ERIC STOLTZ
LANDSCAPE WITH FRECKLES
By Stephen Saban, photographed by Marcia Resnick, 1988

“Do you have a police record?” I asked Eric Stoltz as I followed him down a hall leading to an elevator.

Only slightly amazed by me brusquerie, he laughed, showing teeth. “You’re starting off immediately with the hard stuff, aren’t you?” he said smilling. “Unbelievable.”

Not really. I didn’t care if he had a record or not. I asked only because we were on our way to the outside world, leaving behind the safety of a midtown office building and protective publicists who were mildly concerned that I might take Eric later that night to an illegal “Outlaw” party on an abandoned West Side pier.

“About that party, Eric…,” one of them had worriedly called to him.

“It’ll add a little tarnish,” Eric had answered.

“Do you have bail money?” another had asked.

See, Eric Stoltz, whom you probably wouldn’t recognize in real life as Cher’s son in Mask, has a movie coming out in November in which he plays Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet who died on a boat at the age of twenty-nine. Haunted Summer features a lot of beautiful scenes on the water. Great idea, I thought, to interview the actor on some kind of water, even if it’s only a filthy river. My original thought had been to take him boating in Central Park, but we both came up with the obvious question: “Who’s gonna row?” Since he’d been in the teen films Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Wild Life and Some Kind of Wonderful, we could have gone to a high school cafeteria. If it hadn’t been summer. Eric’s other November movie is Manifesto, but I wasn’t in the mood for Yugoslavia.

“Why don’t we just walk around?” Eric suggested, simply.

“The U.N.,” I said. “We’ll walk to the U.N. It’s on the East River.”

Eric Stoltz in twenty-six, red-haired, freckled. Despite what would seem to be an indelible stamp of recognition, he manages to look completely different in each of his films. And, apparently, never what he really looks like. This late afternoon, he was dressed casually to the extreme—jeans, white T-shirt, Nikes—and his red hair seemed darker and chopped shorter than I’d expected it to be. And he sported the sproutings of orange mustache and thin hairs.

“I dye it depending on the part,” he said, separating some of the tufts of his hair for me. “My hair’s really this orange color. See, the top half is, like, brown left over from something or other. A lot of times they don’t believe redheads can come from families with brown hair. Which is not true.”

“What color hair do your parents have?” I said.

“Are you still with Jennifer?” I asked him when we reached the elevator. I was referring to Jennifer Jason Leigh, his two-time co-star and—I was willing to bet—his girlfriend.

“Jennifer who?” he said, smirking.

“Jennifer Jason Leigh. I met her with you at that party in L.A.”

“That’s right! You know what I’m wondering?” he said as we descended to the ground floor. “I’m wondering if…Oh, never mind.”

“What?” I said. “Say it. I won’t print it.”

His laugh echoed into the lobby. “I’m wondering if, in between what we’re talking about, you’re going to write what you really think in parentheses.”

(I wondered if he said that just to change the subject, to avoid the Jennifer issue.)

“Relax. I only interview people I like,” I said. “I like you. So far. You’re not answering that Jennifer question?”

“No,” he said.

We headed in the direction of the U.N. and, with some difficulty, I extracted a basic bio from him. He was born in Whittier, California, a suburb of L.A. “I thought it was Placentia,” he said, “but my mother says it was Whittier.” He has three older sisters, “two real ones.” His parents are “middle-class teachers with a love for music.” When little Eric was five, his parents, apparently sick of the States, “took the pay cut and went to the islands,” and he lived for three years in American Samoa, on the equator, between Hawaii and Fiji. “I wonder if the U.N. has a delegate from Samoa,” I wondered. “Maybe he knew my parents,” Eric said. Then everyone moved back to the U.S. and to Santa Barbara. Eric began acting at ten, “for fun; I didn’t start making money at it until I was twenty-two.” (Which is weird, because he made Fast Times at Ridgemont High when he was nineteen.)

“How did it happen?” I asked. “How did you get to be a movie star?”

“Luck really,” he said. “I had been doing plays. After I did a play in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival in 1981, I stayed until I was broke and grew my hair really long. I came back to L.A. and these people from the film were looking for guys with long hair. So I went in and they cast me.”

