Helen Slater Interview

Planet Origo is a website out of Norway which is a magazine and store for music and CDs. They just posted a fabulous interview with Helen Slater where she talked at length about her role of Supergirl and as Lara on Smallville.

It is a fabulous interview and well worth reading in its entirety!

Here is the link: ( http://news.planetorigo.com/article.php?poarticle_id=505&s=sfFCIKQXQNEBg2Cd& ). As usual, some blurbs stuck out and are worth commenting on.

To get the role, Slater had to compete against other young up-and-coming actresses, such as Demi Moore and Brooke Shields, but what director Jeannot Szwarc wanted was a person who was athletic but without big muscles, and who knew ballet and could be graceful. How did Slater meet those criteria?

Helen: I had attended performing arts classes in high scool, and we had to take [extra] dance classes. I never did sports per se, but I had done dance classes and that fitted Jeannot's idea of what he wanted in [a female lead].

Now I freely admit it has been a looooong time since I saw the movie, something I really need to rectify soon. But one thing that stuck was just how graceful Slater was in the role. This wasn't a brutish strong-arm of a Supergirl. This was elegance. And it clearly made a lasting impression. And I had no idea that Demi Moore and Brooke Shields were being considered for the role. For me, Slater was absolutely perfect.

PO: Adding to the sheer size of the movie and its ties to popular culture was the fact that some major names were to be seen on screen; Mia Farrow played Kara / Supergirl's mother, Faye Dunaway played the witch Selena, and Peter O'Toole was Zaltar, a Marlon Brando-esque character on Supergirl's home planet. How were those veteran actors to work with?

Helen: Oh, that was such a great experience for me, that whole spectrum. Peter I still think of as this incredible mentor. I don't know if you [know] this, but he would have me do Shakespeare for him, and kind of helped me get rid of some of my American habits, which I still do to this day. He said to me; 'I want you to imagine holding a daffodil between your thumb and your forefinger' while I was doing a speech from Romeo and Juliet, and very much gave me this incredible light into doing Shakespeare, which I hadn't started performing. I've had great teachers since Supergirl [too], about getting more insight into how to work with text.

Helen: And then with Faye, for me it was her professionalism... I was very aware of how an extraordinary beautiful woman she is. She was very mindful of the way she was lit, because there was that kind of self-protection on her part that I think was good. I think she was very helpful [to me].

I can only imagine what it must have been like to be a kid and have this incredible face time with these Hollywood legends. My guess is O'Toole took the part because he had bills to pay. But still, I can only imagine what Slater was feeling, starring in her first movie and doing scenes with Lawrence of Arabia!

It does sound like the cast took care of Slater and I think that is pretty cool.

Planet Origo: The aerial ballet scene looks particularly great in the film. Was it achieved with wires, and how was it to shoot?

Helen: That was such great fun and one of the highlights of the movie for me. It was done with wires back then, [the technique of achieving it] looks really archaic now. I don't know how they do it today, but when I did in the 80s they had a long-nose construction crane, and then they attached two piano wires to a track that went across a frame, and then two guys had a rope on a makeshift wheel, and when they pulled the wire I would go up, and two other guys had another wheel [and when they pulled their wire] I would go across the frame, so that's how they made me fly.

This is another scene that I can remember pretty vividly and also had that feeling of both grace and power. It is hard to believe that she could pull it off when it sounds like such a crude way of shooting.

But one thing for sure, Slater was absolutely perfect for the role. I mean look at the picture above. Just perfect!

Smallville, the long-running TV series about Superman's younger years. Helen Slater played Lara, Clark Kent / Superman's biological mother in two episodes.

Helen: They offered me that part and I had so much fun doing it, they are just wonderful peple over there. They tip their hat alot to the movies that were made, by bringing in actors or voices, so for people who love the Supergirl comics or Superman comic books, it was fun to be that surprise in that I was playing Superman's biological mother.

I never really commented on how Smallville cast Slater as Lara. For someone as continuity obsessed as me that was such a nice touch. It sounds like she had a fun time doing it too.

Planet Origo: Is there any particular incident or situation you remember more than anything else from your 25 year old involvement with the Super universe?

Helen: I was very moved when I met Laura Vandervoort, who plays Supergirl on Smallville, because she was my age when I played Supergirl, and that was a little bit of a shock. She might have been one or two years older, but I almost felt like seeing myself 25 years ago, and walking on the set I had that really odd feeling watching her. She was so poised and lovely, and I had a kind of... not eerie [feeling], but I was thinking 'wow, that was me 20-something years ago'.

I just thought that was a nice story.

Anyways, I have to go order the movie now. I have been remiss in not buying it sooner.