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What's in the card for Katie Holmes?
After a couple of forgettable teen flicks, the 21-year old
star of Dawson's Creek takes a seat at the grown-ups table
with supporting roles in Wonder Boys and the new thriller,
The Gift.
It all starts with a vision. A slow-motion pan down Katie
Holmes's long, alabaster leg as it transforms from a
detonator of teenage testosterone into a bruised piece of
cadaverous flesh immeresed in sludgy water. In next
month's nail biter, The Gift, a movie so scary it may
outspook Blair Witch 2, Holmes plays a hussy of a Savannah
society girl who asks psychic Cate Blanchett if a happy
future is in store for her and her fiance, played by Greg
Kinnear. And this is the image Blanchett's psychic is
overcome with.
Katie Holmes, Dawson's Creek star and budding screen
starlet, doesn't take much stock in all that--psychic
abilities, ESP, telekinesis. Although she's not opposed to
the idea of an old soul or people with intuitive natures,
she's a good Catholic girl from Toledo, Ohio, who turns to
her family for advice, not to a fortune teller.
Nevertheless, she gamely agrees to come along for a jaunt
to an East Village witchcraft shop, Other Worldly Waxes,
for a personalized tarot reading in anticipation fo the
release of The Gift.
Our reader, Yasmine--blonde and wise like Blanchette, buy
not quite so self-serious as Blanchett's character;
originally from L.A. and so over that scene--also has a
premonition. On the day of our scheduled appointment she
rings my cell phone: "Were you trying to reach me? I
had a feeling you were." I had left a message a half
hour before on the number given to me by Other Worldy
Waxes, and was en route to the shop to track her down an
let her know Katie and I would be late--the photo shoot
was running over. It turns out they had given me a
disconnected beeper number and she never received the
message. She just knew to call me. Spooky.
Several hours of posing and vamping for the camera pass as
Holmes's selections of Macy Gray and vintage U2 blare out
of the stereo. Then we trek across town for the reading.
Yasmine is swinging a pendulum over the cards. She places
a large Herkimer diamond--given to her by a shaman--on the
table. Over a round of double skim lattes, Katie, working
a wholesome but sexy look in a pure white pullover sweater
and tight faded jeans, chooses 10 cards with her left hand, concentrating on what the next three months will
bring for her. In the process she also picks one card and
hastily puts it back--a no-no. "I'm sure it'll pop
out and let itself be known," reassures Yasmine.
According to Yasmine, the years 2002 and 2006 will be
biggies for Holmes. The former being a time of great
career opportunities, the latter a time of a different
kind of growth: motherhood. "I don't wanna be a
mother at 27!" Holmes protests. It strikes me as
funny to think of her as a mother, as right now the people
surrounding her have a tendency to baby the actress. Her
publicist tells me more than once to go easy on her--she's
only 21. And don't harp on the bare-breasts scene she did
in the The Gift--she's only 21. And she's sort of freaked
by the idea of the tarot reading, so her friend Albert is
going to tag along for moral support--she is only 21.
Maybe that's just the curse of playing a 17 year-old on
TV, aof having slightly baby faced cheeks, and being
genuinely sweet, nice, and soft-spoken. And to be fair,
Holmes calls herself "naive" even after five
years in the business, and admits to surrounding herself
with people who protect her. But make no mistake, Katie
Holmes is no pushover. When our psychic brings up the
question of a boyfriend, Katie grabs the tape recorder,
shuts it off, and puts it by her side until the answer is
given. Later on she'll try to broker a deal with me:
She'll keep on talking to me rather than sneak off to see
Almost Famous with Albert if I don't print anything about
her relationship with hunky American Pie and Election star
Chris Klein in the story. When I tell her I can't comply,
she's outta there within 15 minutes.
She knows what she wants and she's not afraid of taking
charge--or is at least becoming less so. In the past year,
she's made some bold career moves. For starters, she
parted ways with her original manager, the man who landed
Holmes her first film role, in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm,
and took her from star of Toledo high-school plays like
Damm Yankees and brought ther face to millions of
television screens as the heroine of Dawson's Creek. (Let
it be noted that from the start, she's had moxie: She
famously blew off her first audition for Dawson's creator
Kevin Williamson because it was scheduled for the same day
as Damm Yankees' opening night, and she wouldn't dream of
letting her friends down.)
