Did ‘Showgirls’ ruin Elizabeth Berkley’s life?
After the commercial success of the scandalous movie Basic Instinct, Paul Verhoeven decided to make another erotically charged effort with Showgirls. Unfortunately for him, very few people seemed to like it, and despite the fact that it contained lots of nudity and sex—something that usually garners an audience—the film still managed to crash and burn at the box office.
Showgirls starred Elizabeth Berkley as the leading character, Nomi Malone, a young woman who makes her way to Las Vegas in the hopes of becoming a successful showgirl. She meets many interesting characters in the process, including Cristal, one of the area’s most prominent showgirls, whose boyfriend, Zack, is the director at Stardust Casino. While she accuses Nomi of being a prostitute, Cristal and Zack provide stepping stones towards Nomi’s goal of showgirl stardom.
Showgirls contains a lot of nudity and sex, with the female characters almost constantly topless or wearing skimpy outfits. There are even many scenes with full frontal nudity – nothing was off limits for Verhoeven. Mainstream cinema rarely allows such a staggering amount of explicit content, and, subsequently, Showgirls was quickly questioned by critics and labelled as male-gazey and exploitative.
Roger Ebert called the movie a “sleazefest” full of “masturbatory fantasies”, although he didn’t hate it as much as some critics. Most audiences viewed the movie as bizarre, attempting to be so astoundingly erotic that it just became the opposite. All of the characters, but particularly Nomi, were derided as annoying, making it hard for audiences to sit through the whole thing without anyone to root for. By the end of the year, it had been labelled one of, if not the worst, films of 1995. Some people even consider it one of the worst movies ever made.
Berkley was widely criticised for her performance, with critics simply stating that she was a bad actor. The star got her start in the 1980s, landing a recurring role in Saved By The Bell, which she played until 1993. It was then that she was offered the leading role in Showgirls, but her hopes of a cinematic breakthrough were quickly squashed. Her lack of success spurred her to part ways with Creative Artists Agency, with whom she was signed, eventually landing a deal with United Talent Agency.
As a result of Showgirls, Berkley’s career took a sharp downward turn, and it has never recovered. Her next role was a voice part in the animated movie Armitage III: Poly-Matrix, which was followed by a supporting role in the successful comedy The First Wives Club. Yet, that was pretty much it for Berkley. She appeared in a string of indie films throughout the rest of the decade, and in 1999, she landed a tiny role in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday – not one of the director’s greatest works.
She did happen to star alongside Isabella Rossellini and Jesse Eisenberg in the acclaimed Roger Dodger in 2002, but the film has since faded into relative obscurity. In 2003, she resorted to a Lifetime movie, Student Seduction, and in 2009, she appeared in her last movie to date, S. Darko, a bizarre sequel to Donnie Darko that was widely panned.
Berkley has had more success in television, starring in several episodes of popular shows like CSI: Miami, The L Word, The Twilight Zone, New Girl, and Melissa & Joey. She even appeared on Dancing With The Stars in 2013, but she did not win. Clearly, she hasn’t managed to carve out a career that extends past guest roles or made-for-television movies, all down to her controversial turn in Showgirls.
Still, the levels of criticism she received, compared to everyone else in the movie, like Kyle Maclachlan and Gina Gershon, seem incredibly unfair. She committed herself to the role of Nomi, and even if she wasn’t the greatest actor in the film, it was clear that she understood the character that Verhoeven wanted her to play.
