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Brntwd Magazine - March/April 2000Natasha on her life It’s the first sunny morning after several days of rain in Los Angeles and I’m watching Natasha Henstridge peel a couple of boiled eggs and sort through a melange of fruit against a backdrop of boats. We’re having breakfast on the terrace of the Ritz Carlton, Marina del Rey. The unfiltered sunlight, the redness of the ripe strawberries and the brilliant white of the eggs make Henstridge’s near perfect skin and green eyes pop. The picture puts me in mind of a Norman Rockwell painting. If only every morning could be this lovely, every woman this stunning! This might be one of the reasons why the erstwhile Canadian model turned actress became a cult sensation almost overnight with her film debut in 1995 in the hit sci-fi thriller Species with Michael Madsen and Ben Kingsley. In it she played an alien-human hybrid hellbent upon finding a suitable mate with whom to breed. Able beauty (imagine Bridget Fonda’s pertness crossed with the royalty of Grace Kelly), earned her an MTV Movie Award, and secured her next role (something she prefers not to talk about) as a maiden in distress in a Jean Claude Van Damme action flick Maximum Risk. A slew of roles followed in movies with suspicious titles including Adrenalin: Fear the Rush. These days, however, Henstridge is more discriminating about her material. She’s hanging with some very reputable talent and aspiring to more challenging work. In the rollicking comedy The Whole Nine Yards she put in a commendable, although by definition, limited performance as professional hit man Bruce Willis’ estranged bombshell of a wife (whom he would rather kill than divorce) who falls for a dorky dentist played by Matthew Perry. (''I laughed so much watching the film. Usually I’m yawning my way through screenings of films I’m in.'') She’s about to appear alongside young hotshots Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck in writer/director Don Roos’ (The Opposite of Sex) much anticipated Bounce. (''It’s about a plane crash. It has some bizarre plot twists. It’s really about fate.'') And she also stars opposite Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) in It Had To Be You, Steven Feder’s romantic comedy about a man and woman who inadvertently fall in love with one another while planning their weddings to other partners at New York’s illustrious Plaza Hotel. As she talks about her upcoming films, Henstridge is not so much circumspect as she is realistic about the size of her roles in them. ''I feel excited and frustrated at the same time. I don’t think I’ve come anywhere near reaching my potential. But each time [I take on a role] it’s a little frightening,'' says Henstridge, who never attended anything as formal as drama school. ''It’s like that song ‘Don’t Forget Your Sunscreen’ doing something each day that you’re afraid of. That’s kind of what [acting] is for me.'' What does she do with all that fear? Borrowing from another piece of popular culture, Henstridge laughs, ''I just do it! It’s not as though I have that much technique. I would like to feel that I have more of a tool, that I could pick up any role and say I know how to go about getting it. I’m not secure enough yet.'' She figures she’ll really come into her own in about 10 years and lets face it, at 25, she’s got the time. Henstridge says she’d like to try her hand at drama. ''A troubled singer. That would be very frightening.'' Does the actress have a great voice? ''That’s up for debate,'' she quips, ‘but I’d like to do something dark and seedy anyway. I love comedy too. I’d like to be free and open enough to do the Jim Carrey role and not the girlfriend of Jim Carrey.'' She has never been short on temerity. The daughter of a building contractor and his homemaker wife, she left Fort McMurray, Alberta at 15 and jetted off alone to Paris, after winning an Elite newcomer’s contest. ''My mother actually sent my photograph to a modeling agency. She often says she wishes she’d never done it. The only challenge modeling offered was trying to keep my weight down. I was running in circles,'' jibes Henstridge. Since giving birth to her first son, Tristan River (now 18 months old), Henstridge’s drive hasn’t been compromised at all. ''I’m more ambitious,'' she owns. ''Although I want to stay home and look after him all day, I’ve started to think about the future and the quality of work I’m doing. I used to look at it literally like a job I’m working, I’m making ‘X’ amount of money. Now I’m a lot more passionate about what I’m doing and I have more of a long-term vested interest. I want my son to grow up being proud of the work I do.'' While her upcoming film 'It Had To Be You' is about the dilemmas women go through figuring out if they are with the right man, Henstridge has a full time beau, fellow actor Liam Waite (the son of Pa Walton). ''We’re in no hurry to get married. There’s so much going on. And there’s something wonderful about waking up each morning with one another and knowing it’s a choice to be there.'' Henstridge met Waite while on a blind date with one of his friends. ''He came along too and on subsequent dates. When his friend and I had an argument, I told him that I was really interested in Liam.'' The couple now shares a house in Montenito, a small town between Malibu and Calabasas. ''The house is practically owning us. I lived out of a suitcase for so many years of my life; I could still do that. Strap my son on my back and away we go but that’s not realistic. But I have a fantasy of living in Tahiti without any attorneys or so many people involved in my life.'' For relaxation, Henstridge, a self-confessed tomboy, prefers men and their sporting activities to hanging with women and ''drinking tea in the kitchen,'' as she puts it. (''Although I do drink tea,'' she says exhibiting her somewhat dry humor.) ''I love just about any outdoor activity known to man. And I’ll try anything once as long as it’s not going to kill me.'' But she also indulges a passion for throwing pots and, of course, shopping although she goes to great pains to add that she’s not into the latest trends. ''I’m not that girl. I just can’t keep up. I also love to lie on a white sandy beach and read a magazine and do absolutely nothing,'' she says flashing an unabashedly self-satisfied smile. ''To be honest, L.A.’s not my favorite place in the world. It’s great career-wise, weather-wise, but it’s this strange melting pot of people all interested in doing exactly the same thing as you. I’m always very happy to be on location, away from L.A. I was in London recently and I thought, ''How civilized, how normal.'' Henstridge, satiated from her hearty breakfast, confides that she once had a nervous breakdown pondering her so-called ''glamorous'' life. ''I was living this pseudo movie star existence. It was all about shopping, what you have, who you know. We were shooting a film in Brazil, in a tiny town, and my emotions were out of my control. I was frustrated and confused. I was watching the local women taking care of their babies, their men out fishing, their very simple lives. And I was so miserable for about a week. I will never lose sight of that, their simple life. It doesn’t have to be ‘What’s her latest movie?’'' The story is a telling one and a tribute to Henstridge’s powers of discernment in an industry often characterized by its lack thereof. Ironically, it’s this quality in Henstridge that will assure her future in that world. It’s just a matter of how bad she wants it. ''You’re always hearing people say, ‘Oh, whatever happened to him?’ It kills me. Sometimes it’s just people’s way of doing something different with their life. I came back from Brazil and cut all my hair off. I called a girlfriend and told her I was going to do it. She said ‘No, come see my hair person,’'' she laughs. ''You hold all your experiences in your hair, they say. I may still be on the edge of Hollywood but maybe that’s not what I really want.'' We have the feeling she’ll be around for a while. |
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