An Eye on New Roles

As debilitating as failure is for actors, success may not be any easier.

Ask Cathy Moriarty, who burst into the film world at 18 with her Oscar-nominated performance in “Raging Bull” and followed it with “Neighbors” opposite John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

That was 1981. Donald Cammell’s bent psychological thriller “White of the Eye,” in which Moriarty plays the loving wife of a man charged with a series of ritualistic killings, just opened. Where has Moriarty been?

“I was rejected for a lot of the good, quality roles I tried out for,” she said. “You start to wonder if an early rise to the top like I had played a part in getting turned down so much. More than anything else, I was determined to stay at the level I started at.”

Although a 1982 car accident did knock her out of circulation for a while--it required surgery and lengthy recuperation--she called it only a temporary setback.

“What was a lot tougher,” she said, “was being set for two films (first, Robert Towne’s “Two Jakes” with Jack Nicholson, then Cammell’s “The Last Video”) and then seeing them both fall through.

“I admired Donald’s work immensely,” Moriarty said of the writer and co-director (with Nicholas Roeg) of the cult underground classic “Performance.” “When he sent me the ‘White of the Eye’ script, I was really taken with this woman who changes from a hip East Coast woman into a mother living in the Arizona countryside.”

As much as “White of the Eye” fit into her long-term strategy of tackling a wide range of roles--and garnered her some high critical praise--it’s also, by some reports, sent women storming out of the theater.

“This woman makes love to her husband at the most shocking time in the movie, and that’s offended some people. But Donald and I agreed that her love for him was so intense that she thinks she can save him. She doesn’t run away,” Moriarty said, “and I like that.

“Hey, when any movie gets a reaction at all, that’s a good sign.”