read menus backwards, start
ing with dessert," confides
MarieI Hemingway, her coltish,
rawboned frame tucked into a
banquette at a Hollywood cafe.
"Dessert is my main interest."
With her broad cheekbones,
heavy eyebrows and low
forehead conspiring to make
this lanky granddaughter of the great
novelist Ernest Hemingway look like
some unusual combination of Swede
and Eskimo, 21-year-old Mariel Heming
way has nonetheless managed to start
the menu of life backwards, too. Sweet
things like film roles with world-class di
rectors and writers (Woody Allen, Bob
Fosse, Robert Towne), bon-bons like an
active love affair with a mucho hand
some leading man (Christopher Lam
bert), have already crossed her plate.
Her most recent morsel, following up
her praised portrayal of slain Playboy
Playmate Dorothy Straiten in Star ’80, is
a co-starring slot alongside Peter
O'Toole and Vincent Spano in an up
coming comedy-drama called Creator.
In person, Hemingway is tall, speedy,
giggly and not quite either the ethereally
calm teenager she played in Woody Al
len’s Manhattan or the world-class
athlete of Robert Towne s Personal Best.
Were she not a movie star, she could be
the proverbial girl next door. Or, judg
ing from the cuts and bruises she sports
from her minor collisions with life, the
tomboy next door.
As Bob Fosse, her Star '80 director has
said of her, “she has a kind of innocence
without being dumb.” It was also Fosse
who for a long time didn’t think Hem
ingway had the sex or the sophistication
to play a Playboy model. Fortunately he
changed his mind, but meeting the real
Mariel you can see what he meant.
Though she is athletically attractive, she’s
no classic beauty and her manners have
the charm and directness of her Idaho
small-town origins.
Says Hemingway herself, “The other
movies I’d done I was son of playing
myself — I wasn’t really but it’s a great
compliment when audiences think you
are. Those movies weren’t different
enough to show what I could do. I
wanted Star '80 so badly in order to
make a statement that I could do lots of
A NATURAL
SCRUFF MAKES OUT
different stuff." She laughs and adds rue
fully, “It’s real funny. Now Star '80 came
out, everyone thinks that's what I can do.
They never really believe you’re an ac
tress, you know.”
Hemingway is not only an actress, she
is also, literally, “a natural.” One of three
daughters of Ernest Hemingway’s son,
Jack, she grew up living the outdoor life
with her father, a dedicated hunter,
fisherman and sports writer who taught
her to fish, dry fly method. "I had no de
sire to be an actress,” she recalls. “At dif
ferent times I wanted to be a singer, a
marine biologist, a secretary.” Margaux
Hemingway, Mariel’s sister, was already a
well-known model and when Margaux
got her first film (Lipstick) she asked
Mariel to be in it with her. "Even after
that film, 1 really didn't think I'd do it
again. 1 went back to Idaho to ski race —
which was my passion for a long, long
time. Then 1 got a TV movie playing an
unwed mother. There were millions of
babies around and 1 was baby crazy at
the time. It was 18 days and I really
worked hard and I had the best time
And then I did Manhattan with Woody
[Allen] and of course that was fabulous.
Those two experiences decided me.”
Now, Mariel says, "I love my work so
much I go crazy when I'm not working."
She's also made recent preliminary steps
toward studying her craft. She's taken on
an acting coach "when I’m not working.
1 tried acting classes but I didn't like all
that Method stuff. This way, it's just me
and him, and I go and read Shakespeare.
Chekhov, ail the stuff I’ve never done.”
She also did her first play, in Dallas,
"and I want to do it again and again and
again. It was so good for my voice. 1
used to be quiet. I used to hide behind
my mother and everything as a kid. I was
desperately shy as a teenager I used to
be a nightmare for the sound people —
they were always saying, can’t you speak
up louder? That’s ail changing, as you
can see."
She Is especially happy with her new
film, Creator, because "1 get to yell and
scream. I’m definitely not the victim in
this one " However, in the part drama,
part-comedy about a scientist (Peter
O'Toole) who plays God, Mariel is once
again in risky sexual territory. In At an
bateau she was Allen’s teenage mistress,
in Personal Best an athlete involved in a
graphic lesbian affair, in Star 80 a nude
model and in Creator she's a college girl
trying to get the much older O’Toole
into bed. There’s no question Heming
way’s fresh looks and inner simplicity
make her effective in such roles. Her
frankness extends to her own life and
the May-September relationship she had
with Robert Towne, the top Hollywood
screenwriter who made his directing
debut with Personal Best
"Robert and 1 didn’t go out when we
were making Personal Best — in fact, he
was going out with (co-star) Patrice
Donnelly. But I did live with him when 1
was making Star '80. It’s so incestuous
and awful. Isn’t it fun? It never crossed
my mind when we were working to