If You Ask Me - Betty White [9]
The TV Land folks threw me an eighty-ninth birthday party. Here I am with the girls from Hot in Cleveland.... The red carpet is a lot better with friends!
D DIPASUPIL/FILMMAGIC.COM
With Malin Akerman, Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock, Anne Fletcher, and Mary Steenburgen on the set of The Proposal.
PHOTOFEST/WALT DISNEY PICTURES
THE PROPOSAL
Doing movies is different but interesting.
One thing in particular struck me about being on the set of The Proposal—what a joy it was to work with Sandra Bullock.
Here’s this big movie star, and there wasn’t anything “movie star” about her at all. She was just as down-to–earth as she could be. We became great and dear friends. Still are. The same goes for Ryan Reynolds.
Anne Fletcher, the movie’s wonderful director, had been a choreographer originally. We all got relaxed and silly with one another, so she wouldn’t just walk onto the set—she’d do a ballet leap onto the set, saying, “The director is here!”
In one of the scenes in the movie, Sandra and I are dancing around a bonfire.
On that day of filming, we’d been working all day, but we had to finish that night, because we were moving locations the next day. It was three o’clock in the morning, and I had to sing this blinking Eskimo song in order to shoot the scene.
First I had to learn it. And Eskimo makes no sense. I don’t know how Eskimos communicate! But I learned it. God knows what I was really saying.
And then it came time to dance around the fire.
Anne just turned us loose—told us to do whatever we felt like doing. And Sandra’s such a good sport. So just about the time we started moving around ...
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The rain started, and it kept getting harder and harder.
Now, we had to finish this scene! We were leaving the site the next day. So they put up a canvas on four big poles to keep us dry. But the rain continued—harder and harder.
I’ve said before I love my profession, and I do. At three o’clock in the morning in the rain, you’d better love it a lot.
With Sandra—a scene in The Proposal.
© 2009 TOUCHSTONE PICTURES/PHOTO BY KERRY HAYES/MPTVIMAGES.COM
THE LOST VALENTINE
For the Hallmark movie The Lost Valentine with Jennifer Love Hewitt, we shot in this pretty little house in Atlanta in a lovely neighborhood. Across the street was a low wall, and behind it was this big grassy lawn.
All the neighbors knew that I was working there, so they all brought their dogs.
We’d look across the street from the set, and they’d all be lined up—owners and dogs, sitting on the wall.
Between scenes, I’d go across the street to say hello and get to know all the dogs.
There was this young man, Mitch, hired to escort me around the set, who would go over with me. One day he came in and said, “Betty, there’s a Newfoundland out there.”
The way he tells it, at the word “Newfoundland,” I shot out of my chair like a bullet! Why not? I don’t get to smooch with a Newfie that often.
So I got my dog fix every day.
Now, that’s a happy set.
With Jennifer Love Hewitt on the set of the Hallmark movie The Lost Valentine.
HALLMARK/THE KOBAL COLLECTION
LETTERS
INTERVIEWS (REDFORD)
It is a real privilege to have been working in this business for so long, but there are a few built-in hazards—some of which can’t be avoided. Interviews, for example. There is no way to even estimate the number of them I have done over the years—we must be in the millions by now. This means I have answered the same questions, told the same anecdotes, wheezed on and on ad infinitum, again and again. The interviewers know the material better than I do, going in—and it’s tough to put a fresh spin on it.
A few years ago I was asked one of the standard questions for probably the umpteenth time: “Is there anything you haven’t done in your career that you would still like to do?”
Well, I had just seen Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Out of Africa for the third time, so the answer was automatic: “Yes, Robert Redford.” And I was surprised to suddenly find it was true! Ever since, I have realized that that answer fits a variety