Today is Linda Fiorentino's 60th birthday, after the revolutionary 'The last seduction' and blockbusters like 'Men in Black' seemed like she was going to be the new big name in cinema. But disagreement after disagreement, she preferred not to allow the industry to devour her.
A woman walks into a John Wayne-esque dump and five minutes later she's sticking her hand into the fly of a guy she just met. “I'm looking for a certain quality from the horse,” she tells him as she sniffs her fingers and gobbles up her Manhattan. It was 1994. The public had just discovered Linda Fiorentino (Philadelphia, March 9, 1960). And Hollywood, the umpteenth heir to Lauren Bacall, Gene Tierney, and Barbara Stanwyck.
The last seduction (John Dahl, 1994), an independent erotic thriller, wowed critics, earning Fiorentino the Independent Spirit for Best Actress and the New York Critics' Award. She also ranked first in the Oscar race. But the disinterest of the distributors forced the film to be released directly on HBO, which, at that time, meant that it was ineligible for the Academy. An ostracism that only contributed to everyone wanting to know more about her.
"Hollywood is very macho. The control and the power of decision are masculine. Men choose and create women that they can dominate, rather than control. Since I don't like to be quiet, I've had quite a few scuffles with Hollywood executives."
When months later Vanity Fair launched its already iconic cover with the ten most promising actresses of her generation for the first time, she was part of the group. What then happened to that powerful actress whom Guillermo Cabrera Infante called in Cinema or Sardine “la plus noire”? Contrary to what has happened with other crashed stars, there is no big scandal after her disappearance. Just rumors.
Little is known about the personal life of the actress. In 1992, two years before starring in The Last Seduction, she married filmmaker John Byrum, but the marriage only lasted a year. Since then, Fiorentino has not gone through the altar again nor has he had children.
Clorinda – that is her real name – Fiorentino was the youngest of a large Philadelphia family who traded law studies for acting and ended up in New York sharing a flat with other aspiring actors, including an unknown Bruce Willis. Her first role came from the creators of Flashdance, who in Crazy About You (1985) tried to turn her into the new Jennifer Beals. The film was a flop, but Fiorentino made it clear to Hollywood what he was made of: When Warner's publicists arrived at her hotel to escort her to her first interview, they discovered that she had skipped.
She also didn't get much further than the action comedy I Got You! Gotcha! (1985), in which he played the romantic interest of Anthony Edwards, an actor who would have his moment of glory in the nineties thanks to the series Emergencies, but it helped him to know the kind of roles he did not want to do because, as he declared to the Magazine in 1995: "Normally, the woman is there to show that the hero is not homos-."
The jackpot was not long in coming: a small role as a sculptor with traces of a dominatrix in Jo, what a Night (1985), by Martin Scorsese. She didn't have much space to show off, but whoever saw her keeps her in her memory. From one prestigious director to another, Alan Rudolph, who brought her together with the most languid and beautiful group of people that Hollywood minus Hollywood could offer: Keith Carradine, John Lone, and Genevieve Bujold, in The Moderns. Her cloudy, washed-out beauty and her watery voice fit like a glove in that story of art forgers in Paris in the twenties, but her relevance was minimal. And then the inevitable happened: the erotic thriller knocked on her door. The exuberant producer Zalman King wanted to revive the success of Nine and a Half Weeks with the much more watered-down Wildfire (1988) and he stayed at half throttle. When Fiorentino was beginning to think about throwing in the towel, The Last Seduction appeared.
“It was definitely a dream role,” she confessed to legendary film critic Roger Ebert. “When I read the script, I was in Arizona, I got in a car and I drove six hours to get to the meeting because I had never read anything so unique in terms of a female character. I walked into the meeting with [director] John Dahl and said, 'John, you can't hire anyone but me for this movie.'
“I'm single and I've been on a few dates since The Last Seduction came out and I could see the disappointment in the eyes of the men who thought I was going to be a hot date and show them all these weird things. And then they find out that I'm a normal person, you know, and I have no inclinations towards strange S- behavior and it's like disappointment crosses their faces."
The story was not far from what Perdition and Fire in the Body had already told us: a cold and perverse woman manipulates men taking advantage of her overwhelming capacity for seduction. But it came at a time when the billboard was packed with movies for the whole family like Legends of Passion or Forrest Gump and the adult audience appreciated a film without heroism, good feelings, and songs composed by Diane Warren.
This first success also gave him the measure of the obstacles he was going to encounter. After she attempted to make a sequence in which she appeared with her breasts exposed more suggestive, she suggested using straps that covered her nipples. When one of the producers saw it, she raged: “Are we making an art film?” she bellowed. The scene was suppressed and they did not charge that day.
Her next project would definitely have to elevate her. She was going to be the absolute protagonist of the great thriller of the decade, Jade, written by Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct), produced by the legendary Robert Evans and directed by William Friedkin, responsible for The Exorcist and French Connection. Next to her would be Chaz Palminteri, recently nominated for an Oscar for Bullets on Broadway, and David Caruso, a television star thanks to New York Policemen.