We’d been walking a long time, and I wondered if we’d ever reach the U.N. We were walking under a bridge when Eric pointed to a clearing. “See that? I think that’s the building.”

“You think that’s the U.N.?” I said. “I thought it was shaped differently.”

“You mean like a U?”

The U.N. was closed, gated, inaccessible. As we circled the complex, heading for the East River, Eric told me two stories. One about an “estranged” friend of his who thinks he’s a bull and will attack if a red flag is waved, another concerning a man he’d read about who can become sexually aroused only by derailing trains. By telling those two stories, Eric successfully cut down the relatively long time we had to talk about Eric. He ran up to a guard, talked to him a minute, then continued walking with me. Pause. “What did he say?” I said. “Yeah,” Eric said, “he said they have a delegate to Samoa.”

Beads of sweat were forming on my upper lip. Not from the heat, but from walking in the heat. We came to a wall in the middle of the FDR Drive, a wall that prevented us from reaching the river. Eric wanted to climb over it. I didn’t. There had to be an alternative. “There has to be a place for people to enjoy the East River,” I said.

“I don’t think anybody enjoys the East River,” Eric said. “My feet hurt.”

“I can tell,” I said. “Why did you make Manifesto? I liked it. Secretly. It’s a bizarre, weird film, like a film that’s made to be seen only in Yugoslavia. Did you make it just to travel?”

“No, I thought it would be fun. Dusan Makevejev’s films are all weird and sexual and political, and that’s something I love to do.”

“I kept thing it desperately wanted to be a porno film,” I said. “That woman kept getting thrown over haystacks and rogered from behind.”

“Well, she represented the youth of today,” he said blithely, as we came to a gate, another impasse. “We could climb around the gate.”

“Still working on that police record?”

“No comment,” Eric said. “I wanna say things like that in interviews. No comment.”

Around 44th Street, we came upon a friendly little park overlooking the highway and the river, filled with trees, dogs and benches. “We can talk here if you like,” I suggested.

“No comment,” Eric said.

“This is getting tedious,” I said. What had I meant?

“Is it?” he said. “I want to be misunderstood. Maybe I’ve said too much already.”

“Well, I think probably you may have.” I loved this guy. He was fun to hang out with. He was easy to talk to. His speech was clear and precise, even over the constant roar and rumble of the city traffic and the insistent yappings of crazed dogs. He talked a lot, but what was he saying? We sat on a bench together and he seemed perplexed by the number of questions I was asking. Wasn’t this supposed to be an interview? He was clever at manipulating my attention away from him and onto anything else. In a way, it was charming.

“Look at that couple going at it,” he said, pointing to a bench across the park. “She looks all of twelve.”

“It’s the romance of the ocean,” I said. And the highway. The tide and the traffic do something to people. Let’s talk about you, your career, your life and how it relates to the world and possibly the universe.”

“No comment,” Eric said.

“I recently saw you in Fast Times, but I didn’t realize it was you until the end credits.”

“Great,” he said. “That’s exactly what I want. See, it’s no fun to know someone when they’re doing a role, because you can’t enjoy the film.”

“I should have rewound,” I said. Then, while he was answering, “How long did the makeup take in Mask?”

“Four hours a day, every day for three months.”


“Oh yeah. We had makeup tests two weeks before shooting, where I’d go into grocery stores, post offices, and walk down streets. I’d leave the set and people would make fun of me. They would throw things at me. People in town were quite cruel. They’d yell, put cameras in my face. At first I would get really angry and I’d want to hurt them physically. But then it happened so much that that eventually passed. It must have been like that for Rocky as well. It passed and became normal behavior, like saying good morning to a doorman. It was almost expected. A strange thing.”

He was talking. “Do you choose which movies you make, or do you have help?” Eric laughed at the “help” half of the question. “I choose them on my own. Sometimes, if there’s a good movie, everyone will say, ‘This is a good movie, you should do it.’ Usually, though, it’s the reverse. Like no one wanted me to do Manifesto.”

I laughed. I would’ve advised against it, too. “There was no money,” he continued, “it’s a strange film and the part was dubious at best. But I felt like doing it—so I did it.”

