The gal who has taken the New York and L.A. intellectual set by storm and whose recent films have brought about a cult following, is a shortish, angel-faced blonde who brings out the protective instinct in you. Her name is Carol Kane. You've seen Carol's oval face and slim body grace at least a half dozen movies including Hester Street, Dog Day Afternoon, The Last Detail, The World's Greatest Lover and Annie Hall.
She landed her first screen role at seventeen - a bit part that more accomplished actresses would have done gratis. She was the hooker who tried to restore Jack Nicholson's masculinity in Mike Nichol's Carnal Knowledge. "Marion Dougherty, the casting director had seen my picture in a magazine, but the magazine didn't know how to get in touch with me. Fortunatelly, she recalled that I'd done a walk-on in Little Murders, with Elliot Gould and called its casting director, Vic Ramos, who had my number. Otherwise I might never have been discovered!
"Mike Nichols had already begun shooting up in Vancouver, which meant I'd have to flly there. My mother, who is a musician and not unfamiliar with the devious ways of showbusiness, decided to play it cool. Suppose Mike didn't like me, she figured. At least I should go up in style and enjoy myself. So she insisted that I be given a first class plane ticket and accomodations in Vancouver's best deluxe hotel.
"When I arrived, they were all waiting there in the lobby - Mike, Jack, Art Garfunkel and a few other actors. They wanted to see what the new kid in town looked like. I felt under microscoopic examination. Worst, I hadn't even had the time to comb my hair, which I never do anyway!
"Later, they told me they wanted to take me by surprixe to see how I would react. They did. But I lived up to their expectations and didn't become flabbergasted. Jack was the first to smile and nod his head in approval. Then Mike applauded and suddenly the room went wild with clapping. I began laughing and started to applaud myself. I knew I was in!
"I didn't have a line to say in the film, but it was a major scene just the same. A lot of important people remembered me in it. I recall being very nervous and Jack saying: 'All you have to do is keep quiet and play your cards right.' This made me giggle. I couldn't do otherwise with the part!
"Little did I realize that Jack and I would be working together again a few years hence, and that the character I'd be playing would be almost identical.
"I was in Canada finishing a movie called Wedding in White when director Hal Ashby came scouting locations for the Last Detail. I loved his Harold and Maude, so I called him to tell him how much I admired his films. I added that I would be willing to do any sort of part just to work with him.
"I imagined that many actresses had told him that in the past, and I thoroughly expected a polite brushoff. But to my astonishment he suggested we meet to see if there was anything in the script for me. As it turned out there was a small part of a hooker whom Jack Nicholson gets for Randy Quaid, the sailor brought back to base to face charges.
"When I came onto the set. I felt like the star. Jack rushed up and immediately kissed me. 'Angel face, where have you been all these years?' he murmured jestingly. 'Oh, around,' I replied getting into character.
"Jack prefers the actresses with whom he works to be on the short side. I wasn't tall, so I was immediately in. The reason for this is that he is no more than five foot seven or so himself. When he has no other choice but to play opposite a lanky actress, he will wear elevator shoes.
"Although I always seemed to be working, I felt I wasn't getting ahead as quickly as I hoped. It's every actresses dream to walk into the director's office and be told to your amazement that 'you're exactly the girl for whom we've been searching to play opposite Redford or De Niro!" It simply hadn't happened to me, and it didn't look like it was about to either.
"I went on to play Squirrel, the shy bank clerk in Dog Day Afternoon. We were all menaced by Al Pacino in that movie, although off-set Al was more mouse that menace. We had a nice rapport because he respected me. He'd seen me do Arturo-Ui on Broadway and liked my work. But with the other actors he hardly opened his mouth unless he had a line to say. He was just the opposite of Jack Nicholson.
"I'd been studying acting since I was fourteen, having begun my training along with academic at the New York Professional Children's School. It's a very relaxed place where young entertainers can continue their education while working in showbusiness. For instance, you may sign out for classes whenever you must go on interviews. Or, if you're on the road with a show, you are allowed to follow a home study course.
