Trivia / Susan Sarandon

• Approval of God: Sister Helen Prejean was happy that Susan played her in Dead Man Walking.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • She did The Client because she had never done a legal thriller before.
  • She and Julia Roberts did Stepmom because they had both been looking for a film to work on together.
• Cast the Runner-Up: She was cast as Alexandra in The Witches of Eastwick, but then Cher wanted that role, so she arrived on set to find that she was now playing Jane.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Callie Khouri wrote Louise Sawyer of Thelma & Louise with her in mind. It took so long to find a Thelma however that she signed a contract saying she would play that role if they couldn't find someone suitable.
• Dawson Casting: In her first film Joe, she was twenty-three playing a sixteen-year-old.
• Enforced Method Acting: She actually slapped the eleven-year-old Brooke Shields for the scene in Pretty Baby where Hattie tries to make Violet leave the brothel.
• Fake Russian: She puts on a Russian accent for her role as the ballet teacher in The Simpsons "Homer vs Patty & Selma".
• Meta Casting: Marmee in Little Women (1994) is given a bit of an Adaptation Personality Change that more closely resembles Susan's real life activist and outspoken feminist public persona.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Her daughter Eva Amurri plays her co-star in the Soap Within a Show she stars in a guest spot in Friends.
  • She also plays her as a child in Dead Man Walking.
• Romance on the Set: She and Barry Bostwick were dating while filming The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• Star-Making Role: While she had been a respected indie and character actress, she didn't truly become a household name until Bull Durham.
• Wag the Director:
  • Janet was supposed to appear fully nude during the "Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me" number in Rocky Horror, but she opted not to.
  • The sex scene in The Hunger was scripted to have Miriam drugging Sarah, but Susan protested, saying that no one would need to be drugged to sleep with Catherine Deneuve.
  • Anywhere But Here originally contained a sex scene for Ann, but she requested it be taken out to spare the young Natalie Portman having to film such a scene.
  • Louise of Thelma & Louise was also scripted to have sex with Jimmy in their motel room. Susan felt that Louise wouldn't be in the mood for it at that moment in time and insisted that if it had to be in the film, she should back out.
• What Could Have Been:
  • She wasn't even auditioning for Rocky Horror, and just stopped by the set to say hi to Tim Curry. The producers then offered the role of Janet to her, saying none of the actresses they'd auditioned could make her funny. She turned it down, saying she wasn't a singer, but they convinced her anyway. She says it was a "lucky fluke".
  • She turned down offers to pose for Playboy twenty-five times.
  • She had been attached to several Bette Davis biopics for years before finally playing her in the series Feud.