Farrah: Nude Scene in Dr. T Was Worth It
October 13 -- When Farrah Fawcett shows up in Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women as Richard Gere's mentally ill wife, a few filmgoers may feel that it's a case of art imitating real life, given Fawcett's well-publicized flaky behavior of recent years.
But as an anything-but-ditzy Fawcett proved during a September interview in a Manhattan, N.Y., Park Avenue hotel, that's on-screen, not in real life.
The 53-year-old actress was so eager to work with the unconventional Altman, whose 40-year career includes classics like Nashville, The Player, and M*A*S*H, that filming schedules were rearranged. That was just the start.
"She probably spent as much on a chartered plane to get to Dallas to film her part as we paid her," Altman says.
"When the offer came in to my agents," Fawcett explains, "they said I wasn't available because I was starting another film [TNT TV movie Baby]. I said, 'Pick up the phone. I cannot believe this was the one time Robert Altman calls. I'd do anything to work with this man.'"
Fortunately, Baby's producer was Glenn Close, who had worked with Altman on Cookie's Fortune and was eager to see Fawcett do both roles.
But the logistics weren't that simple: Besides shuffling back and forth between the Baby shoot in Nova Scotia and Dr. T in Texas, there was also the matter of Fawcett's hair color. In the TNT movie, her character is a brunette, but as Gere's ditzy wife, she had to be her usual blond.
So Fawcett finished a full day's work on Baby and boarded her chartered jet, where a team immediately began to transform her into a Texas blonde.
"When I arrived for night shooting, I was blond. Then, the minute at 5 a.m. when I'm back on the plane, I did my hair back to brown. But I only did that twice."
Fawcett had flown in to film a breakdown scene in a mall where she completely strips.
"I think it was gutsy," concedes the actress, who, just three years ago, indulged in nude body painting in Farrah Fawcett: All of Me. "[It was] hard but [it would have been] so much harder to do it if it wasn't justified.
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