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Triple impact
Susan Sarandon is now in the limelight for her performances in three acclaimed films
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Arthur J Pais
Besides raising three children, running a home with actor-director Tim Robbins and engaging in leftist causes, Susan Sarandon still comes up with fine performances one after the other. She did not conspire it, but she is there in major roles in three well-received movies --- The Banger Sisters, Igby Goes Down and Moonlight Mile --- playing across North America.
When most actresses beyond 40 years complain they cannot get good parts, here is Sarandon, 56, enjoying a booming career. She is not complaining, she says with a hearty laugh. The actress won an Oscar for her sterling performance of a nun consoling a death row inmate in hubby Tim Robbins's Dead Man Walking. Her earlier Oscar nominations include Thelma & Louise, and Lorenzo's Oil.
At the Toronto International Film Festival where Moonlight Mile premiered, there was an instant buzz she would be nominated again.
Moonlight Mile, which tells the story of a couple whose daughter has just been killed and how they bond with the young man who would have been their son-in-law, was one of the better received films at TIFF.
Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman who feature together for the first time had good fun at the press conference in Toronto.
"Did you just pinch my ass?" she asked Jake Gyllenhaal, the actor who plays the bereaved young man, just as Hoffman put up his hand announcing the real culprit.
Sarandon and Hoffman bonded so well on the sets that it looked like they had been friends for ages, says Ashok Amritraj whose Hyde Park Entertainment co-produced the film with Disney's Touchstone Division.
"I have rarely seen two artistes --- not to forget Gyllenhaal --- who have poured so much passion and energy in their performances," says Amritraj, the man behind some 70 films, including Bandits starring Cate Blanchett and Bruce Willis.
Eager to see how her three films will perform, Sarandon was not worried about featuring in three films simultaneously, she said, adding that the only thing common to the three films was Susan Sarandon.
Her comedy, The Banger Sisters has grossed an impressive $14 million in its first week. In this film, she plays an uptight mother whose forgotten memories of the rock era days are revived when she is reunited with an old friend (Goldie Hawn) after two decades.
In Igby Goes Down, which is slowly expanding across the country following excellent reviews, she plays a self-absorbed mother who cannot save the home from ruin.
Moonlight Mile, which opened in a handful of major cities in the US and expanded to some 400 theatres next week before going wide again after two weeks, she has to emote humour, anger, sarcasm and sorrow as she grapples with her daughter's murder.
"The most important thing for me (while choosing the parts) is that I am not playing the roles I have already played," she says. "My character has to undergo a lot of change in any movie."
She has a monologue in the movie in which she describes some of the reasons why her marriage has lasted for over three decades. Some of her observations are raunchy, some are comical but on the whole they are very touching. And she is mesmerising all through the electrifying monologue.
"It is very funny," she says of the sequence, "but it is also so philosophical and down-to-earth. That moved me."
Hoffman had initially turned down the film because he was unsure whether he wanted to play a character role. Sarandon signed on as soon as she read the script about two years ago.
"Susan was remarkable," says director Brad Siberling who has based the film on the tragic incidents in his own life. "She was the first person to sign on. As soon as she read the script, she told me, 'Go for it'."