Anjelica and Joan with Jack Nicholson at the Cannes Film Festival, in I’m guessing, ’78 from the clothes and hair
Angelica’s second book, just out
Anjelica Huston and Joan Juliet Buck have know each other since they were kids. Their fathers were friends, both in the movie business, Angelica, the director John Huston and Joan, her father, Jules a producer.
I worked with Joan at Vanity Fair, years ago and Angelica I know a little through her sister, Allegra who is a good pal and also Kate O’Toole, whose father Peter and mother Sian, were tight with the Bucks and the Hustons. They are both smart and funny and do talk, play and argue like sisters. Once at a casual dinner with the aforementioned group, Joan referred to Angelica teasingly as “movie star” one too many times and Angelica snapped, “Stop calling me that!” –but 15 seconds later, it was forgotten. They were recently were in conversation on Yahoo.com and Joan writes;
“We’ve traded places, though —I was a child actress, she was a teenage actress; I went to British Vogue, she was a model; I was WWD’s correspondent in Italy, she was Jack Nicholson’s girlfriend; I got married, she went to acting class; I wrote my first novel, she played Maerose in Prizzi’s Honor; I got divorced, she bought a ranch; I wrote my second novel, she won an Oscar; I had love affairs, she got married; I edited French Vogue, she directed her first movie. And now she’s beaten me to the memoir — the first volume, A Story Lately Told, came out a year ago, and this week, part two, the moving Watch Me is published by Scribner’s. I’m still at the manuscript stage.
This winter she’ll be on Broadway in Love Letters. She made sure she’d be onstage on Valentine’s Day.”
JJB: … there was the tragic moment when you got taller than me.
AH: There was a brief moment when we were the same height and then suddenly I spun out of control.
JJB: And those legs kept getting longer. And even though your feet got bigger than mine, you could wear my size six and a half shoes.
AH: I’ve always had telescopic feet, particularly if I like the shoes. I did that at my wedding. I wore size 7 1/2 shoes at my wedding, whereas I’m actually a 9 1/2.
JJB: How much agony…?
AH: I can pretty much curl up those toes and make my feet fit. I wouldn’t fit into a 6 and a half anymore, but I could tuck them into an 8.
JJB: And what about the pain?
AH: Unbelievable. Like, mind numbing.
JJB: So how do you get over the foot pain?
AH: Well you don’t do that anymore. There are certain things you don’t do, I’ve learned in time.
JJB: Was this one of the things you learned as a model, to ignore foot pain?
AH: I remember being in Milan, this one awful moment on a Friday night when my agency wouldn’t pay me, and I had no money to get back to Paris and I was walking around in some piazza with these enormous Mario Valentino high heels… they were very expensive, they were like couture shoes of the highest order, they must have been 7 or 8 inch heels. I’d been given them by Mario Valentino.
JJB: When you’re in the fashion world, you’re wearing a lot of things that weren’t meant for you, but they look really fabulous, even if, in my case, they’re way too big.
AH: I remember going to visit you when you were the Redactrice-en-chef of French Vogue and you were standing in incredibly high heels, and knowing your feet intimately as I do, I was astonished. The sacrifice you were making for fashion!
JJB: One Sunday I went on a Mario Testino shoot wearing flat shoes, and he shouted at me, “Don’t ever let me see you in flat shoes again!”
AH: Oh my God…
This makes me long for the old Interview magazine where you could “listen in” on the conversations of really interesting smart, funny people. Read the rest of this VERY entertaining interview and Part 2 tomorrow, here. You can get Angelica’s book here. Stay tuned for Joan’s…
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