was very badly counter-programmed opposite the Emmy winning Ally McBeal. It never knew what hit it.
Maybe Sam found the role that best suited her life story when she played the part of Gwenwyfar in TNT's miniseries The Mists Of Avalon, based on King Arthur's Camelot. In yet another cast of big names, like Angelica Huston, Joan Allen and Julianna Margulies, Sam, as usual, held her own.
Still, she never got the role that would turn her into a star. Where was her "Pretty Woman," or "Speed?"
Finally, Sam did what actors do. She moved to the stage. Again, working with a heavyweight actor, Linda Lavin, she performed the play Collected Stories at the South Coast Reperatory in Costa Mesa, California. The cleverly written two person piece about an author mentoring a fledgling writer was transferred to the small screen on PBS earlier this year. The problem here is that people seem to have missed it entirely!
And now, today, Sam is doing it again. Chris O'Donnell appeared on a couple of talk shows to promote his new Broadway play, Arthur Miller's The Man Who Had All The Luck. What Chris neglected to mention was that his co-star is Samantha Mathis. How a propos to both this story and the play, about a guy who somehow gets everything, while fate deals a bad hand to those around him.
Luck opened just in time to qualify as a potential Tony Award nominee. We'll see.
Perhaps fate deals us a hand because we can deal with it. Or maybe it helps us become better, more understanding, more seasoned, more capable of telling a story.
No matter what, Samantha is still an actor to keep an eye on.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-05-04 05:07 pm (UTC)do you ever visit fametracker.com? this reminds me of the "fame audit" that they do sometimes...
no subject
Date: 2002-05-04 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Well done
Date: 2002-05-05 12:12 am (UTC)One day some womderful il story is going ot come along...........not as big a story that can jsutify the salery of those "who made it big" otherwise the movie woudl not be made. but it will be the sort of movie that gets noticed in the trades and by critics and by the pulic in a small sort of way untill it starts picking up awards. teh fireworks wil hit this girl soon enough. long well ground backgroud is better than being a early on one hit wonder.
Richard Farnsworth labored away for many years as an extra, a stock company player (John Ford), and taking on small roles whenever he coudl get them. Then one day, the Canadian Film companies wanted to produce a lil film called The Gray Fox. Richard won his first acadamy Award Nominatino for that film. A very memorable performance. It was his attention to detail learned from actors such as Gary Cooper and Hank Fonda that peoole noticed. Hes had a second acadmy award nominatiion too. His is a wlel respected body of wrok.
This young actress wil reap similar reward. I suspect jsut working in the industry in a craft she loves is rewarding to her.
It's funny that you wrote this...
Date: 2002-05-05 01:08 am (UTC)I did see that horrible movie, "The Thing Called Love." She was absolutely gorgeous, and the film was horrible. She was interesting to watch, but somehow, so passive, so much a waif. I think this may be her downfall.
She was equally gorgous in "Little Women", and I too, expected to see much more of her after that.
Unfortunately I ended up seeing more of her in the film "Jack and Sarah" which was an insult to all British and American people and parents everywhere. First of all, anything with Richard E. Grant as a serious love interest is doomed to failure. Secondly, anything about a widowed husband who indulges himself by outgrieving his in-laws is obviously wrong-headed and revolting. The storyline went something like this: Can this, young, rich eligible widower ever find happiness again in the arms of a girl half his age? Surprisingly, he can. Blech!!!!! And it was a complete bore, besides. No wonder her career floundered.
Funny that you mentioned her tv series, which I totally missed, as being up against Ally McBeal. Her beauty reminds me of Callista Flockhart's.
Will she ever be a star? I seriously doubt it. She's aged out of the waif market.