NEED TO KNOW
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Anjelica Huston reflected on her relationship with her Oscar-winning director father John Huston
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She made her acting debut in 1969’s A Walk With Love and Death, which he directed
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“He realized early on that I didn’t really want to do it, because I didn’t think the part was for me, and I wasn’t comfortable in my skin,” Anjelica told Interview magazine
Anjelica Huston is reflecting on her relationship with her late father John Huston.
For a new feature in Interview magazine, the From the World of John Wick: Ballerina actress, 73, looked back on her first of four cover stories for the outlet. For the 1972 profile, Anjelica discussed her acting debut in 1969’s A Walk With Love and Death, which her father directed.
“I was 15 and going through all sorts of adolescent problems. It’s really hard to make a movie on another person’s territory, especially when that person is your own father, therefore too close to the situation,” Anjelica told Interview in 1972 of her experience making the film.
Asked to respond to her comments today, the actress said, “That was very tough. He was hard on me because he realized early on that I didn’t really want to do it, because I didn’t think the part was for me, and I wasn’t comfortable in my skin.”
“You ask any actress if she’s right for something, she feels good. If she doesn’t, she feels bad,” she added. “So I still don’t think it was my fault.”
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John Hutson and Anjelica Huston on set of A Walk With Love and Death, Nov. 27, 1968
A Walk With Love and Death was one of 47 movies Anjelica’s father John directed in his decades-long film career. John, who died in 1987 at 81, was a two-time Academy Award winner for his work directing and writing the screenplay for the 1948 movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
The actress has admitted publicly before that her first time acting for the screen was fraught, in part due to the fact that she was being directed by her father. In 2019, Anjelica told the Los Angeles Times that John “miscast me [the] first time out and I think he realized that.”
As she told the outlet at that time, she originally wanted to make her big screen debut in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet, which ultimately starred the late Olivia Hussey. “I was ready to act, but I wasn’t ready to act for him,” she said. “I was difficult. I didn’t want to act with no makeup, although I’d have done it for [Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli].”
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Anjelica Huston and John Huston in A Walk With Love and Death
Anjelica, of course, later won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in her father’s 1985 movie Prizzi’s Honor, which was John’s penultimate film as a director. “He wasn’t like the other fathers. He was larger than life, and quite extravagant as a person,” Anjelica told Interview of her father, in response to a 1972 quote of hers in which she described his A-list circle of friends as “part of my everyday life” growing up.
“He lived in extremes,” she added. “And it was an ordinary fact of life that famous people would come to stay, so I was exposed to a certain amount of drama. People like Peter O’Toole and Marlon Brando.”
Ballerina is in theaters June 6.
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