- Miou-Miou, F comme Fairbanks, France, 1975. And so Miou-Miou made the fourth of her five films with Patrick Deware, father of their daughter, Angela. The two actresses co-starred in La Derobade, 1979.
- Kathleen Quinlan, I Never Promised You ARoseGarden, 1977. Charlotte Rampling was due as the shrink of mental patient, Marie. “I feel I’ve had good experience of that,” said La Schneider.
- Marthe Keller, Black Sunday, 1977. The ever charming Hollywood producer Robert Evans dated Schneider – “what a body!” – before she got “stuck on heroin.” By the time she was considered for his terrorist thriller, he reported “she was a total dyke.”Film proved his career low (until the 1984 Cotton Club fiasco) and cost him the $6m he’d been offered for his points which “ended up not making enough for a phone call.”
- Stefania Sandrelli, 1900/Novocento, Italy, 1977. “Never,” she said after having her world turned upside down by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris, “never take your clothes off for a middle-aged man who claims that it’s art.” Mainly, though, it was Schneider’s heroin habit keeping her off-screen for three years, missing Bertolucci’s two-part masterpiece..
- Carole Bouquet, Cet obscur objet du désir, France-Spain, 1977.
- Angela Molina, Cet obscur objet du désir, France-Spain, 1977.
Quit after a publicised row with Spanish director Luis Buñuel, when he failed to greet her arrival from Paris. When they did meet, she said: “So, we’re going to work together.” Buñuel: “Together?” He called her a “petite bourgeoise.” “We worked two days,” Buñuel’s usual star, Fernando Rey, told me in Paris. “Terrible. Terrible. She had traque[stage fright]. She didn’t understand Buñuel. So they said: ‘Maria… er…’ She understood. I suggested Angela… and his assistant director kept reminding Buñuel of having met Carole in Paris.. Suddenly, Carole was in Madrid as well as Angela. He saw me at the studio bar. ‘I can’t tell you yet but it’s going to be a big surprise.’ ‘Oh no it’s not, – you’re using both.’ ‘How do you know, who told you?’ ‘You did,’ I laughed, ‘many times.’ He’d often told me that the only way he could possibly make La femme et le pantin some day would be to use two actresses, because the right one, the perfect one – vulgar dancer, elegant lady – didn’t exist. To have an dream like that at his age… 77! But he was always so fresh…” -
Olivia Hussey, Jesus of Nazareth, TV, 1977. Franco Zeffirelli’s first choice for The Virgin Mary was the girl called Maria… She regretted passing it to Hussey (!) but knew full well what kind of scandal circus the media would have made over such casting after her 1971 erotics in Last Tango in Paris.
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Miou-Miou, Les Routes du sud, France, 1978. Exiled US director Joseph Losey didn’t like her smoking – and she didn’t like him being drunk after every dinner. For his third French movie, Losey also thought of Adjani (bien sur) before settling at the last minute for Miou.
- Mary Steenburgen, Goin’ South, 1978. Jack Nicholson offered it to Maria while making Antonioni’s Passenger twogether. Then his pal, Warren Beatty, discovered Steenburgen paying her way through drama lessons as a waitress and Nicholson just had to, er … have her first. “Maria and I were old friends. I’d been out with her. I always think of her as a female James Dean – she’s a great natural. It’s funny, Tony Richardson told me he asked Maria what she thought of me and she said: Well, Jack is a professional. He likes to know what he is doing. I do not.”
- Therese Ann Savoy, Caligula, 1989.
- Emilie Lihou, Malevil, France, 1981. When first planned in l976. No one ever worked out…
- Penelope Palmer, Malevil, France, 1981.When first planned in l976. … t which role was best for Maria.
- Ornella Muti, Un amour de Swann, France, 1983. Hardly right for Marcel Proust’s Odette de Crecy. Norwas Muti, an Italian Maria in many respects.
- Christine Boisson, Rue barbare, France, 1983. Another French massacre of US pulp fiction. David Goodisrearranged by writer-director Gilles Behat.
- Nathalie Baye, Catch Me If You Can, 2002. Maria was the big surprise on Steven Spielberg’s shortlist of French actresses to test for Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother. A bizarre list ranging from Judith Godreche, aged 30, to Jeanne Moreau at… 74! When Baye had to miss the tests because of filming, Spielberg (who’d loved her since Truffaut’s Une chambre verte 21 years earlier) sent his mate, Brian De Palma, to Paris to test her as soon as she became available. Baye also beat Bouquet to the role, six years after Carole elbowed Nathalie out of La Rouge et le Noir because she was “almost a has-been.” Hah!
Birth year: 1952Death year: 2011Other name: Casting Calls: 15