Sean Young doesn’t seem to have much of a filter, even now that she’s defeated her demons and moved ahead with her life. She hit viral fame a few years back when she yelled and interrupted Julian Schnabel’s acceptance speech at Director’s Guild Awards. Young went into rehab shortly after and just sat for a very frank interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of her new role in the horror film Darling, but mostly ended up talking about her role in Hollywood lore.
Right from the start, the interview hits on Young’s infamous attempt to win the role of Catwoman in Batman Returns, something Vince hit on in his recent piece revisiting the film. She attempted to dress as the character on several occasions, including one time on the WB lot that prompted a fantastic answer when brought up by Tatiana Siegel at THR:
When you dressed up as Catwoman and approached Tim Burton on the WB lot, what was his reaction?He wasn’t there. I guess he was hiding in the bathroom. Who knows? If these Warner Bros. executives now were really good businessmen, they’d let me play Catwoman today, and I’d make a smash amount of money. But they’re too stupid. You can lead people to water, but you can’t make them great artists. Nobody wants to take that risk, it’s too scary. If they’re wrong, it can cost them their job. If there were really good businessmen over there, it’d be an obvious no brainer, but I’m not running the studio.
Young would get her chance to dress up as Catwoman several times: once on the Joan Rivers show as you can see in the home video shot above, and then again with David Letterman to make fun of the story:
Young also talked about other parts of her wild past, including the controversy surrounding herself and James Woods. In fact, she addresses rumors that Fatal Attraction was written about her — she was initially in mind for the role instead — and brought up how Woods accused her of stalking him in 1987. Her answer provides a lesson for young actresses in Hollywood:
For anybody in show business who actually believes that story that I, beautiful Sean Young, movie star on the upcoming rise of fame, would stalk James Woods, is preposterous. But the fact that it was believed is even more preposterous. It makes you think how the game really works, which is, it’s not what is true, it’s what is believed. But the fact that I should be upset that I was accused of this bullshit from Woods made me look even more guilty of it. It didn’t feel good anyway to defend myself. That was the job of my agents. Michael Ovitz was my agent at the time and he didn’t come to my rescue. My other agent didn’t come to my rescue. None of them at CAA came to my rescue, and that was an agency that represented James Woods as well. None of them came to my rescue. It’s not show art, it’s not show home on the range, it’s show business, and that was an eye opener for me as a young woman. Hopefully the young women coming up will watch their back, be aware of the terrain, and not get too emotional and be calm and collected. It’s not about being right. I was always right. It didn’t matter.
There’s a ton of good stuff in the interview, including her views on losing Vicki Vale in the first Batman film, her views on the gender pay gap, and what actresses she enjoys from the current generation. The story behind her departure from Batman can be seen in the short featurette below:
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