Eric reached over and took a cigarette out of my pack, put it to his lips and reached for my lighter, which was decorated with the image of a beauty in a bikini. Eric turned the lighter upside down, expecting the bikini to slip off. “It doesn’t do that,” I said.

“She’s attractive. Who is she?”

“I dunno. It was a gift from someone in Dallas.”

“Why were you in Dallas?” This was typical of Eric. He tended to ask more than he answered. And he was smooth at it. Often before I knew what was happening, I was telling him lengthy stories about how my dog died, how I broke my hip. But I caught on.

“I travel,” I said. “And write about it.”

“Oh right,” he said, lighting the cigarette. “That’s the best way to travel—when someone else pays for it. It’s like being an actor. Or a migrant worker. Do you meet beautiful people all over the world?”

“I guess,” I said, falling for it again. “Today a girl I met in Iceland came to visit me.”

“Why were you in Iceland?”

“For the crowning of Miss Iceland.” “Was she pretty?” Eric said, referring to the titled one. “I’d imagine Miss Iceland to be sort of blubbery, for some reason.”

“Yeah, she was pretty, in a beauty pageant sort of way. They all look alike.”

“They all frighten me,” he said. “There’s something about that mentality that scares me. I’ve never been to a beauty pageant.”

“But you’ve seen beauty pageant women,” I said. “Miss This…”

“Miss That.”

“They’re interchangeable,” I said.

“A lot of people feel that way about actors,” Eric said. “Or journalists.”

“Let me throw this thought at you,” I said. “It’s not meant as an insult or a compliment. It’s just an observation. I think of you as a normal-size Michael J. Fox. And I like him. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I’ve never seen one of his films. I don’t know him.”

“But you’ve seen Family Ties.”

“No, I don’t have a TV. I got rid of my TV in 1979. It bored me. I felt like I was wasting my life. You’ve stumbled onto an obscure fact.”

“This was curious, indeed. Eric Stoltz has himself appeared on TV, in such fare as St. Elsewhere, Knots Landing, Paper Dolls, The Fall Guy, The Waltons, movies-of-the-week. “But you’ve been on TV,” I protested. “You’ve been on this show and that show.”

“With Miss This and Miss That,” he said. “Oh yeah. It paid my bills. But I didn’t like the way I was becoming with a TV, so I got rid of it. Nine years without a TV set. I find myself in some awkward situations. You’d be surprised how often people quote commercials.” He paused for a moment to put out his cigarette. “There’s a dancing raisin commercial now?”

“Yes there is, Eric,” I said. “But isn’t it embarrassing when you’re with other actors, and you haven’t seen their work?”

“I don’t really run into a lot of raisins. When I do run into actors, they’re usually ones I’ve worked with. And we don’t talk about TV. I don’t like hanging out with actors. I don’t know, I don’t really hang out with anybody.”

“What are your interviews usually like?” I said.

“You know, the same old questions.”

“Like what?”

“Makeup questions about Mask. What’s Cher really like.”

“What’s Cher really like?” I said, and we laughed. “What am I really like? I’m really like this.”

“Are you?” he said. “Yeah, this is what I’m really like, too. Kind of like an open book. There are things I don’t talk about. You know, like who I’m dating.”

“Who are you dating?”

“I won’t talk about that.”

“What happened with Jennifer?”

“Jennifer who?”

“That three-name girl.”

“Jennifer Stuart Masterson? See, I don’t talk about things like that.”

“Were you dating her when I saw you with her at that party at Richard Duardo’s loft in L.A.?”

“Wow, I was at a party!” Eric exclaimed, redirecting my fire. “I think that was the only party I went to.”

“The party was for me, and you left when I got there.”

“That’s right. Well, you were two hours late, man!”

“So you were dating Jennifer at the time?” Did I even care at this point?

“No comment. Something’s gotta be private.”

“Come on,” I coaxed, “we wanna get some good stuff for your fans.”

“Okay,” Eric said. “I lost my virginity when I was nineteen.”

“Who to?”

“To Ally Sheedy,” he said. Ally Sheedy. Did that make him a member of the Brat Pack?

“Is that true?” I was suspicious. Why this, after all that?

“Yes,” Eric insisted, squeezing the side of his chin. “I think I have the beginnings of a pimple here.”

