The interview Anjelica Huston recently gave to Vulture's Andrew Goldman should really be deemed an all-timer. This was all part of the press rounds the actress is conducting for her upcoming Keanu Reeves-led action film, “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum.”
Clearly the legendary actress doesn’t give a fuck anymore.
She bashed critic John Simon, who nastily panned the actress's debut performance in 1969's “A Walk With Love and Death,” directed by her father, John Huston, by focusing on her looks: “There is a perfectly blank, supremely inept performance by Huston’s daughter Anjelica, who has the face of an exhausted gnu, the voice of an unstrung tennis racket, and a figure of no discernible shape." Yikes.
About the review, Huston states “It sticks with you. And now that you’ve reminded me, it will stick with me for another ten years … I think the news there is he’s dead and I’m not.”
However, Simon is still alive. He's 93 now, Goldman informed Huston. "He’s dead as far as I’m concerned," she shot back. Love it.
Because this such an extensively fascinating review that any dead-serious cinephile must read, I have split the most fascinating aspects into bullet point:
Oprah Winfrey Holds A Grudge Against Huston for losing the Oscar:
“She never had me on her show, ever. She won’t talk to me. The only encounter I’ve had with Oprah was when I was at a party for the Academy Awards, a private residence. I was talking to Clint Eastwood, and she literally came between us with her back to me. So all of the sudden I was confronted with the back of Oprah’s head.…Nobody else would dislike me so much as to literally, physically come in between the person I was talking with that way. But I admire Oprah. God knows, she’s made some big steps.”
She defends Woody Allen:
“I think that after two states investigated him, and neither of them prosecuted him.” [Asked if she’d work with again]: “Yeah, in a second.”
Jack Nicholson's cocaine addiction:
“Never took overt amounts. He was never a guzzler. I think Jack sort of used it, probably like Freud did, in a rather smart way. Jack always had a bit of a problem with physical lethargy. He was tired, and I think probably, at a certain age, a little bump would cheer him up. Like espresso.”
Huston was also arrested at the house where Roman Polanski was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl.
Huston defends Polanski:
“Well, see, it’s a story that could’ve happened 10 years before in England or France or Italy or Spain or Portugal, and no one would’ve heard anything about it. And that’s how these guys enjoy their time. It was a whole playboy movement in France when I was a young girl, 15, 16 years old, doing my first collections. You would go to Régine or Castel in Paris, and the older guys would all hit on you. Any club you cared to mention in Europe. It was de rigueur for most of those guys like Roman who had grown up with the European sensibility.”
On Bill Murray being asshole?
"He was a shit to me on Life Aquatic. The first week I was there, we were all in this little hotel, and he invited the entire cast to go and have dinner, except me. And everyone came down for dinner, a little dog-faced about my not being invited, and they were all like, “Oh, you know, we don’t really want to go.” That was worse than anything….I think we met again in Florence, because that movie was shot all over Italy, and we were doing a scene at Gore Vidal’s house in Ravello, and he said, “Hey, how’ve you been? I missed you.” I said, “You’re full of shit. You didn’t miss me.” He looked all confused for a moment. He’s been a little nicer to me since. He showed up at my husband’s funeral. He couldn’t have been nicer that day. He showed up. A lot of people didn’t.”
Of note: My personal Anjelica Huston cinematic hall-of-fame would be “Prizzi's Honor,” “Enemies: A Love Story,” “The Grifters,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”