GLOUCESTER, MASS. -- After The Color Of Money and The Abyss and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves were hits, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was poised for major movie stardom.
Instead, she went on to bigger and better things -- who are now aged three and seven. Okay, smaller and better.
"I took breaks because I had children," says she. "And," she adds quietly, "I still have them."
The actress' children with her husband, director Pat O'Connor, and the care they both take to protect their domestic life are the top priorities.
Work comes somewhere after that. The work that has brought her to this fishing village in Massachusetts is her role in The Perfect Storm, the new film that tells the story of how a handful of regular people responded to a catastrophic storm at sea in 1991.
Mastrantonio portrays Linda Greenlaw, a swordfish boat captain and close friend of Billy Tyne (played by George Clooney), the captain of the Andrea Gail. The cast includes Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, Diane Lane and William Fichtner. The movie opened Friday.
Maybe it's a happy marriage or motherhood or removing herself from the Hollywood scene to live permanently in England -- or maybe she's always been that way? -- but Mastrantonio is fearless about NOT playing the game. She says what she likes. She has no interest in Hollywood. She questions the actor-as-empire-builder.
Mastrantonio was cast for her role in The Perfect Storm without ever having met Wolfgang Peterson, the director.
"We didn't meet until the first day of filming,"she says, "and I was convinced that when he saw me he'd say, 'Oh, no, no! Not her! I wanted the other one, the blonde.'"
Praised for her hard work -- the shoot was notoriously difficult -- on the high seas, Mastrantonio declares at once that it was really the crew who deserves the praise.
"I was inside the boat staying dry. They were the ones outside getting soaked, strapped to the front of the boat."
The modest and marvelous Mastrantonio, now 41, was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She is the fifth of six sisters; her dad was a foundry worker. Mastrantonio trained for a career in opera, majoring in voice at the U. of Chicago, but wound up moving to New York in 1980 to work on Broadway.
Her first film role was in King Of Comedy, but her work ended up on the cutting room floor. Then came Scarface and Slam Dance; meanwhile, she still worked in theatre.
Other roles for Mastrantonio came in The Color Of Money (for which she received an Academy Award nomination) and January Man -- where she met her husband, who directed her, in Toronto. He has just finished making Sweet November with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron.
Then there was her role in The Abyss, in which she spent a lot of time in the water co-starring with Ed Harris.
Speaking of water, any flashbacks to The Abyss while filming The Perfect Storm?
"Not a one, I'm happy to say," she remarks dryly.
Reminded that she had had the chance to warn the world about Jim Cameron when he directed her in The Abyss, Mastrantonio laughs and says, "I tried! But he makes too much money, and money rules. You make enough money and you're forgiven everything."
Don't get her started: "Money is the new god," she sighs.
And forget the stardom stuff. Her children, says the actress, "Are the real stars."
She adds, "They need me. And I need them."
Mastrantonio has no use for celebs like Madonna who show all and tell all and then beg for their privacy.
For the working mother, it's always a catch 22, she says.
"How much do you give up to perpetrate the work? I don't work as much as I used to, as much as I'd like, and that's worrying," she says.
On the other hand, she gets to keep a lowish profile that allows her to live on a normal street and go into the shops and be left alone. And watch over her kids.
Anyway, work is work, says Mastrantonio, and she enjoys it. And needs it. "The big difference is that people used to save up for college. Now you save for grade six."
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