Model-turned-actress-turned Humphrey Bogart’s young wife-turned legend Lauren Bacall, 81, has been around, and in her ever-deepening voice she spoke with Time magazine in conjunction with Private Screenings: Lauren Bacall, an interview show which debuts tonight on TMC, and a marathon of her films throughout the month on the same channel.
Some of the former Betty Joan Perske’s thoughts:
Does having the kind of romance you did with Bogie so young set you up for disappointment later in life?
When everything happens to you when you’re so young, you’re very lucky, but by the same token, you’re never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you–your first love, your first success–the second one is never the same.
Why did you object to a journalist’s use of the word legend to describe Nicole Kidman?
A legend involves the past. And I don’t like categories. This one is great, and that one is great. I mean, the word great stands for something. When you talk about a great actor, you’re not talking about Tom Cruise.
So you don’t think Tom Cruise is a great actor?
No, I don’t. His whole behavior is so shocking. It’s inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it’s kind of a sickness.
Well, there you have it, the great Bacall joins the list of Cruise-crunchers. While I agree with her entirely about Cruise’s oddly manic, erratic discussion of his private life being “inappropriate and vulgar,” and even pathological, I’m not sure what this has to do with his acting. I think there is some generational prejudice at play here.