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NEW YORK -- By and large, the toughness of this place and its people is exaggerated. But Philadelphia - the birthplace of movie maneater Linda Fiorentino - that's a tough town.
Raven haired, wirily-beautiful and ready-to-spar, Fiorentino is now fixed in many minds' eyes as the lethal and sexually-predatory Bridget Gregory in John Dahl's deliciously-evil The Last Seduction. With carnal glee, she portrayed a woman who plots to rob her husband (Bill Pullman) with the help of an easily-seduced good-hearted dupe (Peter Berg).
In my mind's eye, the image that stays is of her throwing Berg against a fence and having her way with him.
Bridget was, of course, a character. And Linda Fiorentino is a real person, a veteran of a decade of trying to get noticed in movies (Vision Quest, After Hours, The Moderns).
But the 34-year-old Fiorentino will slap you around, figuratively, as part of her personal style.
Asked whether she would have been ready for the attention if it had come 10 years ago (when she received good reviews for After Hours), she considers the question with initial distaste. "I can't predict what would have happened," she says, slowly warming. "I suspect that because I have 10 years of abuse behind me that I handle it a little differently, now. I'm more aloof than I otherwise would be, I'm more cynical."
Define abuse, I say. Her eyes glint. "Abuse? For a woman? In Hollywood? Use your imagination!" she snorts derisively.
Then she smiles, as if to say, It's okay. You needed that.
"She's a tough chick. You met her, you know what I mean," summarizes supermodel Angie Everhart, who makes her 'acting' debut opposite Fiorentino in William Friedkin's Jade, the latest by-the-book psycho-sexual thriller from million-dollar screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct).
In Jade (opening Oct. 13), Fiorentino plays the title character, a professional psychologist who leads a double life as a call girl to wealthy and powerful men. Chazz Palminteri is her husband, an influential attorney, while David Caruso plays her ex-lover, a D.A. who suspects she may be a psycho-killer.
She's ostensibly playing another sexual predator. But Fiorentino, who describes the experience of playing Bridget as "therapeutic," concedes that Jade wasn't quite the same personal catharsis as was The Last Seduction. "The aspect of living a (sexual) fantasy life (in Jade) appealed to me maybe, but Bridget represents the side of all women that we'd like to enact at one time or another," she says with a throaty laugh.
Rarely has a character so insinuated herself on a person's life. The Last Seduction - originally made for U.S. pay TV and then deemed marketable as a theatrical release - hit big late last year, and grew hot with an Oscar scandal. Though most agreed Fiorentino's performance was Oscar-worthy, Academy rules prohibited nominating any film that had appeared on TV first. Eventually the case was taken to court, and the producers lost.
Still the heat was there. "I first figured out something was going on when I went to the doctor's office for an insurance physical," she says. "I'm sitting in the waiting room and saw my picture in about five magazines, and I said, 'I think my life just changed.' I mean, I only read magazines in doctors' offices, that's how nuts my life has been. People I knew were telling me what was going on, and it was like, 'Oh really? I gotta go.'"
Fiorentino, who was married to director John Byrum, has allowed that she broke up with someone before Last Seduction hit. Do men treat her differently now? "I don't know, I've been working non-stop, but I'm taking time off. I intend to go out and do a little survey," she says with a mischievous smile.
"I've been in hotels since last August. I'm living in one now. I don't meet many people. You (journalists) are the only people I've met all year," she says in a mock sobbing fit. Poor girl.
What's amazing for a nice Catholic girl is how uninhibited she seems about sex, even to fellow actors. "When I found out she was playing my wife in Jade, I went to see Last Seduction," says Palminteri. "My reaction was 'I gotta start working out, big time.' On the day we'd shoot a love scene she'd be completely uninhibited - the clothes come off, whoosh!"
"I'm not sure I am free or uninhibited," Fiorentino says. "It's part of the process. After the fact, I freak out. At the end of the day... Oh my God! But if you walk on the set and you're inhibited and freaked out, it affects everybody on the set."
Has that ever happened to her? "Well, on The Last Seduction (during the "fence scene") there was kind of a role reversal going on. Usually it's the actress who's saying to the director, like, 'I don't wanna do this, it's pornographic, and blah blah blah and I don't want to take my clothes off and my thighs look really fat...' And in this case, Peter Berg was doing that.
"John Dahl was freaking out saying 'You talk to him, Lin.' I said 'C'mon, we're losing the light!' and threw him against the fence."
There's little doubt the direct connection between Fiorentino's brain and her mouth has something to do with her slow progress in Hollywood (she frankly hates the place). On the other hand, spontaneity is the basis of her appeal now.
"I try to let anything that's going on into the process," she says of her approach. "I don't pretend there's not a crew, I don't pretend I'm not having a hard time with this person or a great time with that person. It's all me."
The LINDA FIORENTINO File
BORN: Clorinda Fiorentino, Philadelphia, Pa. Two brothers, five sisters. "I'm convinced my mother only had sex eight times."
EDUCATED: Rosemont College, Political science, pre-law. "I was actually three months away from going to law school. I think I would have been a trial lawyer."
ATTENDED: Circle In The Square Acting School, New York.
UPCOMING FILMS: Unforgettable - directed by Last Seduction's John Dahl. "I play a scientist who's discovered a memory drug. Ray Liotta plays a medical examiner trying to solve the mystery of who killed his wife and he injects himself with the memories of key witnesses. It was great working with John Dahl, and actually having a budget. We were talking, 'Imagine Last Seduction with a $20 million budget!'"
Zenith Suites - Spanish Civil War romance directed by ex-husband Byrum. "We're really professional and we're friends. The fact that he knows me makes the job easier, not harder."