THE roles of Thelma & Louise were already cast by the time I read it: Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand had been the Thelma and Louise choice of writer Callie Khouri when she was going to direct her own script.
After she sold the rights to Ridley Scott and Mimi Polk Gitlin to produce, Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer became the next pairing.
The timing didn’t work out on that one, as Jodie went off to do an obscure little thing called The Silence of the Lambs and Michelle shot Love Field.
Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep were also in talks to do Thelma & Louise, but Meryl thought one of the two main characters should survive, and that pairing also faced scheduling issues.
As for me, well, I had my agent call Ridley’s office approximately 52 times (that is, every week, for a year), to remind him that I was available and interested. I knew an important script when I read one and wasn’t above pressing my case tirelessly.
During that year of weekly phone calls, I even met with my acting coach, Roy London, many times to work on the script. In other words, I was preparing for a movie other actors had already been cast in – that’s how insanely fixated I was on it.
Roy convinced me that I was ready to go for the more jaded, more mature character, Louise.
Surely, it was time for me to play a role like this; I was nearing my mid-30s!
When Ridley decided he’d direct the movie himself, he knew all about my longtime
