Scene
Stealers: Murdering Mom
Samantha Eggar had a ball spinning
Charlotte's web of evil on AMC (by Gabrielle Winkel, SOW 7/11/2000)
"There's
no mistaking AMC's Charlotte Devane for a milk-and-cookies mom, and that's
exactly what Samantha Eggar loved about playing her. Forget warm and fuzzy. Try
sharp and brittle. But it does come as a surprise that after 30 years as an
actress, Charlotte is the first evil character the British-born actress has
played.
'I've always been the victim, the delightful, charming, blah, blah, blah. This is the first opportunity I've had to be wonderfully evil,' Eggar says. Her most famous 'victim' might have been Miranda Grey, whom she played in her star-making turn in The Collector. The 1965 William Wyler film earned the red-haired actress a Golden Globe award, a Cannes Film Festival Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Eggar still gets asked about that film, and the 50-plus other projects she's done. She doesn't mind. 'They ask me about the people that I'd worked with- and The Collector, of course.' If you think about it, it's too late to [ask questions] afterward, when people are gone. You think: Goodness, I worked with Cary Grant, and I never asked him... or whatever. And fun stories; there were fun things I could tell them.'
Now Eggar has collected her own stories about playing the sinister Charlotte, a mother whose day job is professional killer/head of an international spy organization. In Eggar's eyes, Charlotte isn't 100 percent bad. 'I see both sides of her. I think in actual fact she is a good mother, but she's also a professional killer. I love it. I wish I'd been asked to play this kind of characters more often.'
It's Charlotte's complex professional life that caught Eggar's attention. Though the character appears sweet on the outside, she is constantly ordering hits, and was the mastermind of a scheme to brainwash her daughter. She had no qualms about tossing her son-in-law, Dimitri, out of a plane en route to Pine Valley. 'If, in fact, this character, Charlotte, was the head of the CIA or the equivalent, that means it was an extremely unique opportunity and position for a woman to have. Her dedication to that has to have been so intense, not only just as a woman to succeed but to succeed in a situation that's so patriarchal. How did Charlotte get there, and how was she able to hold that position?' Eggar adds.
In starting this role, Eggar remembered a suggestion Wyler had given her. 'He said, "Always show your eyes, because that's really all anybody every gets the truth from." And in life, that's of course true. You look at somebody, but it always comes back to the eyes. Somebody's talking to you, you look into their eyes. When the camera is that close, you have to know what those people are thinking.'
From the first day on the AMC set to her final tape day, June 14, Eggar forged a magical bond with Finola Hughes (Alex), whom she affectionately refers to as Finny. 'We have an amazing not only personal but working relationship. I think a lot of it possibly was both of us being English and there was that immediate click of two people from the same country. She is totally welcoming, generous and an exquisite actor. She's a wonderful girl, and what luck that I got to do my scenes with her.'
Eggar heads back to her home in California, to continue to perform in productions with the radio company CART (California Artists Radio Theatre). She also may do a film in England this summer. And of course, Charlotte Devane isn't dead, which opens up the character to a host of storyline possibilies. 'She is a very interesting character; she may not be evil anyways. I mean, there are so many ways that they can go with relationship between her and Alexandra- or lack of one,' Eggar adds."