The actor who fell in love with Ridley Scott at first sight: “I read him half a poem”
Ridley Scott has a reputation for being a bit spiky. Now in his 80s, the Alien director can get sweary with journalists and has a tendency to downplay the magic of cinema to a degree that can occasionally be a bit of a bummer. He has more than earned the right to be curmudgeonly. Since the 1970s, he’s produced box office smashes, Oscar-winners, and box office smashing Oscar winners to become one of the most influential filmmakers of his time.
Though Scott’s reputation may be that of a grumpy octogenarian, there is one actor who had a completely different experience with him. In fact, when she first met him, she described it as love at first sight, a creative spark that instantly caught fire. This is all the more surprising given that she was still a teenager at the time and far from famous. Somehow, however, there was synergy going on.
It was 1984 and Mia Sara was a 16-year-old Brooklyn native who had played a small role on the soap opera All My Children the previous summer. When she went to an audition for the upcoming Scott movie Legend, which would be starring Tom Cruise, the casting director was impressed, and brought her back for several rounds of auditions. Finally, they brought her in to meet Scott.
“It was love at first sight,” Sara told UPI in 1986 while promoting Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, stressing that it was a platonic, creative attraction rather than a romantic one. “I believe in fate,” she continued. “And I think that’s what brought me and Ridley together. I read half a poem for him, and he said that was all he needed. Something really clicked when we met.”
Legend was Scott’s fourth feature film and his first after Blade Runner, which had received relatively poor reviews that devastated the director. It would only become a touchstone of the science fiction drama in the years after its muted release, and considering the fact that he still hasn’t let go of his anger over its critical reception four decades later, he was almost certainly nursing the sting of it when he made Legend.
In the film, Cruise plays a forest child named Jack who helps fight the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) from casting the world into eternal night. There are unicorns and fairies, and Sara plays a princess who Jack teaches to speak to animals. It was innocent enough, but it was panned by critics and failed to make back its $25million budget at the box office.
Still, Sara loved the whole experience of shooting the film and didn’t want to go back to normal life afterwards. Because of her positive experience on Legend, she continued to audition for roles and eventually landed the part that remains her most famous – Sloane in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Even though the movie was a comedy directed by John Hughes, the most famous filmmaker focusing on high schoolers at the time, Sara had a much less enjoyable time than she had on Scott’s film, even remembering decades later that it was a low point in her life.
