Anne Bancroft
The Five Years That Taught Her How To Be A Woman
Happiness Is More Than "Oscars"
The excitement of possibly winning a second Oscar in five years swirled around Anne Bancroft, infecting everybody--except Anne Bancroft.
She lazed back on a sofa in her recently purchased Greenwich Village brownstone and said reflectively, "You interviewed me just before I won my Oscar?(That was for her 1962 performance in "The Miracle Worker"; this year she has been nominated for her role as the predatory wife in "The Graduate," also nominated as "Best Picture.")
"Well, you'll find me a very different person from what I was five years ago. I've changed. I wasn't married then for one thing. Not that marriage changed me. Just life, I guess. Say I 'matured.'"
Five years ago, Anne Bancroft was an edgy, tempermental actress, rehearsing for the grueling role of "Mother Courage" on Broadway after six uninterupted years of physically and emotionally demanding parts on stage and screen.
Then she sat in a shabby dressing room, stiff as her wooden kitchen chair and snapping impatient answers: "The man I marry, if I do, must accept the fact I am a totally involved actress . . . An Academy Award? I don't have enouph left in me to think about it, much less go to the presentation."
Now, in 1968, she talked languidly about herself in depth. She took time out only for affectionate give-and-take with her writer-director husband Mel Brooks, whose first movie, "The Producers," is the surprize comedy hit of the year. She obviously was pleased at "The Graduate" nomination and looking foward to attending the Hollywood presentation. She looked slimmer ("Actually, they've always padded me a lot, here and in Hollywood") and younger, although in analyzin her new life, she says:
"They joke about it, but it's true--that business of looking in the mirror one morning and realizing you're (she says this with an wan smile) well, you're 30 or more. Suddenly you whisper--I'm going to die! What am I getting out of life?
"If any moment changes a person, that's the one. What was important--success and what-have-you--remains important, but you want more: friends, a home, someone to love. Just sitting still and--living.
"Yes, I probably told you a husband would have to accept me as a totally involved actress. That's how I felt then. I had already met Mel then and wanted to be married, but he wouldn't accept those terms. I set about to talk him out of it.
"We knew each other three year before we married (1964)|--and, like so many problems, we found that they really didn't exist except in our minds. I don't know why--maybe my thirtyish 'maturity' solved it. I simply found myself working only when the role was exactly what I wanted, witht the time and emotion left for other things in life.
"Oh, I still get deeply invloved in the roles I take. Mel gets totally involved when he's writing, too, and I am shut out, alone. But life's not all work now. Work is just part of life, along with getting this old house in shape (she waves her hand helplessly), shopping for antiques, enjoying the company of friends--and having a husband."
An indication of Miss Bancroft's new life is that in 1966 she accepted only two brief periods of work: a tv play and a revival of "The Skin of Our Teeth," only because she needed "rejuvenation" under Arthur Penn, a director she credits for her acting success.
"In 1967 I didn't expect to work at all, but Mike Nichols telephoned about 'The Graduate' I read the script and knew I had to get back to work. Mrs. Robinson (an affluent matron who seduces a young college boy) was something I never did before. Everybody sees me as a saintly Mother Cabrini type. Later I did the revival of 'The Little Foxes.' That was all. As for 1968, well, maybe this is the year I don't work at all. Lord, I have enough things at home to keep me busy two years."
If human lives could be sliced neatly into parts, Anne Bancroft's would divide by three. The current one, the hard-driven success-laden one of the late '50s and '60s, and the movie starlet one begun in the early 1950s, when teenager Anne Italiano put aside her fan magazines and went to Hollywood.
"I didn't have any ideas about becoming a dedicated actress," she recalls. "I just wanted to be a Hollywood star and within a year had made my first movie. It never occured to me that there was anything else worth happening to me. I made five or six pictures and became exactly what I dreamed--a Hollywood star. If you ever see those pictures, and I hope you don't, you'll know I wasn't particularly ambitous.
"What changed me> No, no look into the mirror this time. I just got restless without knowing why. I went back home. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was sure I'd find it. That's when Arthur Penn came into my life. From him I learned to combine technique with my instincts and how satisfying good acting can be."
Now Anne Bancroft apparently has found self-satisfation in both her professional and private life, whether or not she wins another Academy Award. How does she think her life might change when, in future years, she again looks in the mirror and sees--well, somebody 40?
Anne lifts dark, expressive eyes heavenward. "I have no idea! But if it brings as much to me as that look at 30 did, I won't complain."
|