The career Paul Verhoeven apologised for ruining: “It made my life more difficult”
If you’re looking for a violent or saucy film from the late-1980s or 1990s, then chances are Paul Verhoeven has something you will enjoy. The Dutch director broke through to international audiences with RoboCop, the surprisingly tender gore-fest satirising ultra-violent action flicks. The 90s kicked off with Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and continued with Basic Instinct, the controversial erotic thriller that made Sharon Stone a household name forevermore. Unfortunately, things hit a roadblock in 1995.
This was the year that saw the release of Showgirls. The story of a budding dancer who travels to Las Vegas with dreams of making it big, the film was a garbage fire in every sense of the word. Critics hated it, nobody went to see it, and it has since been confined to the bin of ‘worst movies ever made’. It has undergone something of a reevaluation in recent years, but it still carries with it the stench of failure.
The film’s supporting cast includes Gina Gershon, Robert Davi, and Kyle MacLachlan. However, nobody suffered from the failure of this film like its lead star, Elizabeth Berkley. She had found fame on the TV show Saved by the Bell, playing Jessie Spano, one of the lead characters. Showgirls, in which she played Nomi Malone, was meant to launch her career to the next stage. Alas, it simply wasn’t to be.
Berkely faced a whirlwind of abuse following the film’s release. People ruthlessly took umbrage with her performance, laying most of the blame for the movie’s failure at her feet. Legendary critic Gene Siskel infamously called her “not sexy, not particularly appealing and not attractive” on live TV. This sort of response was completely unacceptable and a barometer of how women were treated by the media at the time. Berkley’s performance might not have been perfect, but attacks on her appearance were completely unwarranted.
In the years since the backlash, Verhoeven has spoken many times about Showgirls. In a conversation with Daily News in 2015, the maestro specifically mentioned Berkley and how the film had impacted her life. “Showgirls certainly ruined the career of Elizabeth Berkley in a major way,” he said. “It made my life more difficult, but not to the degree it did Elizabeth’s. Hollywood turned their backs on her. If somebody has to be blamed, it should be me because I thought that it was interesting to portray somebody like that.”
Verhoeven – who had another flop shortly thereafter with Hollow Man – addressed the criticisms of Berkley’s acting, for which he also took credit. “I asked Elizabeth to do all that,” he confessed. “To be abrupt and to act in that way, but people have been attacking her about for that ever since.” He believed that the revelation at the end of the film that Nomi had been taking drugs to cope with a childhood trauma would explain this erratic performance. “I had hoped the end of the movie would explain why she acted that way, when it’s revealed she has convictions linked with drugs,” he said. “But that too turned out to be a big mistake.”
Debate still rages over whether or not Berkley’s career was nuked or not – she has since bounced back a little – but Verhoeven should be commended for going out of his way to defend her. He didn’t need to do something like this, but the spiral into which her career felt as a result of his directing was clearly weighing heavy on his mind.
