Role Recall: Susan Sarandon

Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon sat down with Yahoo Entertainment to chat about her impressive resume as a part of our "Role Recall" series. Watch to hear Sarandon reminisce about her work on films, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Bull Durham," and "Thelma & Louise."

Video Transcript

SUSAN SARANDON: We were working two places with the Rocky Horror Show. One was the Bray Studios, and one was an old house that had no roof. And so it was actually snowing and raining in the house, and for some reason, there was no heat in the studio. So I had pneumonia, because I was obviously hardly dressed through a lot of it, and damp. And so they-- the doctor came, and he said, well, I really shouldn't go back to work, because I was-- had walking pneumonia. And what they could do was either put me in a hot bath or, you know, warm me up in between each thing. And they thought, you know, here's the American diva. They weren't very happy to hear any of that.

And so what they did do was they created a screen that they put space heaters in, so there was one warm place to go. And everybody went in there, and then it went up in flames, and that was the end of that. That was-- that was hard. But it looks like we're having fun, right? It seems like we're having fun.

Yeah, it was Tony Scott's first film. People were, at that time, very offended that I was doing a love scene with Catherine Deneuve. That was a shocker at that time. One of the things that happened that was awful, we had to do some pickups in a garage in New York as a stage. And Catherine and I were on the ground, and the guy whose garage it was came in with a gun and wanted more money, and then told-- and they-- and Tony got, was like a little Bantam cock. You know, he got really upset, and he wasn't going to pay them any more money. So then they-- they were putting the door down of the garage to keep all the equipment-- they didn't care about us-- but the equipment hostage.

And so someone shoved a ladder under the door that was coming down, the metal door, and they were trying to get things out, and he got into a fight. And I remember Catherine and I were kissing. All of a sudden it was very bright, and we were like, what is going on? It was like you were getting busted for some kind of terrible sex act.

JOURNALIST: Roger Ebert said no one else could have played Annie Savoy.

SUSAN SARANDON: Well, actually the studio thought everybody but me could have played Annie Savoy. I was at the bottom of the list, but everybody else turned it down, because they didn't want to read. And Ron Shelton, who at that time was a first time director, felt that he wanted Kevin to read with everybody, and read a lot. And I was living in Italy at the time and flew myself over. Paid for my trip. I had a small child, so as soon as I got there, I did read the entire script with Kevin, turned around, got back on the plane, and like a day later, they told me that I had gotten it, that in fact I was some kind of consolation prize in terms of the part. So maybe after the fact, Roger Ebert thought that, but nobody thought that in the beginning.

We were two gals in the middle of what was basically like a cowboy movie. And we didn't understand that it was going to be taken as any kind of iconic movie. Ridley took this little thing and placed it in this heroic landscape.

BRAD PITT: Ladies, gentlemen, let's see who wins the prize for keeping their cool. Simon says, everybody down on the floor.

SUSAN SARANDON: I remember thinking he was darling. And you know, they spent a lot of time on that love scene. I remember a lot of time on the love scene. And Gina tells it that Ridley was personally oiling him down, and he got much more attention than she did. But when I saw the movie, I thought that all of his stuff in the police department is where you really saw that Brad was something really special.

GEENA DAVIS: Let's not get caught.

SUSAN SARANDON: What are you talking about?

We did the end of the movie actually in like one take, because we spent the whole day doing helicopter shots and all the other stuff that had to happen on the last day of shooting. And I-- we had one take, and I just told Ridley I'm going to grab her and kiss her if that's, you know, and he said OK.

I found that book. I brought it to Tim. He wasn't really interested. He had a different movie. And we waited for about a year, and then I finally just had a meltdown and said, you know, if you're not going to do this, I'm going to take it to somebody else. And then he reluctantly started to work on the script, but he still wanted to do "Cradle Will Rock," which was the movie that he did after it.

JOURNALIST: People wouldn't normally think of you to play a nun, and then you won an Oscar for it.

SUSAN SARANDON: Hollywood doesn't really encourage people trying different things. You know, when I did pretty baby, then everyone sent me prostitutes. Then I did a nun. Everyone sent me nuns. I never sung before when I did Rocky Horror Show. I don't know. I try not to repeat myself. I have-- I play a one-legged alcoholic, pill-popping person in one that's coming out in the fall, and another alcoholic pill-popping person also at the end of August in a cop movie. So I'm kind of gone from my dying-and-helping-people-die period to now being an alcoholic substance abuser. And it's more fun, for sure.

THEME: Yahoo!