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Bewitching Angelica
I grew up on Anjelica Huston as Morticia in The Addams Family, and The Grand High Witch in The Witches - and so when I was invited to meet her, childhood memories of this tall grand woman with a strong imperious nose, long black fingernails and a stern demeanour came flooding back
What I met at Claridges Hotel in London, couldn't have been further from those chilling childhood recollections. Instead I found an elegant, slender and impeccably dressed woman, with shiny jet black hair, a warm welcoming smile (the sort that makes you feel a bit special) and sparkly eyes that convey just a hint of mischief.
She is magnetic, and bewitching in her own right, but not in the black cat and broomstick sense. Having forged a vast and diverse CV, Huston continues to delight contemporary audiences with her performances in films like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, at the same time as having her roots firmly moulded from the golden era when she grew up surrounded by the likes of Hepburn and Monroe.
As we talked, I soon became completely absorbed as we skipped down her memory lane of Bogey, Bacall, Hepburn and other 'family friends' - her father being acclaimed director, John Huston (Casino Royale, The Misfits). She is completely at ease, totally unfettered by the world of Hollywood, and I instantly wanted to be her new best friend. (If you're reading, Anjelica, call me - ok?)
Today she has come full circle, having just attended the premiere for her latest film These Foolish Things, which also features her old friend Lauren Bacall. Bacall was in her father's inner circle of friends, and one of the first people he told that Angelica was born while they were on location in the Belgian Congo filming The African Queen (Bacall was accompanying her husband Humphrey Bogart). According to Anjelica, a runner raced through the jungle and into their camp one night and handed her father telegram. 'My father opened it, read it, and stuffed it back in his pocket' says Anjelica. `Then five minutes went by, and nobody said anything until Bacall finally said 'For Christ sakes John, what's in the telegram?' to which he replied 'It's a girl, it's Anjelica''
In the 1950s her father, John Huston, relocated his family to Galway, Ireland after becoming disillusioned with McCarthyism in America. Angelica remembers a quiet childhood: 'we lived in a quite remote part of the Irish countryside, and I had tutors until I was about nine or ten, so I mostly dressed up on the lawn and imagined things.' Living on the family estate, riding ponies and fishing - Angelica seemed well protected from the renown of her father and his work. 'I met a lot of actors and actresses but I wasn't really on my father's sets for the duration of any given film' she says. And like any young girl, she admired the glitzy, glamorous women in Hollywood at the time: 'I remember casting a jealous eye on Eva Gardner at about the age of nine, and thinking "that is what I want to be."' She says 'I think from an early age I had an idea that that's where the juice was, in those exalted glamorous creatures'.
It wasn't until the 1969 film A Walk With Love and Death that a 16-year-old Angelica made her screen debut, under the direction of her father. She has few fond memories of making her first film though, 'I didn't like the character; I wanted to be an exalted creature, not a 15th-century French heroine with no make-up'. Tensions on set ran high between the two Hustons 'he was granting me my life's wish, and here I was reluctant, obstinate and unprepared' she says. 'I think I was a big disappointment to him on that one and it took a good 15 years to right that wrong.'
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