“If you play with it for a while,” I said, “it definitely will form into one.”

“I like popping them. I wonder if that guy’s making a bomb,” he said, indicating a busy bum in a far corner of the park. “I’m serious. He’s opening up things and putting them together in a strange way.”

I was giving up. “Why don’t you control the conversation for a while,” I suggested. “Tell me more stuff.”

“Man!” he said, getting up and sitting on the arm of the bench. “What else do you wanna know? I’m a normal guy, man, I’m a normal guy. Come from a normal, middle-class home, my parents are from the Midwest, stable happy family, youngest boy, older sisters. I’m an average guy.” (Who makes movies.)

“I went out with a friend the other night,” Eric said, still watching the bum, “and he told me he’d been leading a double life for seven or eight years. I had no idea. You never know. I could turn around and be a mass murderer. Wouldn’t it be strange if it turned out that I killed you during this interview and mailed the tape to the magazine.”

“That would be brilliant,” I said. It would have been, but perhaps with another journalist. Normal guy, normal guy.

“Look,” Eric said, “he’s taking his clothes off now. I’m serious.”

“How do you feel about that nude scene you did?”

“Hey, you saw me naked! Didn’t you? You saw me totally naked!”

“Well, you did it for the world to see.”

“Oh yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s my body. It’s mine. There’s really nothing I can do about it.”

“Was the scene in the script, or did you demand it?”

“Well, it was in the script,” he said, “but the director, Ivan Passer, wanted me to do it with a shirt on, actually. I loved the character so much and thought, ‘Who’s gonna bathe, with his two lovers there, under a waterfall wearing a shirt?’ That would have ruined the movie for me.” He was getting animated. “I hate when you see a movie a people are making love and they’re all wearing clothes—I think, ‘Oh, these actors don’t want to show their bodies. Why did they do the part?’ It takes you out of the story immediately. It makes me angry.”

“Boy, it really does.” I said. “You scared me for a minute.”

“We shot it at a waterfall…,” he said and stopped. “Oh, which nude scene are you talking about? Haunted Summer?”

“Yeah, you thought I meant Manifesto?”

“I’m nude there too.”

“I know,” I said. “You’re always nude. People will be referring to you as That Nude Actor.”

“I thought about doing all my interviews nude,” he said, “but the people in charge said no. But I’ll tell you about that nude scene. We shot the waterfall scene at a place called Monte Gelato, which means Mountain of Ice. You take it from there. It affected my anatomy in a disturbing way.”

“How long have you been taking acting classes?” I said.

Eric looked at me uncertainly. “Now, do you really wanna ask me that question?” he said. “You seem a little bored by it.”

“Well, I ask it because I think you’re a very good actor and I’m impressed that you’re still studying. You had a class earlier today.”

“I always wanna take a class of some sort,” he said. “The class I’m taking now is Shakespeare. I feel like taking classes in Latin and anthropology. Now that I’m no longer part of a school system, I feel like going back to class. I want to learn. Now that I don’t have to.”

“You just finished making The Fly II,” I said. How is it? Is it as good as the first one?” (Which was actually the second one.)

“It’s scary. I dunno, I haven’t seen it yet. But I was scared when we were doing it. I’m serious. I hate that kind of movie. I actually screamed a few times when I was making it. I don’t know if I’ll end up seeing it, actually.”

“Are you a New Yorker?” I asked.

“Yeah, now I am,” he said. Eric has apartments in New York and Los Angeles. “When I’m in L.A. I’m an L Alien.”

It was almost dark now, breezy. We got up, Eric strolled over to the bum’s area of the park and peed—“Sh*t, I probably peed on his home!”—and we started the long trek to Grand Central, where he would take the 42nd Street shuttle to meet a friend.

“Are you a shy person?” I asked as we entered Grand Central’s marbled lobby.

“Oh yeah,” Eric said.

“Really? Are you?”

Eric laughed and looked at me. “Oh yeah.”

“Well, isn’t it difficult for a shy person to be an actor?”

“No, not for me,” he said. “It’s hard for a shy person to do interviews.”

We said goodbye and he disappeared into the terminal’s hub-bub, a speck of white T-shirt, blue jeans and freckles. Who was he going to meet? And what did happen to Jennifer?