The problems began when Friedkin minimized the text of an Eszterhas who, furious, demanded that his name be removed from the credits. The brawl reached the media, but it was corrected with a few million. And believe it or not, the biggest hurdle Jade had to deal with was the anger of NYPD Blue fans, furious that Caruso had left the series for filming. The actor became the most hated in the industry and everyone, the media, and viewers expected and wanted his failure.
“Then it turns out that David Caruso is not like the saint he plays in NYPD Blue,” wrote Newsday critic Marvin Kitman. He is a greedy showbiz rat who puts his personal career ahead of the viewers who made him who he is today.” Those who wanted to see his head roll had what they wanted: Jade's hit, the film destined to reaffirm Fiorentino's stardom, was huge.
Fiorentino found refuge in the new film by his friend John Dahl, who had directed her in The Last Seduction. But Hidden in Memory, a strange thriller halfway between police and science fiction, did not repeat the success of his previous collaboration. Roger Ebert, who had fallen in love with The Last Seduction, declared: “In the annals of cinematic nonsense, Hidden in Memory deserves a place of honor. This is one of the most convoluted and absurd movies I've ever seen... The actors play this footage as if they think it's a serious movie or even a good one. That makes it even more galling."
“When Linda saw the sign she went crazy. They put her head on another body because she never did the photo shoot. The body had more cleavage than hers and she got angry and did not promote the film "
Fiorentino was again five minutes away from the world forgetting who he was when Men in Black (1997) appeared. It was hard to understand what a San- bomb like her was doing in such a white and sanitized family product, but she desperately needed a hit. Legend has it that she won that role in a poker game with director Barry Sonnenfeld and there, among cigar smoke and glasses of whiskey, it is easy to imagine her, much more than in a product of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
The film, which was the third highest grossing of 1997, ended with the inclusion of Linda's character in the team, but in the second part – released in 2002 – there was no trace of her character, Dr. Laurel Weaver. What happened?
There are two versions. The first states that she asked for a disproportionate amount of money, something difficult to understand since she was at a low point in her career. Second, the team refused to work with her again. Her character was erased from history and replaced by another thin, shady, fascinating, and down-to-earth actress, another John Dahl muse who had ended up in oblivion: Lara Flynn Boyle, the famous Donna from Twin Peaks.
It did not take long for another role to arrive that helped to cement his black legend. Breaking away from the roles that had made her popular, Linda played an abortion clinic doctor who turns out to be the last descendant of Jesus Christ. If Jade's problems had been aired in the press, those of Dogma (2000) did not fall short. After director Kevin Smith's script was leaked, the Church threw its hands up and Disney disengaged from the project, which ended up in the hands of Harvey Weinstein. It's funny how her name always appears in the stories of attractive actresses who disappear for no apparent reason.
In the DVD edition, the director regretted not giving the role of Linda to Janeane Garofalo. “The biggest pain in the ass I've ever worked with was Linda Fiorentino,” he dispatched. According to her version, Linda had complained about having too many scenes and spending too much time in Pittsburgh far from civilization while everyone else came and went to her house. However, it also transpired that Linda's role was reduced in favor of Damon and Affleck's showing off. Perhaps the average between the two stories is the real one.
“When Linda saw the sign she went crazy. They put her head on another body because she never did the photo shoot. The body had more cleavage than her and she got angry and did not promote the film, ”Smith also revealed. Although it may seem incredible, in 1999 those words went unnoticed. Today it is easy to understand why Fiorentino was angry, but then she seemed simply hysterical. Everyone knew that the legs on the Pretty Woman poster weren't Julia Roberts's, but she hadn't even said "moo" because Julia wanted to be a star and Linda didn't. Or not that kind of star.
In 2014, Smith told Daily Beast that after suffering a heart attack he received a message from Florentino and took the opportunity to apologize to her for her words. The Failed Dogma was her last notable film. From there her career was a slow slide towards goodbye. In 2009 she made her last film, Once more with feeling, again with Chaz Palminteri, and she disappeared.
The movies she didn't make also helped define her career. She auditioned for Basic Instinct, but Paul Verhoeven offered her the role of her which she ended up playing Jeanne Tripplehorn and turned down. She was not the only resignation of her, she also got off Top Gun after meeting with Tom Cruise. "I told him that this was the typical bad movie for brats and that it was also poorly raised," he revealed in an interview with Tony Ward in Penthouse. It is not difficult to know where his fame comes from. With We were never angels, which ended up being played by Demi Moore, the same thing happened.“Not only did he tell Robert De Niro he wasn't going to make the movie, he also didn't understand why he was going to make it.” Maybe more people should tell Robert De Niro that.
Her speech from more than two decades ago is sadly still valid: “Hollywood is very macho. The control and the power of decision are masculine. Men choose and create women that they can dominate, rather than control. Since I don't like to be quiet, I've had quite a few scuffles with Hollywood executives."
In an interview with critic Roger Ebert in 1995, she complained bitterly about how her bigger role had changed men's perception of her: “I'm single and I've been on a few dates since The Last Seduction came out and I could see the disappointment. in the eyes of men who thought she was going to be a hot date and teach them all these weird things. And then they discover that I am a normal person, that I have no inclinations towards strange S- behavior, and it is as if a disappointment crosses their faces. Rita Hayworth's old lament: "Men go to bed with Gilda and wake up with me." Fortunately, Linda said goodbye to the industry before it swallowed her up.
