Courtney Love Looks Back on Her Life as a Movie Star

No, I didn’t have any sense of him. I’m uncultured, remember that. I come from the streets of San Francisco. However, it was a cool set, and I like Jeffrey [Wright], and we had this little scene. I found out later that I was representing Madonna, and I was mad about it. I’m not mad anymore at all, but I’ve never seen that movie.

Obviously I knew who Miloš was. I’m not that dumb. You know why? Lots of reasons, but in San Francisco at the Strand, me and my friend Marie Barr would go and see Amadeus every day. When I liked a movie, I used to go see it at the theater every day. But the first time I went to see Miloš, there were a lot of actresses going in and out. I remember seeing Ashley Judd there, and a lot of the ladies of the day. And he was watching a Lakers game and smoking his cigar. He was kind of a dick. I was like, okay, whatever, I’m not getting this role. He liked that I was kind of a dick back to his dick, and I got called back again, and then I read with Woody [Harrelson], and I got called back again.

After I did this audition, I was taken to the old Palm Restaurant, with Woody; Miloš; Oliver Stone, who was a producer on it; and some studio executives like Mark Canton, who, I found out later, had said, over my dead body are you casting this girl. I blurted out, to this table full of mostly producers, “Do you know, when I was a kid, and I was a ward of the state… I was on the same compound you shot One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in.”

Miloš took me aside, and in his deep Czech accent, he goes, listen, these people, they only like the upper-middle class. Do you have anything upper-middle-class? And I said, boarding school. And he went, yes, boarding school. And then he goes, did you ever ride a pony? And I said, yeah, I took riding lessons. So he goes, don’t say anything. I don’t care if you were a crack whore on the street. Don’t say it. I adjusted accordingly. We had an incredible working relationship. Woody was nothing but great to me. We had one epic fight that was crazy.

Edward Norton had been cast. He’d just come off Primal Fear, and he’d done a Woody Allen movie. We started hanging out, and we would rehearse. One day I came to set and Miloš was so furious. He’s like, I don’t ever want to see you act. If I see you acting, you can’t hang out with Edward anymore.

[After The People vs. Larry Flynt] I did Man on the Moon, and then I just started getting offered everything. Everything. I hate when people do their pass list; it’s such a simpy thing to do. So I won’t even bore you.

I’d been in Hollywood for years. And you would think I knew how to play that game. I just didn’t. I liked being a film star, it was super fun. I just was under a lot of pressure.

I kept passing on things that ended up getting Academy Awards or making a billion dollars or whatever. I will say one thing, because no one's ever made it. Sherry Lansing brought me in when she was the head of Paramount. She said, how about you do Janis Joplin? She did this whole pitch. Sherry Lansing was an incredibly formidable beauty queen, you know, velvet glove with the iron fist. And I said, I don't want to do it. I want to do [James Gray’s] The Yards. And Sherry Lansing blew up. She was offering me fifteen million. Like, this was the era where actors were getting twenty. I was friends with Drew Barrymore, and she’s like, do it for the quote. I would never do anything for the quote at that point. I’d just come from punk, and like, you don't do things for money. Anyway, I told her I didn’t want to do Janis and I wanted to do The Yards. And she was like, you want to fucking do The Yards with Harvey [Weinstein]? It was very funny.

Anyway, I didn’t want to do Joplin. I wanted do this little movie, Beat, because I had a real connection to these Beat guys. Also, Joan Vollmer Burroughs was murdered. And that to me was a better story. I just felt like, okay, that’s something I can get into. It was a really hard shoot in Mexico. Kiefer Sutherland was William Burroughs. My friend Norman Reedus was Lucien [Carr]. I really enjoyed it. It was kind of a film on my own terms, where I got to sort of do what I wanted. Lots of things didn’t work in it, but it’s a really reflective, interesting piece that didn’t get any attention. So I’m glad Criterion is showing it, because of everybody’s performances—they’re all great.

200 Cigarettes was [directed by] Risa Bramon Garcia. If you know anything, you know that she and her partner were, other than Bonnie Zimmerman, the biggest casting agents in Hollywood. The thing I liked about it, weirdly, was she’d never cast me. I owed her nothing. A lot of people on that film owed her something. Her [producing] partner, Betsy [Beers], was a really great comedic woman. It was so light and so sweet. I was like, I wanna do this movie because it’s comedy.

I remember the producer wanted somebody else to play the person across me. I had just seen Clueless, and there’s a scene in Clueless where Alicia Silverstone [as Cher] says, “Well, I know my Mel Gibson,” about Hamlet, and [Paul Rudd] just gives her a look. I told Risa and Betsy, I wanna do this with Paul Rudd. I had casting approval, which is a weird thing. I remember being accosted at a party by Billy Zane, yelling at me because I had casting approval. Anyway, I didn't care, I just wanted Paul Rudd. So I had to send him flowers. I did a whole campaign, and he said yes in the end. We had a really good time.

Comedy is really fucking hard. I had done Man on the Moon. I’d been around Jim Carrey, and we had talked about it a lot, physical comedy, and he did some comic stuff in that movie. The milk and cookies in the Carnegie Hall scene was fucking epic. The process of comedy was really hard. Honestly, if you have a good leading partner, everything is butter. And that cast was great: Kate Hudson coming off her first indie; Christina Ricci; Elvis Costello, my scene partner in life. Who else? A lot of people in that fucking movie. Casey Affleck! It was crazy. Janeane Garofalo and Ben Affleck. It was a great set. It was really fun; great camaraderie. And Risa was a really good director. Betsy was the producer. They were a great team.

I wish I had done more comedies.

Trapped was sort of like me knowing, okay, I need to get my shit together and do a real movie. Charlize [Theron] was on the come up. Also, Kevin Bacon was in it. I could now play the Kevin Bacon game and actually be not even one degree from Kevin Bacon.

I know why I did that movie—[the director] Luis Mandoki. I asked Jennifer Lopez; I asked Andy Garcia. I asked people that had been in Luis Mandoki movies because I didn’t want to make the same mistake and not have a really good connection with my director ever again. Luis was fantastic, and he got the best reports from other actors. I do think Jennifer Lopez is such a good actress. I love her. Hustlers should have gotten an Oscar nomination if not an Oscar. I talked briefly to Meg Ryan, and everybody said he was great, and he was. I just wanna say, Vancouver is hard if you’re an actor, it just is. It grates on the soul.

I had a really brief run. I did things wrong. I just didn’t know how to do things. As far as my film life, I don't really care. I peaced out and that was the end of me in that world. My friend Courtney Hoffman, who’s a director, was like, you need to go to AFI women’s program to direct. This was ten years ago. I told Aaron Sorkin about this. I told Cameron Crowe, because you have to get someone to recommend you. It was like literally the whole town going, oh, we know what to do with Courtney now. She should direct. And I thought the same thing. I went into AFI, and these women were great. There’s only so many places a year, and it’s an eighteen-month program. Have you ever gone on a date and it was high stakes, but you both knew it was not for you? I don’t want to direct. I don’t want to write. The Courtney-can-direct thing? No, not gonna happen. Courtney can write a really good album. That’s what Courtney’s doing right now. I’m super flattered, with my brief run, that Criterion is doing anything. What the fuck? It’s amazing. I’m so grateful.