The fire in Fiorentino

Linda Fiorentino reminded us how daring an art acting can be with her brazen, bravura performance in The Last Seduction. Now, after a decade in film, she's poised to skyrocket

In The Last Seduction Linda Fiorentino plays a woman as virulently evil as any the cinema has invented in recent years. But Fiorentino goes unacknowledged by the Academy Awards this month because John Dahl's baleful neonoir premiered on HBO, rendering her ineligible for an Oscar nod. That's the official reason, but would Fiorentino have been nominated anyway? Academy voters are more likely to cozy up to a Nell or an Amy March than an unrepentant castratrix like Bridget Gregory. America - at least white, male America - is terrified by those of its daughters who turn out malignantly sexy, but it cannot get enough of them. If Fiorentino made Bridget triumphantly flesh, she also made her flesh crawling - a vulgar, callous phantom of tormented male desire harking back iconographically to the great Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945).

Bridget was admired by some observers for coming on like an unscrupulous, sexually aggressive man. Yet that undermines the bitter femininity and, indeed, the fell feminist intent of Fiorentino's unimprovable performance. It has deservedly brought her the long-awaited stardom that was promised by her portrayals of the S&M sculptress in Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) and the ripe, satin art groupie in Alan Rudolph's The Moderns (1988). It has also brought her a plum part as the wealthy psychiatrist who doubles as an especially gifted hooker in William Friedkin's Jade. This upcoming thriller, written by Joe Eszterhas, co-stars David Caruso and Chazz Palminteri, and we chose the latter to telephone the thirty-four-year-old actress in San Francisco one morning in January, just before he flew up from L.A. to rejoin her on the set.

CHAZZ PALMINTERI: Linda?

LINDA FIORENTINO: Chazz? What are you doing?

CP: Well, I was going to work out before this, but I decided not to.

LF: You know you have to shoot tomorrow.

CP: Tomorrow? Get outta here. Linda, don't do that to me. [LF laughs] Don't fool around like that. You know that's an Achilles' heel for an actor. You're not shooting until when - Sunday?

LF: Saturday. I'm an actor-in-waiting. It didn't rain today, so I didn't have to work. Why don't you have to sit around and wait until it rains?

CP: I don't know, but that's why I was able to come to L.A. Anyway, let's talk about you.

LF: Oh yeah, let's talk about me.

CP: I just have to speak for all the men on this planet. When I say, "I'm working with Linda Fiorentino from The Last Seduction," they go, "Oh God! The fence!" [A reference to the most acrobatic of the film's sex scenes, in which one of Bridget Gregory's conquests, played by Peter Berg, is pinned and mounted against a chain-link security fence.] I just hear the words "the fence" and I laugh. Now did that scene happen spontaneously? Was it planned, or did you just throw your legs up there?

LF: It was really funny, because the role reversal that happens in the film was actually happening on the set. Peter Berg was very concerned about the scene being pornographic and he spent hours talking to John Dahl [the director] about how he was going to shoot it. Usually it's the woman who's doing that. Finally, I got sick of them arguing about it and I just threw Peter against the fence. Then I climbed on him and said, "Let's shoot!" [laughs] And that's how it happened. It wasn't written that way. In fact, a lot of the stuff in the movie wasn't written the way it was filmed. I have to credit John with that because he allowed us to choreograph the sex scenes.

CP: Maybe that's a secret passion of men: They want to be thrown up against a fence.

LF: Hmmm. See, men like the fence scene. Women like the hospital scene [in which Bridget, the survivor of a fatal accident of her own devising, coyly deflects the police].

CP: Oh, that was great. [LF laughs] After I saw the film, I said, "My God, she's doing it again. How come this person is not a major star?" I mean that sincerely. But I knew nothing in the world could possibly stop you this time. I don't think anyone has ever taken the femme fatale that far.

LF: That's what's so interesting about it all. I don't feel like I did anything that I hadn't done before as an actor - it's just that I had a director who let me do it a lot.

CP: I think you're going to see more women showing that kind of incredible, dangerous power on the screen. Do you think that's good?

LF: It's funny, because I never saw that character as a role model for little girls. But I've had women come up to me and say, "I saw your movie and I've been walking around like a bitch ever since, and I'm driving my boyfriend crazy. It makes me feel really strong and really great." [CP laughs] So I guess if it does that for people - meek secretaries who go home and throw their boyfriends up against a wall - then l guess it serves its purpose in that respect. [laughs]