"That was my case when, at fourteen, I was cast in a touring company of The Prime of Miss Jean Broadie. I did my algebra and French lessons by mail, mailing the results back to New York for examination. I did better than when I attended actual classes. Outside of the eight performances, I had so much spare time on my hands I had nothing else to do but devote it to my studies. In New York, I was continually bouncing in and out of auditions.
But Carol did not have to go to an audition for the big break, the leading part in Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street. This was the award winning film about love and lack of love amongst Jewish immigrants newly arrived in America. For her performance as the abandoned wife of the rougish double-faced Middle European, Carol found herself a leading contender for that year's Oscar.
"I never dreamed my name would one day be along side people like Maggie Smith's and Glenda Jackson's. I knew I didn't have much chance to win because Hester Street was in-New York picture - experimental in its handling , off-beat in theme. Yet, the very idea that it could compete with much bigger productions thrilled all of us connected with it."
At first Hester Street had trouble finding an American distributor. But when Carol received her Oscar nomination, several dozen theatres across America immediately booked it, and it was also sold to numerous European countries.
"When casting, Joan Silver thought that physically I was perfect for the part. But she had certain doubts, and so it was touch and go for several weeks. The problem was, Joan couldn't decide between an American actress who would speak Yiddish or a Yiddish actress who spoke English. I wound up with a few sleepless nights, because I wanted that role more than any other I'd ever tried out for. I identified with the girl.
"Funny, my parents are both Jewish, and we are of Jewish descent. My grandparents were forced to leave Russia during the terrible pogroms there at the beginning of the century.
"If you're a boy and have to be bar mitzvahed, you may pick up a few phrases of Yiddish along the way. Most of the part was in Yiddish, and in the limited time, I knew I couldn't learn enough to give the character the right feeling during the trial readings.
"I enrolled in a neighborhood Hebrew School and took coaching from the rabbi. I made better progress than I expected. When I returned for the second audition, Joan couldn't believe her ears."
Carol has always striven for perfection in whatever she has done. Therefore, it was no surprise when she also tangoed brilliantly with Nureyev in the dance school sequence of Ken Russell's Valentino.
"I'd gotten out on the floor of 'Club 54' several times, but nothing very extravagant. I didn't start as a hoofer on broadway the way Shirley MacLaine or Valarie Harper did. I'd always thought of myself as earthbound, even though I'd go to dance and movement classes when I had the time.
"I picked up the rudimentals of tango from the same Hollywood coach who for years worked with people like Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Caron. but when I began rehearsing with Nureyev, I realized what I had learned was insufficient.
"Rudy was so charming that he made me feel immediately relaxed. His approach to dancing is more intuitive than methodical. You can almost guess the steps from the movement of his body without bothering to look down at his feet. We perfected the routine together, modifying it with arch movements to make look really spectacular on screen."
It was a Valentino year for Carol because her next movie was The World's Greatest Lover, with Gene Wilder. She played Wilder's wife, a woman seduced by Valentino when her husband is lured to Hollywood to protray a counter-type to the silent film lover.
"Gene was the most methodical and meticulous person with whom I'd worked. On and off screen he gives the impression of being shy. That's because he is fundamentally very inhibited. To overcome this he pushes in the opposite direction - sometimes too far.
"Like Gene, I give the appearance of being fragile, but I am a strong person by nature and intellectually. On a film set I will hold out for what I believe is right and even argue a point of characterization with a director. However, I am not above compromising.
"Gene and I had some forceful disputes, which astonished everyone. Here were are supposedly two shy individuals suddenly having some tough analytical discussions. "Would she have left him if ---' No, she wouldn't have reacted that way....Nobody could believe it."
Carol smiled as she brushed back off her forehead a few locks of blonde hair. She was dressed casually in a checked jacket and dark slacks which reflected her informality. "I may compromise but I don't give in easily. I have a strong ego which has become even stronger after years in the business. You couldn't survive in this world without ego. Demands are continually being made upon you by press agents, agents, managers and such. You can't say yell all the time to everyone.
