Actress Took the Dangerous Path, but Not Without Guilt

South African actress Alice Krige has not gotten over the guilt she assumed when she left her native country to pursue a career in England and the United States. Guilt, however, occasionally has its rewards.

“In many ways, my father thought I was wrong to leave, because he felt if you’re white and liberal and can make any difference at all, you should be there to try to make that difference,” Krige said during a recent stop in San Diego to promote Alan J. Pakula’s new movie, “See You in the Morning,” now playing at San Diego theaters.

Krige, who made her screen debut as the beautiful diva in “Chariots of Fire,” said the guilt has helped her identify with the part she plays in “See You in the Morning.”

On the surface, Krige has little in common with the character, Beth Goodwin, a widow with children who marries a divorced man (Jeff Bridges) with children. (Farrah Fawcett plays Bridges’ first wife.)

The focus of “See You in the Morning” is the challenge of finding and keeping love alive in a blended-family situation--a challenge with which Pakula, the writer and director of the film, still lives. When Pakula divorced his first wife, actress Hope Lange, he married a widow with children.

Krige has never been widowed, divorced or had children. But she does know anxiety. It peppers her conversation as she talks about leaving the country where her parents and brothers still live, about putting off having a baby for the next two years--if her husband of 10 months doesn’t mind--and for still being unsure whether her years of classical training mean she is good enough to have been in “Chariots of Fire,” “Barfly” and “See You in the Morning.”

Suddenly, as she speaks, and despite the evident differences between her and Beth Goodwin, all of the sweet, vulnerable qualities of the character start bubbling up. The identity between the two was something Pakula himself had to see to believe.

“The woman who casts all his pictures, Alixe Gordon, thought I was ideal for the part,” Krige said. “But Alan said, ‘She’s from South Africa and lived in England for 13 years, and you want her to play a New Yorker?’ Alixe said, ‘Just see her.’ ”

He did, and Krige believes he cast her because she had “the right spirit for the role.”

“I was fascinated by Beth’s journey from trying to make everything perfect to learning to live in the moment. Also, we were very lucky because we had Jeff and Farrah as the big names, so they didn’t have to cast a big star.”

It seemed clear that Krige does not put herself in such a category.

Wearing no jewelry, no makeup and breezily confessing to her age--34--she wound her waist-long brown hair girlishly around her arm every few minutes and settled it behind her back. At the suggestion that Lorimar Film Entertainment must think her important to send her on a limousine-driven tour of the country, she only shrugged, laughed and changed the subject. Quickly.

“I’d really like to do theater in San Diego,” she said earnestly. “I’ve been told the theater is very good here.”

Part of Krige’s insecurity seems to stem from being the “rebel” in a conventional South African family. Her father is a doctor, her mother a psychologist. Her two brothers became doctors, and Krige herself planned to become a psychologist before switching her major in her final year of college to drama.

One thing she preferred about drama was what she describes as the “danger” of the choice. She has never lacked for work--she landed her role in “Chariots of Fire” just out of drama school in London, played Lucy Manet in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of “A Tale of Two Cities,” took a part in “Ghost Story,” went on to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company for the next two years, then landed parts in “Barfly,” “Haunted Summer” and “See You in the Morning.”

The danger seems to lie in the shaky areas of her own self-confidence.

“I knew I’d be a good psychologist, but I didn’t know if I’d be a good actress. I still don’t. I guess I took the dangerous path, the path where I couldn’t be convinced that I could do the job.”

The word danger keeps popping up as she explains what she likes about her work.

While she doesn’t find any of the roles she has had so far to be the least bit like her, they do seem to involve working with actors and directors who keep asking for the unexpected.

Pakula allowed four weeks of rehearsal to give the actors time to become comfortable with each other and their parts, but, once they were, he took away the safety net.

“Having created a safe space when we were shooting, in every take we did he introduced something new. I would see Alan and Jeff in a corner and know something was up. So I would be on the tips of my toes wondering what would happen next.”

Krige met Pakula’s second wife, Hannah, on the set, but says she was not trying to create “a little Hannah.” There are tales she could tell about the personal confessions of the cast but won’t. It was like group therapy, she said, and people were open with each other on the condition that their secrets would not flee the set like so many errant butterflies.

The words she uses to describe working with Mickey Rourke in “Barfly” are similar to those she uses for Pakula.

“He was so dangerous to be around,” she said. “It was incredibly exciting. You never knew what was coming next.”

Krige’s love of danger is clearly one of those cases in which opposites attract.

“I’m not a gambler at all. I can’t even play video games. But it’s very exciting to walk that kind of knife edge in your work. Given that you’ve done the groundwork, it’s wonderful to surprise yourself and everyone you’re working with.”

Krige’s next project involves flying to England to work with her husband, Paul Schoolman, who will be directing his first feature in England this summer. The project, “Tumultuous City,” has a two-scene part for her at best. Her main role will be as an executive producer of the drama, which stars prisoners in a story about their lives.

She is finding the project “very exciting.”

“I have been taught so much by the men inside the prison. They work with an honesty and simplicity because they don’t have any preconceptions of being actors. It is a very salutary experience.”