NEW YORK -- Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Not to mention puff adders, spitting cobras, rogue elephants and poisonous frogs. That was the general lay of the land when Kim Basinger went to Africa.
So much for the glamour of movie making.
I Dreamed Of Africa is the first film Basinger has made since winning an Oscar in 1998 for L.A. Confidential.
The movie, opening Friday, tells the true story of Kuki Gallman, an Italian woman who moved to the wilds of Africa with her son and husband in the early '70s to start a new life.
"The thing about Africa is, you have to live in the moment," Basinger says while in Manhattan to promote the film. "There is such a magnificent sense of life there. It's hard to verbalize."
But she tries. Basinger describes hailstones as big as dinner plates, her first view of the Indian Ocean, the magnificence of the animals.
She gesticulates as she speaks, painting the air. Basinger has large, beautiful, expressive hands and long fingers, although to notice her hands you have to stop looking at her face, and that is not easy.
At 46, she is luminous. She is actually more attractive in person than on the screen, which is unusual.
Basinger was 'Junior Miss' in her hometown of Athens, Ga., and came to acting via modelling. In fact, it was on a modelling shoot that she first went to Africa.
"It was a Vogue shoot. Those ones are tough," she says, meaning the weather. "The makeup all melts off. So you end up doing mostly water shots."
She mimes everyone sweating in the climate and then says, "From the look of the final pictures, we could have shot the whole thing in Calabasas, California. They were pitiful."
Just about anyone you ask will tell you that Basinger is a very shy woman and plagued by various fears, including bouts of agoraphobia (a morbid dread of open spaces). On the other hand, maybe she's just a very private person. In the past, the actress has been hit hard in the press for poor career choices, odd public statements, eccentric clothes, the disastrous Boxing Helena lawsuit and so on and so forth. Who wouldn't be nervous?
She says she has no idea why she became an actress.
"I didn't have the discipline, school-wise, to become a doctor," she says. One of five children, she talks about watching movies with her daddy when she was little and how much pleasure he got from the films.
"I thought, 'Maybe I'll be an actress. I'll be a doctor of the screen.' I sort of painted a picture in my head."
She painted it well. Basinger's screen career includes The Natural, Cool World, The Man Who Loved Women, My Stepmother Is An Alien, Never Say Never Again, Nadine, Blind Date, Batman, 9 1/2 Weeks, Fool For Love and The Marrying Man, among others.
Basinger describes a mental image she held from the beginning of her career, which had her holding a helium-filled balloon that was slowly slipping out of her grasp. "I could feel it go, little by little. I had to hold on tighter. One day, it just floated away.
"On that balloon was written, 'Your anonymity.' "
I Dreamed Of Africa -- a story of joy, tragedy and survival -- was first a best-selling novel by Gallman. Gallman had to adjust to a vastly different life, endure enormous personal loss and then, somehow, remain in love with her adopted country. Today, she lives in Kenya and is an acclaimed environmentalist.
Basinger wanted the role as soon as she read Gallman's book -- but then again, she didn't. What was involved was filming for months near Hluhluwe, not far from the Lubombo Mountains in South Africa, and Basinger was not going without her husband, Alec Baldwin, or their daughter.
At the time I Dreamed Of Africa was filmed, their little girl, Ireland, was two and a half years old. Dare Basinger take a child into the bush?
"It was the hardest decision I've made in my life thus far," she says.
Basinger says she had terrible nightmares about her daughter's safety before leaving for Africa. Worse, upon arriving there, she discovered most of her fears were well-founded.
"Everything in Africa has teeth," she says, warming to her story, "even the acacia trees. And there are signs up everywhere: 'Don't drink the water.' And, 'Don't wash and then touch your face.' Puff adders were everywhere, and they're the fastest-striking vipers."
Her daughter was particularly attracted to tiny bush spotter frogs, interesting critters that Basinger describes as foaming poison before clinging on to the nearest person.
There were days without electricity. There were days without water. Everybody got tick fever. Basinger can laugh about it now, but what she describes is every mother's worst nightmare.
Of course, she would not consider going without Ireland. "I've spent, at most, two or three nights away from her since she was born. I adore her. My first responsibility is as a mother."
Despite her fears, Basinger also wanted the child to have the experience of seeing Africa. "And if we were going to do it, we'd have to do it then when she was two and a half. After that, she'd be in school."
Just like Gallman, Basinger wound up loving Africa.
"I came away with a new-found appreciation for the reptile world," she says, laughing.
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