"Not to mention the rejection and misunderstandings, public and private which an actor is up against. Things are changing quickly now since people know who I am, but the number of roles for which I auditioned in the past and never got would keep me counting for the next hour.
"To help me cope, I've been under analysis for the last eleven years- on and off. When I'm working on a film, I skip the sessions for a few months. It makes me less dependent upon the psychiatrist and puts the responsibility squarely on my own shoulders. It gives me a breathing period to digest what I've learned about myself. I went to my first analyst when I was five. Now wonder I became an actress - the profession must have chosen me!
"From my behaviour this psychiatrist thought I was absolutely cuckoo. If you were a kid of five you wouldn't have reacted differently either. I was shoved into a small rrom with three chairs in it. One chair was occupied by the psychiatrist, the other by his assistant. My mother was asked to sit down next to him. I was facing them. I felt overpowereed in a confrontration situation. When my mother spoke, the psychiatrist told her to keep quiet. Right away that made me nervous. Then he screamed at me, and I began to cry.
"It's very difficult finding an alalyst with whom you are compatible. I had a woman for a year who actually ate her way through the sessions - odoriferous salami sandwiches. I decided to dismiss her. She was getting fat on my troubles.
"No, I've never fallen in love with any of my analysts. That only happens in the movies. The fact is, I never reached that high a point of transference. Usually I was too involved in discussing my love problems with other people to even consider the analyst. Anyway, would you like me to describe the analyst I had to you?
"I have no doubt that my sessions hellped me to play Cissy Carpenter of The Mafu Cage. The nuances of neuroticism although not evident on the surface can be carried to extremes so they look psychotic. That's waht I did. Seeing the movie, you might be inclined to think I'm playing my role too well. But in real life. I've never had moments of madness like Cissy. Cissy has an unnatural affection for her sister played by Lee Grant. It plays upon her psychotic mind. Eventually, in a fit of madness, she kills her sisters's older boyfriend. Well, I have an older sister, Anina, who is twenty-six, and was just married. In playing and understanding Cissy I tried to use the affection which I have for Anina, although quite normal.
"Anina and I were never that close. Our most memorable period together was when the whole family spent a year in Paris. I was eight. Dad had a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at the Sorbonne, afterwards we moved to Cleveland, and that's when my parents split. Divorce in those days was a dirty word. Whenever there was a divorce, the teachers in our school talked about it as if it were leprosy. Ohio was, and still is, a very provincial region with provincial attitudes...although what's under the surface is another matter.
"We were much closer to our mother. Dad was traveling a lot to places like Nigeria and Egypt for the World Bank. I loved my father dearly, but my relations to him just was not what it should have been.
"The lack of a father figure was at the basis of my problem. I had feelings of insecurity. Even though, after eleven years, I've almost worked out the solution for myself, I'm not ready to leave the sessions. They are too beneficial.
"Someone once remarked that you can never escape the psychological spiral in which you're emeshed. For example, there are certain types of women who are always falling in love with the wrong men. It's not that I've fallen in love with the wrong man. Rather I haven't met the right one. I shall someday.
"A good instance of this spiral effect is Woody Allen. I played one of Woody's girlfriends in Annie Hall. Another brief appearance, but I wanted to work with him. Woody's films mirror his seemingly insatiable search for the right woman. But Woody never finds her because psychologically he doesn't want to - he is somewhat of a mascochist. Also subconsciously he chooses this type of woman to whom he is not suited.
"Right now, I am looking for a comfortable relationship with a man. I want peace of mind. I would like a relationship which is give and take equally. Alas, they are not easy to find. A good example are my friends Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft.
"There is a guy in my life at present. He's a very talented business man. I am drawn to men who are bright and talented at whatever they do. I need to have respect for a man before I can fall in love with him. I don't know whether I'll marry him. It's furthest from my mind at the moment. Work is going well at last. I have a nice apartment in new York in the west sixties - a huge studio with a fireplace. I can play the part of a bachelor girl to perfection. But", Carol added with a grin, I'm open to more exciting roles."