As with many young actors' careers, a strike-while-the
iron's-hot mentality found Holmes filming three teen
movies in quick succession, with starring roles in
Disturbing Behavoir, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, with Helen
Mirren, and Doug Liman's terrific raver odyssey Go.
"I was way in over my head; and I approached
everything with such naivete," Holmes reflects on
ther first feature-film roles. "They were great
opportunities, and I had a wonderful time doing those teen
movies, but it was kind of time to not do that anymore."
Understandably, she got sick of playing teenagers. "I
mean, I'm getting older, you don't really wanna do that on
vacation. And I was fortunate enough to have opportunities
to work with people like Michael Douglas and Robert Downey
Jr., who, you know, I would cry if I saw them in a
restaurant. I wouldn't be able to walk up and ask for an
autograph." She is only 21, remember.
And how did she do in said company? In certain scenes she
steals the show. Oscar-winning director Curtis Hanson, who
cast Holmes in Wonder Boys with Douglas and Downey,
praises the actress's performance in a key scene in which
her character, a college student named Hannah Green who's
got an unrequited crush on her professor (Michael Douglas), critiques the professor's
novel: "She's got
over a page of dialogue, and it's all her. Michael just
listens and reacts. And as she critiques his book, she's
also critiquing his life. And she's nervous, insightful,
brave, vulnerable, and ultimately disappointed. And I
can't think of an actress who could've done that scene
better."
Instead of cashing in on more throwaway teen flicks,
Holmes smartly opted for smaller, but pivotal roles in
meatier films with stellar casts and directors--even when
her handlers were against it. Case in point: Holmes's
cherished role as Hannah Green was initaially turned down.
Hanson recalls "Katie flew up to New York and stood
in line in the hotel corridor on a day when I was seeing
actors and actresses every 15 minutes. And she read for
the part. I know that she actually did this against the
advice of her advisors. Going through the normal channels,
which our casting director did, in essence the job was
passed on. But word got to Katie directly. And she made up
her own mind. She was hotter than hot off that TV show,
and so often young actors get a taste of success and
immediately start second-guessing everything, and their
managers and agents do. And it's all about, Oh, you can't
read for this, or the movie's not built around this...
Katie just approached it as an actor--and a very serious
one."
When I ask what happened with her manager, Holmes will
only say, politely and quietly, but firmly, "I had a
manager and now I don't. It was just time to move
on." (In a follow up interview the next week, Holmes
elaborates just a bit, saying, "My manager did a heck
of a job with me. He got me where I am. It was hard for
the both of us. It was kind of like breaking up with
somebody.") While she won't go into specifics about
her manager or any of her dealings, she does hint at the
awakening process: "At first, you are just so excited. I was just
like, everyone seems so nice, and the
producers are great. And then you start to figure out how
it all works."
Her fellow cast member James Van Der Beek, who plays her
ex-boyfriend and longtime childhood pal Dawson Leery on
the show, witnessed that transition first hand. "You
always hear people say, 'You know what I like about so and
so? They haven't changed a bit.' That always rubs me the
wrong way," he says, speaking from his Dawson's Creek
digs in Wilmington, N.C., where the new season is
currently being shot. "Because you know, [in Holmes's
case] you start out in high school, you send out a tape
from your basement in Toledo, and then all of a sudden
you're surrounded by all these people in your life who
stand to make a huge profit off of you. You definitely
have to change a little bit: You have to grow up and get a
little more savvy. I think that Midwestern sweetness will
always be a part of Katie. So it's probably a struggle
sometimes as to what's the most professional thing to do,
and what's the best thing to do for her. And I think she's
also very concerned about how other people are feeling."
Holmes has a question for Yasmine: Any big news in her
career in six months' time? She elaborates in a whisper.
She won't admit it to me, but she is asking if Dawson's
Creek will run its course this year. Holmes has come a
long way since her first day of work on the series back in
1998, professionally and personally. And the time hasn't
passed without some growing pains. Over the years, the
core cast has become like family, in the sense that, as
much as you love your family, you can pick your friends,
but you can't pick your family. You're stuck with them.
She became romantically linked with co-star Josh Jackson,
who plays Pacey on the show
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od: 31. marzec 02 |
Mój nr GG:
201547
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