CHRIS NEUMER: Now let me ask you this, and I’m playing Devil’s advocate here and I’m not actually suggesting this. You mentioned at the top of this conversation that you were interested in roles that provided a challenge and you wanted to try things, places that you hadn’t gone before. Is there any temptation at all to play the slutty cheerleader to see if you could do it?
TINA MAJORINO: More so than playing the slutty cheerleader, it would be like playing a drug addict or an alcoholic or a sociopath. That’s more of the way that I lean to. Of course you could play the slutty cheerleader. I think if you dug deep enough you could get there because I think that every girl has the ability to kind of tap into that side of their sexuality. Recently I did a project last summer where I played kind of this drug addict and it was awesome because I obviously had never gone there in my real life. Those are more the kind of challenges I’m talking about, more so than the slutty cheerleader or the provocative high schooler.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, I understand wholeheartedly and it was sort of a jackass question. I’ll be the first to admit it was something that I was curious about. I was talking to Fernando Meirelles, the director of The Constant Gardner and I had asked him if he was ever tempted to remake Sweet Home Alabama, the crappy Reese Witherspoon movie. I said it would be interesting to take a script that is this bad, that’s this formulaic and attach a really kick-ass director who has style and vision and just see what he could do with it. He sort of laughed at it. He graciously sidestepped the issue by saying he wasn’t sure what he could add to it being a foreign director, but he did admit there were certain projects out there that he wanted to investigate that you wouldn’t have thought of. He was attached to Collateral for a while and he thought that would have been interesting. So I ask it with that sense in mind. Of course, you can hang up and at dinner tonight you can complain to someone, "Oh my God, you’ll never guess what this guy asked me."
TINA MAJORINO: (laughs) It’s an interesting question because–whenever I talk to my friends about what they think about films, they always wonder how you pick a role or how you navigate your way through your career in that sense. It’s interesting how many choices you have and then in the same sense, you don’t really because the people who hire you do so because that’s how they see you. If they don’t see you in the role you want to play, then you are kind of screwed. I’m sure there will come a time when I’m older and I’ll be asked to play someone provocative. That’s different to me than just being the slutty cheerleader. If it had depth to it, you never know.
CHRIS NEUMER: That seems like a challenge right there, like a reality TV show, 5 up and coming filmmakers try to write a script to add depth to the slutty cheerleader.
TINA MAJORINO: It would be quite a challenge.
CHRIS NEUMER: I give you that. Now, you’ve been working for 70 years, right? Or is it, 72?
TINA MAJORINO: 75.
CHRIS NEUMER: 75 years, Okay. Diamond anniversary. Have there been things about the nature of your career that have surprised you or how the process has turned out to be different than you initially imagined?
TINA MAJORINO: I think the thing that was most surprising to me is that it was so easy for me to start up again after being gone for five years.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, I hate you.
TINA MAJORINO: (laughs) When I quit I was 13 and everyone said, "Why are you quitting? You are making a horrible mistake. When you come back it’s going to be like starting all over again, blah, blah, blah." When I actually did come back, I’m not saying it was super easy–I did work my ass off–but at the same time there was a kind of relief to the fact that I would be starting all over again. It’s hard to come back after being a child actor and you want people to see you as your age now not who you used to be, so there was that relief of walking in the door and hearing, "Wow, we haven’t seen you in 5 years. Let’s see what you’ve got." That’s a lot better than hearing, "Oh she was the kid from Andre? So whatever, she’s all right for the part." That was quite surprising to me that it actually went so well. I’m very thankful for that. Every day is a surprise in this business. Part of what attracts me to the job is that it’s always something new and I’m a humongous fan of change. It’s nice to know that every day I’m going to be scared shitless of something.
CHRIS NEUMER: Wow, that’s a pull-quote. I can appreciate that. I don’t want to say that I live my entire life based on that principle, but I think that the people in Iowa are going to have a hard time understanding that concept. I feel you there.
TINA MAJORINO: My mom and dad have always raised me to do that. They always say, "Each day do something that scares you." So it makes you grow as a person. If you are doing the same thing every single day and you are always staying inside the comfort zone, you never really know who you could be or the things that you could achieve.
CHRIS NEUMER: My parents said that until I tried heroin. Then they stopped saying that. My mo was like, "We didn’t mean this." This is the last thing I have for you unless you have something to add after this. As a former child star coming into your own as an adult actor, do you feel lucky that you have managed to avoid the pitfalls of the stereotypical child actor? Did you ever come to forks in the road where you could have gone Corey Feldman, but decided to go normal?
TINA MAJORINO: In a sense I feel lucky that I sort of sidestepped those pitfalls. In another sense I think that it had a lot to do with my choices. I’m proud of the choices that I made and I’m glad that I didn’t listen to everybody else and that I stuck to my gut feeling about it. It didn’t steer me wrong and for that, I’m very thankful. I don’t think that there was ever a moment where I could have gone Corey Feldman. I don’t know, I try to stay pretty true to the way I am each day because I’m my biggest critic. I think that I’ve always just tried to be myself even when I wasn’t working and even when I was just doing the normal thing. I never really had any need to take it down.
CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like you have a very solid understanding of yourself, what your boundaries are, what your limits are and what you will and will not do. It seems that since you have that very solid sense of self, that whenever you are faced with any choices, you just do what you would do, which turns out to be correct. Then people say, "Oh man, how did you do this?" and you are like, "Well let me think. Basically I was just being me and I’m not screwed up."
TINA MAJORINO: Right.
