The “biggest regret” of Debbie Harry’s entire career
You wouldn’t think that the greatest musicians of the modern industry would have much to regret, especially when looking back on a career of countless number-one hits, best-selling albums and general pop-culture success.
Indeed, the likes of Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Debbie Harry and Elton John have picked up so many accolades throughout their time across so many different industries, picking up Grammys, Oscars, Emmys and more.
Debbie Harry, better known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie, certainly saw such industry success, with her 1978 album Parallel Lines selling over 20 million copies and several of her songs effortlessly entering the contemporary zeitgeist. But, while achieving success with songs like ‘Call Me’, ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘Heart of Glass’, Harry also starred in a number of feature films from established directors.
Appearing in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, John Waters’ Hairspray, Martin Scorsese’s New York Stories and James Mangold’s Cop Land, Harry became something of a cult film star, but there was one project that she severely regretted turning down.
Her stint in the film industry largely came in the early 1980s, a period of time when Harry was struggling to look after Chris Stein, her bandmate and lover, after he collapsed on stage in late 1982. “People made a big deal out of the fact I took care of Chris when he was ill,” she told The Mail on Sunday, “But I was doing what anyone would do for someone they loved. It was a tough time generally. I made a few bad decisions around that time”.
Speaking about the regrets of her short career on the big screen, she explains: “’My biggest regret of all is turning down the role of the blonde robot Pris in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The part eventually went to Daryl Hannah. My record company didn’t want me to take time out to do a movie. I shouldn’t have listened to them”.
Scott’s Blade Runner ended up becoming one of the most iconic science fiction movies of all time and one of the most beloved films of the 1980s, being nominated for two Academy Awards. Starring Harrison Ford, the film tells the story of a futuristic law enforcer who is sent to pursue a group of androids who have stolen a spaceship in a desperate search for their creator.
The sci-fi masterpiece is loosely based on Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and it is hard to overstate the massive influence of Blade Runner on contemporary science fiction works. A startlingly prescient work which asks important questions about human identity in an increasingly technological world, Blade Runner has become a cult classic because of its stunning dystopian vision and cyberpunk aesthetics.
Speaking about the setting of Blade Runner, Scott said, “We’re in a city which is in a state of overkill, of snarled-up energy, where you can no longer remove a building because it costs far more than constructing one in its place. So the whole economic process is slowed down.”
As Harry rightfully points out, Daryl Hannah eventually took the role instead of the singer, with the character becoming an influential figure in sci-fi pop culture. Only in Hannah’s third feature film role, the actor would go on to star alongside Tom Hanks in his breakout role in 1984’s Splash, as well as Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and Quentin Tarantino’s wild 21st-century action flick Kill Bill: Vol 1.
Take a look at a clip of Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner below.
