1. – Demi Moore, St Elmo’s Fire, 1984.
“Everyone wanted that role,” recalled director Joel Schumacher. His office was opposite John Hughes’ where Demi got tired for waiting for him. “I happened to see her running down the hallway. I had my assistant run after her and find out who she was – Demi Moore and she was on General Hospital.” So I called her agent, she came in for a reading. There was no one like Demi at that age in the world. In the movie she gets to be sexy, seductive, hilariously funny and dramatic. She becomes a coke head and she tries to kill herself by freezing to death by opening the windows in her apartment. She had to go through 35 different things in the movie. At that age? Pretty fucking amazing, right? There was no one like her.” Hughes and Schumacher were rather like Lucas and Spielberg in the 70s, dipping into the same talent pool. Those Brat Packers Hughes kept in high school, Schumacher made, as here, college kids. Mare wanted to be Jules but Joel gave the pregnant and Catholic Winningham something harder – a Jewish virgin.
2. – Mary McDonnell, Dances With Wolves, 1990. “She’s a dynamo and I almost cast her as Stands With A Fist,” said the star and debuting director Kevin Costner. He did not forget her. The sole Brat Packer to win an Oscar nod (Georgia, 1995), Marie became the first actress to work twice with Costner: Wyatt Earp and The War, 1994.
3. – Kathleen Quinlan, Apollo 13, 1995. The zero role of Mrs Jim Lovell. All Kathleen got out of it was a Euro publicity trip. Not bad but no Oscar!
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3