A Hot Film Property : Andie MacDowell, star of ‘sex, lies, and videotape,’ opts for small-budget films and ignores major studio bids

“My agent would like me to be working on a big movie for a major studio,” Andie MacDowell said, the hint of an ironic smile on her lips. “But here I am instead.”

“Here” is Ealing Studios, which emphatically does not qualify as major, and where big movies are simply not made. The lot tells its own story; offices and corridors are painted in drab, institutional colors which recall the decor of Victorian English schools.

Employees amble around in cheerful, leisurely fashion; the atmosphere evokes a less complex time. This studio, set in a stately west London suburb, gave its name to a gentle, sweet-minded comic British film genre during the post-war years that constituted its heyday. “Hollywood it’s not,” observes MacDowell, almost fondly.

But for her own good, maybe it should be; MacDowell is currently a hot property in industry terms, and is still basking in the acclaim given her last movie, Steven Soderbergh’s Cannes prizewinner “sex, lies, and videotape.” Her funny, poignant performance as the repressed wife Ann won her a Golden Globe nomination, a joint best actress award from the Los Angeles film critics, and even raised genuine (though dashed) hopes of an Oscar nomination.

In short, “sex, lies, and videotape” gave MacDowell the leverage to hold out for a lucrative leading role in a big-budget Hollywood movie. But rather than capitalizing on her momentum through conventional career channels, she came instead to unfashionable Ealing, to star with John Malkovich in a $5 million independent feature called “The Object of Beauty.”

The film is about an American couple called Jake and Tina (Malkovich and MacDowell) staying in a posh London hotel. They are outwardly affluent, but Jake’s cashflow depends on shady commodity deals, and his credit line has collapsed while the hotel bill keeps mounting. Tina owns a $50,000 Henry Moore bronze, the titular object, to which she is sentimentally attached. Jake sees it as a way of clearing debts, while a mute chambermaid eyes it as a work of literally irresistible beauty. When it goes missing, a darkly comic caper is set in motion.

Andie MacDowell, seated on a sofa in a dark alcove on the hotel room set, said she had simply liked the script of “The Object of Beauty,” especially the absence of any violence. “There’s enough terror in the world as it is,” she noted. “Of course, sometimes high quality movies are violent. I hope I don’t end up eating my words and doing one of them.”

She conceded her career went into overdrive after the extraordinary reception for “sex, lies, and videotape.” “I certainly got two interesting films to work on,” she added in her southern drawl. Indeed. After “The Object of Beauty,” MacDowell goes to New York to shoot a Peter Weir movie, “Green Card,” opposite Gerard Depardieu. “It’s great with John, and I’m looking forward to working with Gerard. But I’m a little bit scared too.”

Meanwhile, MacDowell is having to confront two specters from her past career. She enjoyed modeling success, notably as the L’Oreal girl, but claims to have suffered prejudice from some elements in the film industry against models-turned-actresses. Then, when she appeared in the film “Greystoke,” director Hugh Hudson infamously dubbed Glenn Close’s voice over MacDowell’s own Southern lilt.

“Having been a model doesn’t help,” she said gloomily. “People look down on me for that sometimes.” But what does she say about it? “I had a good time. Part of the problem was that I had such a success with modeling that it’s a known thing about me. I had a lot of good experiences--travel, beautiful jobs, off to Kenya for a couple of weeks. I got to do things most people don’t get to do, and made a lot of money for something relatively easy.

“In modeling, because you’re the center of attention, it builds up people’s egos. Sometimes people lose touch with reality. But that happens with acting, too.”

And Greystoke? “It gave something for people to talk about,” she noted. “But it’s something I’m dealing with, because I’m having to talk about it in every interview I do.”

“Greystoke” had aired on BBC television two evenings previously, and MacDowell said her husband, Paul, had watched it for the first time, alone. “He said afterwards, God, it was so weird watching that, and seeing you, and hearing.... I said, Paul, pleeeeease, I get this all the time, I don’t want to have to hear it it at home.”

She paused for a moment. “Who’s to know? I look back on my life, and if I could have changed things ... if I could have got Greystoke now, maybe that wouldn’t have happened. But if anything had been different, maybe I wouldn’t have the husband or two children I have now, so I wouldn’t change anything. It’s not like it’s anything I can’t live with.”

Homespun common sense, all the way from Gaffney, S.C., where MacDowell grew up, one of four sisters. Her three siblings all majored in education; Andie went to college for a year and a half before dropping out with bad grades. “Sometimes I get intimidated by people, intellectuals, because I don’t have a great education,” she said ingenuously. “The only thing I feel helps me compete with all these people, people with degrees from Harvard, that you’re thrown in with and have to work with, is that I’m grounded.”

