Shirley MacLaine: Having fun 'just being me'
By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY
SANTA FE � Shirley MacLaine is on top of the world these days. Literally. Her sprawling home with its to-die-for views sits high on a ridge just outside town here, at the end of a dirt road where "old rich people live." Or so she says.
By David Weininger
The love of her solitary life: Shirley MacLaine enjoys being alone with her thoughts, and with her spotted rat terrier, Terry.
By David Weininger
The love of her solitary life: Shirley MacLaine enjoys being alone with her thoughts, and with her spotted rat terrier, Terry.
The Hollywood legend will be 77 this month and she is rich, so maybe MacLaine is telling the truth. Not that she has ever been one to mince words.
Guests have to push a few buttons for her iron gate to open. Then halfway down her long dirt driveway, MacLaine's dog, an 11-year-old rat terrier named Terry, rushes up to see who is coming to visit. She is the love of MacLaine's life.
Forget all the men. Forget all the movies and Oscar nominations. Forget all the former lives MacLaine has lived. It's all Terry now, and MacLaine appears quite happy with the situation.
Perhaps the name of her newest book, I'm Over All That: And Other Confessions (Atria, $22), hints at where she is these days. Dare we say almost mellow?
"I'm having so much fun now just being me," she says. "It's a gift."
Sitting in one of her many living rooms, one with a crackling fire and a mantel laden with awards (including her best-actress Oscar for 1983's Terms of Endearment), MacLaine rubs Terry's belly and sings the praises of her solitary life in the high desert in New Mexico.
"Just listen," she says, waving her hand through absolute silence. "You can feel it, right? I'm here alone with my thoughts ?"
And Terry, of course. As she writes in her new book, "I'd rather have a good, funny, loyal dog than a man." (More on the men of her life later.)
For more than two hours ? over a lunch of Mediterranean salad, chicken and fruit tart ? MacLaine touches on everything from vanity (she's not quite over it yet) to her past life experiences, including one as a Muslim gypsy girl centuries ago in the hills of Spain.
she says with a smile. "She's alive! She's moving! She's standing up! And Terry (her dog) comes out, of course."
"An Evening with Shirley MacLaine"
continues on these dates:
MacLaine fans are used to such tales of reincarnation, UFOs and the mysteries of the mystical world. Previous books, such as 1983's Out on a Limb, have discussed all this. But the rest of us?
When asked what people think when they hear her name, the actress quickly raises her index finger and twirls it in the air, making a high-pitched whistle as she does.
Translation: She's a nut case!
"But I don't think so much anymore. I think I have some credibility about what I think now," she says, adding that she was a few decades ahead of the curve. "Remember what people used to say about meditation? Now everyone is doing it."
She knows people make fun of her, that she's fodder for late-night comedians. She cares about only one thing: "That it's funny. I care if it lays a bomb. I'll even help them write the jokes!"
But she never strays from her quest for truth. She calls it "traveling within." She is always searching, always wondering, always in awe of the world unfolding around her.
We need to be 'receptive'
"We need proof in our society," she laments. "We're too young in this part of the world to be receptive to ancient wisdom."
MacLaine says her interest in the spiritual world began with her parents. Just before her father died, he told her they'd be able to be together more often after he died. "He was into this stuff very early on," she says. And she, of course, still is. Her newest book, for instance, touches on the fact she believes she was one of America's founding fathers, Robert Morris, in a previous life.
The idea for MacLaine's 12th book came out of a lunch with her editor, Peter Borland, after she repeatedly said, "I'm over that!"
" 'OK, you've got the title,' " he told her. " 'Now write the book.' "
And so she did. What she hopes readers come away with is a plan for "getting over things themselves." To move on.
"It's a big deal for me to say I'm over politics," says MacLaine, "because I've been active in (liberal Democratic) politics my whole life. But we have to be more spiritual, and I don't mean religion. It's not the same." She knows she also has to get over herself. One chapter is titled "I'm not over vanity, but I'm trying."
She isn't lying. MacLaine insists that photographs of her be taken with a softening filter, something USA TODAY refused to do.
"Because I'm obviously not over it!" she says when asked about the demand. "And because photographers often don't know what they're doing. Some people want to make you look bad. But I'm trying to get over it."
