‘No matter what you think, that he's guilty or deserves it or anything, it's still such a strange, strange thing to have such a cold countdown to a man being killed. ‘I consider myself religious but not in an institutionalised way. The Catholic church angers me so much. I've seen it be a very positive force in Latin American countries but I just think there are too many doctrines that are negative and divisive and it stands on a lot of things that are not practical to me. When I was little I was accused by the nuns of having an overabundance of original sin for asking questions that shouldn't have been asked. ‘We were given a lecture in third grade about how no one is really married unless they are married in the Catholic church. And I said:'' Well, how could Joseph and Mary be married?''. ‘' Out in the hall''. I wasn't trying to be a trouble maker.It was just an innocent question.' The age of innocence has gone but time and genetics have been kind. She will be 50 in October but remains knockout gorgeous (‘Playboy' are still asking her to pose naked) and is not afraid of it:' I love my sexuality and I've always been aware of it.' So have the men behind the moving cameras. In her first film scene in ‘Joe' in 1970 she appeared nude in a bathtub. For director Louis Malle, her onetime lover who died last year, she went topless in ‘Pretty Baby' (playing Brooke Shields' prostitute mother) and also in his marvellous ‘ Atlantic City '. She won her first Oscar nomination as the card dealer who in a memorable scene Burt Lancaster watches as she washes her upper body with lemons. A magazine once voted her as having ‘ the celebrity breasts of summer' but she argued:' I think my breasts are slightly over-rated. And less exposed than some.' They're splendid. She's modest.But she's not silly. She knows her appeal:' I think it would be great to redefine sex so it would be all right to be sexual and smart. I think that is part of my appeal, that I'm also intelligent. ‘It's a shame that Hollywood has a tendency to put all the sluts in one corner and all the ice queens in another. It would be great if you could find an in between space. In most films women are there because of their ability to suffer, to help the man through. I think that's changing. ‘I think people can now accept women who are strong and have a sense of humour. The nudity? I don't know anyone who is comfortable doing nude scenes. Nudity, no matter how many times you do it, is devastating. In ‘'Pretty Baby'' I had to act blase about taking off my top and brushing powder from my nipple. Well, my mouth was dry and I was shaking. But, as I said to Brooke, it's kind of hard playing a whore and walking around with a sheet pasted to your breasts like Doris Day. These scenes for Louis were considered breakthrough erotic scenes.' Hollywood and moviegoers were intrigued by the combination of sexuality and brains. Sarandon's style is seasoned by her lack of inhibition, a belief that we all should be free spirits. The former Susan Tomalin, eldest of nine children in a Catholic family, product of middle class New Jersey, she says she was ‘shy, sheltered and not the least rebellious'. It's was all a fluke that she even became an actress. Her former husband Chris Sarandon wanted to be an actor. Students at a Washington university they met, graduated, married and went to a New York talent agency together.
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