Susan Sarandon names her most overlooked movies: “That was divine”
Hollywood has something of an unfortunate history of blacklisting women for speaking their minds. As far back as 1972, Jane Fonda was roundly banned for her anti-war views, and 50 years on, Susan Sarandon has recently suffered the same fate for speaking out against the horrors inflicted on people in Palestine.
Sarandon has long been known as a ‘leftie’ in the industry, seemingly for her support of vulnerable people and refusal to stay silent about injustice around the world. She fears now, however, due to those comments made at the end of 2024, she will be unlikely to get another part.
She already has some seven decades of acting behind her in some genuinely historic films, including Thelma & Louise, The Witches of Eastwick and 1988’s baseball comedy Bull Durham. She’s also shown true variety in the work she’s undertaken, voicing several computer games and appearing in TV animations including American Dad.
Despite working consistently throughout her career, which began back in 1970 with a movie called Joe, she felt around ten years ago was the point where she was able to fully take on the projects she wanted, saying: “Now my kids have gone their own way, I’ve been able to do seven films in two years! I can go in and work with a new director every time—something I’ve never done before—diversifying my stock, expanding my portfolio. So if some of my stocks succeed and some don’t, then it’s not a problem.”
She’s worked on everything, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and some ill-advised efforts with David Bowie to The Simpsons and Zoolander 2. Naturally, with an oeuvre so expansive, there are a couple of movies that stand out to her as special.
She explained, “There was Bernard and Doris in 2006, for example, a two-hander with me and Ralph Fiennes, that was divine. And I love the Duplass brothers, who are kind of the indie darlings, who did Jeff Who Lives at Home in 2011—I play the mother who’s trying to figure out what life means and looking for signs in the universe.”
Although Berard and Doris wasn’t a success on release, Jeff Who Lives at Home fared rather better. Starring Jason Segel, it told the story of a basement-dwelling loner looking up to the universe for hints about the meaning of life while on a mundane shopping trip. Meanwhile, his mother, played by Sarandon, looks for signs of her own as she suffers in an office cubicle hell daily.
While she has been involved in doing a lot of comedy, including appearances in not one but two Lonely Island digital shorts, Sarandon has also branched out into other genres, including sci-fi. She adds, “I went to Berlin again to work with the Wachowskis on Cloud Atlas. In it, I play a number of characters across time, including a male Indian scientist. Those were all tiny parts, and it was so much fun.”
Despite her being shunned by the industry, the actor has already filmed two new roles that are currently in post-production, one with Shameless’s William H Macy and a movie called The Accompanist alongside Parks and Recreation star, Aubrey Plaza.
She has also pivoted to theatre and will be seen in London this autumn as she makes her UK theatre debut with Mary Page Marlowe, a play about a woman in different stages of life alongside Andrea Riseborough. It marks over five decades since she first appeared on Broadway in An Audience with Richard Nixon by Gore Vidal.