Also in the vanity line, she says she has had a face lift, but she warns readers never to have one during a love affair. "It's disconcerting to your partner," she writes, not divulging who the partner was at the time.
(For the record, MacLaine still looks fabulous, dressed for lunch in a pink patchwork fringed top, black slacks and black flats.)
So, how many partners has she had? She doesn't know.
"The number? I'm going to add them up?" she asks. "No. What for? Would I be interested in that?"
In her book, she mentions a number of men she had relationships with, including big-name politicians ? Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock and Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme.
One who got away was Jack Kennedy, who took her for spins in his convertible whenever he was in Los Angeles visiting the Rat Pack. "He never made a pass at me or anything," she writes. "In fact, I wondered what was wrong with me."
She makes no apologies, even confessing she had sex with three different men in one day, something she does not recommend.
"It was stupid and brought me no satisfaction," she writes.
She and her now late ex-husband, Steve Parker, to whom she was married from 1954-82, had a "liberal arrangement" when it came to their affairs. They had one daughter, Sachi, now 54.
She remains perplexed at couples who are married for 50 years or more. "When I see people in that dazed state of inertia, I just don't get it," she says.
What she does understand is acting, although she says she never took it seriously. She was good at her craft, she says, but not an artist. Those who remember her in The Apartment (1960) and The Children's Hour (1961) would likely disagree.
"I might be getting better now," says MacLaine, who starred as Coco Chanel in a 2008 TV movie based on the famed designer. "I find I get in touch with what it is now and throw her (the character) up to the universe and let her play her part. But since I don't think about it much, I don't have much respect for it (acting)."
She's also hard on Hollywood. She rues the fact the world is obsessed with celebrity, that people are famous for only going to parties or getting into trouble.
One of the best things about living in Santa Fe for MacLaine is that no one pays much attention to her. "They don't come running after you here like the paparazzi do," she says.
Most every weekend she goes down the hill for the Sunday buffet at Bishop's Lodge, taking Terry with her. And the folks in town see her around and think nothing of it. (She has another home in Malibu, Calif.)
Russell Toledo, who works at Onorato Home and Ambiance, a high-end bedding store near the town's historic plaza, is typical.
"I see her at Starbucks over at the DeVargas Mall, but that's about it," he says, shrugging his shoulders.
Kathy Dubay at Frank Howell Gallery is equally blas�. "We're used to them," she says of stars, counting off Gene Hackman, Marsha Mason, Ali MacGraw and Val Kilmer as Santa Fe residents. "Seeing a celebrity around here is not a big deal. And that's what they want."
Not like the old days when MacLaine was followed by photographers curious about her newest love interest.
She now goes to bed about 1 or 2 in the morning after watching movies, gets up about 9, does her stretching and yoga workout, then takes Terry for a "no joke" hike up and down the local canyons. Later in the morning, she works the phones for an hour or two, talking to her agent about job offers. (There's a possible movie deal in the fall, but she says she can't talk about it.)
She also writes "either four pages a day or for four hours," followed by dinner with friends. Life is good.
Spiritual retreats at her ranch
Four times a year she hosts spiritual retreats at her ranch about an hour away from Santa Fe. Over five days, as many as a dozen people work with past-life facilitators, who help them discover where they've been and where they're going. MacLaine calls it "the experience of their lifetime." She would not say what the experience costs, other than "a lot."
Not that MacLaine ever had to venture back to the past for excitement. Her present life was always more than enough. Her library houses what she calls her "Wall of Life," hundreds of photographs, hung from the ceiling to the floor, of her and her friends. All of them famous.
"I don't see any point in living it and not having records of it," she says. There's Jack Kennedy with Jimmy Durante and Marilyn Monroe. There's Sammy and Dean and Frank. Celine Dion. Bella Abzug.
There's even a photo of MacLaine sitting at then-President Carter's desk in the Oval Office. With Baryshnikov. And there's a torn white linen napkin that Frank Sinatra turned into a birthday card for her in 1992, decorating it with a drawing of a clown. "It was after the show, and we went out to eat with lots of Mob guys around," she says.
And in the middle of the wall is the Dalai Lama, looking down at her serenely. "He sent me that," she says.
Does she realize what an incredible life she's had?
"Of course I do," she says. "Are you kidding?"
So what's she going to do in her next life?
"Maybe I'll rest."
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