"She's unto herself. She's an entity that just pops up out of who knows where and sort of changes a guy's life." The description fits the speaker, but Lili Taylor, 23, isn't the type to rattle on about herself. Instead, between bites of a hearty helping of pie in a coffee shop in Manhattan's West Village, she's explaining Lucy, the young Canadian drifter she plays in Bright Angel. When asked about her connection with her character, the diffident former Chicagoan will venture only so far to say, "There are sides of me like her." Bright Angel, scheduled for release in the fall, stars Taylor, Dermot Mulroney, Burt Young, Valerie Perrine, and Sam Shepard. Novelist Richard Ford wrote the screenplay, basing it on two short stories from his collection Rock Springs. The drama revolves around eighteen year-old George (Mulroney), whose parents have split up, and the relationship he developes with Lucy during a reckless western road trip. "He's a little lost and directionless, and then he meets me, " Taylor says. "He hooks on to me because I provide him with something- a purpose." Unfortunately for Lucy, George doesn't have such a salubrious effect on her. "Lili is a tough gal, and people like that," says Paige Simpson, who coproduced Bright Angel. "She could hold her own with anybody." First-time director Michael Fields met Taylor on a casting trip to New York. "Michael came back and said , 'I found Lucy- we don't have to look any farther," Simpson says. Any doubts the producer might have had about Fields's choice were erased when she saw Taylor's audition tape. "The script called for a different physical type-- a slender, lanky, no-breast girl-woman," Simpson recalls. "Lili is not that at all. But at the end of the day, you pick an actress, not a type." "She has this incredible ability to appear absolutely normal-looking and then, at other times, stunningly beautiful," says Mulroney. "Either one can catch you off-guard. It happens in real life, but you also see it on screen."
The film was shot just outside of Billings, Montana. The cast and crew, a bunch of city kids, reveled in the freedom of so much open space, amusing themselves on their one free day a week with picnics, car tours, and softball. "Lili's an amazing shortstop," says Mulroney. "Definitely the best infielder of the cast and crew-- except for me, but I was on the other team. She's got a way of not blanching," Adds Simpson, "What I remember most aobut Lili is how she'd hit the ball way out of the field0 and beat numerous guys at pool with a cigarette and a beer in her hand."
Taylor isn't easily pegged, however, not even as a tomboy. "She's kind of wacky," Mulroney admits. "She finger-paints and smokes really strong cigarettes. On her days off, she'd get really arty--write a poem and then paint it.. "Lili doesn't take any shit," he says. "But she doesn't give any either, which is hard to do." The second youngest of seix children, Taylor grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, where she was not exactly the cheerleader type. At New Trier High School, Taylor says, "I kind of went the loner route . I was clouded on everything; I didn't have a clear perspective. I was very depressed. And I'm finally getting a grip on it all.
Taylor studied theater for less than a year at DePaul University in Chicago, then moved to New York in 1988 when she landed the role of the Unconscious in the Richard foreman paly What Did He See? The stage, the city, and a bit of family- one of her older sisters lives in New York- have kept Taylor there. "I don't care for L.A.," she says. "I haven't quite found my bearings there yet. In L.A., I see a lot of cars and a lot of driving and a lot of weirdness. It's a very strange place."
Striking in her first sizable film roles--as Jojo, the fainting bride with the healthy libido in Mystic Pizza, and Corey, who strums through some of her 63 songs about her ex-boyfriend Joe in Say Anything...-and memorable even in her cameo as the wife of the American soldier killed by Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise) in Born on the Fourth of July, Taylor is steering her career with a cautious, unhurried hand. Last summer, she finished work on Dogfight, in which, incongruously, she plays "River Phoenix's entry in an "ugliest date" competition. "I don't like to play women who are stereotypical," she says. "It would be wonderful to play a woman who is listened to and who has insight and some smart things to say. There's just not a lot of roles where you find dimension." Between films, she keeps her chips sharpened by performing in primarily avant-garde plays with such groups as the Naked Angels. Taylor disparages the low standards of Hollywood films--her passion is for the actor's ancient role, "as a carrier of myths. We've sort of lost that," she says. "Now we carry stupidity, it seems." But she's also forgiving. "It's hard for actors, because we have to eat, tooo, and everyone sees the stupid things we do. Everyone says, 'Oh, did you see that film? It sucked! Why did they do that?' They don't understand that a person has a kid...I save my money, because who knows-- the next role could just totally wipe me out of the scenario, you know?"
And if that happened? "I would nuster all the strength I had and pack up and get the fuck out and move to Vermont." She takes a deep breath. "Or Canada. I'd knit and raise geese or something. I don't know."