She has needed to be. After the “Greystoke” fiasco MacDowell appeared in “St. Elmo’s Fire” as the enigmatic love interest for Emilio Estevez--but little else before “sex, lies and videotape” gives her pride. “I did a mini-series, which actually won awards in Italy,” she said with disdain. “Ben Kingsley was in it, Michael York, some good people. ‘Sahara’s Secret,’ they called it. Never released in the States, and I pray it will not be. I’ll be humiliated. God, it was bad.”

MacDowell also looked grounded earlier, in the Ealing Studios cafeteria. She insists Paul and her kids--Justin, 3 1/2, and daughter Rainey, 1--go with her to locations, and today they had joined her for lunch. This was a plain affair--no motor homes, gourmet commissary food or special treatment. Leading actors and grips alike waited in line for dubious BBC delicacies. Chattering and giggling with her family, MacDowell seemed to be having fun. She’s also getting accolades from her colleagues on set. Said Malkovich: “She’s easy and she’s natural. That’s all I can say. She listens and she responds. Believe me, that’s a lot. These days, that’s a lot.”

“She’s wonderful as Tina,” says the film’s writer-director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. “The character is wacky, but she’s got great heart. Andie is a beauty who’s funny, and that’s rare.”

So is the deal under which “The Object of Beauty” is being made. Avenue Pictures, the film’s American producers, receives a services contribution from BBC Films in the form of a soundstage at Ealing (which the BBC now owns), a crew, designer and post-production facilities.

It’s an arrangement with advantages. Assuming “The Object of Beauty” makes money, the financially beleaguered BBC will receive revenue from its share of the profits to plow back into TV programs. Everyone here agrees the BBC’s input will ensure that “The Object of Beauty” looks good. Producer Jon Denny notes: “The BBC cares a lot,” adding that it has produced some of the world’s best-looking TV in recent years.

Still, there are drawbacks. Lindsay-Hogg, who has already directed drama for the BBC (notably Tom Stoppard’s outstanding play “Professional Foul”), says of the British work force: “They’re wonderful to work with,” but adds, choosing his words with care: “They’re slightly rigid.”

Well, yes. Everyone breaks for lunch at 12:45 p.m. sharp; a 4:15 tea break is rigorously and punctually observed. And no one works after 7:30 p.m., even if shooting schedules demand; at that precise hour, in a tradition that could have come straight from an Ealing comedy, a veteran studio employee throws two switches on the elderly generator which powers the lot, and plunges it into darkness.

Lindsay-Hogg, an American, also notes that the British crew, accustomed to shooting for TV, pay slightly less attention than craftsmen who know details are magnified on a 40-foot movie theatre screen.

But no one blames the BBC for this day’s interminable delays--which have caused the small, thin, tightly-wound Denny to stalk the set, muttering “Jesus Christ!” through clenched teeth. David Watkin, an Oscar-winning cinematographer, has joined the production, and immediately ordered the grand, traditional-looking London hotel room set to re-lit for a more somber effect. “It looks like a Habitat store front,” he reportedly told Denny and Lindsay-Hogg in scornful tones.

No shooting has taken place all morning. In the studio’s green room, John Malkovich, dressed in a sleek gray-brown suit, sighs and lights up a cigarette, arching his eyebrows wearily as he faces not being called upon today.

Clearly, less is at stake for Malkovich on this movie than for MacDowell. His reputation is virtually sealed, after years of critical success with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, followed by notable appearances in movies like “The Killing Fields,” “Places in the Heart,” and “Dangerous Liaisons.” He has also just come off another eagerly anticipated film, Bertolucci’s adaptation of the Paul Bowles novel “The Sheltering Sky.”

So what brings him to Ealing? What dictates his choices? He shrugs. “One might feel like doing something that could be important and say something about the human condition. Or you might do something that could be fun or entertaining. Or then on some level, you do what’s offered.”

It’s suggested to him that perhaps he chose to do “The Object of Beauty” for the second reason. “I think this could be fun, yes,” agreed Malkovich, whose general demeanor suggested that working on the film is anything but.

In the end Malkovich liked the humor of Lindsay-Hogg’s script, and decided on that basis to do “The Object of Beauty.” “I know,” he said a little wistfully, “that I can’t be better than the writing. There are actors who can, and they’re called movie stars. Of which I’m not one. I don’t know how to do it--it’s not a gift of mine.”

Back in her alcove, MacDowell is by contrast glowing about her career surge. “I got both this movie and ‘Green Card’ without auditions. Which is nice. I hate auditions.” Even so, she regrets disrupting her normal family life to shoot two films back to back--something she’s never done before. “I won’t do a third,” she said. “I don’t think I’d appreciate it.”

But now she’s on a roll, isn’t there a temptation to work and work to maintain it? MacDowell smiled sweetly. “Sure, if you’re around actors all the time,” she said. “But I’m not.”