Catch a Wink
Susan Sarandon looks like she is channelling her inner Kathryn Hahn, who acted with her on a film called A Bad Moms Christmas (2017). Kathryn wanted her to be in the film so badly that she sent her an e-mail. It’s a sign of their bisexuality that Susan was not at all alienated when Kathryn had typed: “My ovaries really need you in this movie. I feel it.”
When John Woo made Bullet in the Head (1990), he could have chosen any Parisian actress to represent the identity of the French hitman but he chose Catherine Deneuve for a reason. In 2015, Susan Sarandon had this to say about playing a lesbian in The Hunger (1983): “Who wouldn’t want to go to bed with Catherine Deneuve?”
In 1993, Laura Linney was one of the stars of a LGBT series called Tales of the City. In 2015, Laura played the role of a sapphic novelist in a play called Switzerland. The novelist was Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the novel (The Price of Salt) that was adapted as a Todd Haynes film called Carol (2015). At the 71st Emmy Awards in September 2019, Laura hugged Jodie Comer for a long time despite losing to her. In the early noughties, Laura worked and dated Eric Stoltz - an actor who acted in the same film as Susan Sarandon i.e. Little Women (1994). One of Eric’s best friends is James Spader, who played Susan’s boyfriend in White Palace (1990). In an article about Spader for the October 1990 issue of GQ, there were a surprising number of quotes from Eric.
Spader’s first mainstream film was Endless Love (1981) where he played the brother of Brooke Shields, whose first starring role was in a film where she played Susan Sarandon’s daughter i.e. Pretty Baby (1978). When Tales of the City returned for a new season in 2019, one of the stars was someone who had the experience of working with Susan. I’m referring to Ellen Page in a film called Peacock (2010). Susan co-starred in a 2012 film, Arbitrage, where one of the characters was originally going to be played by someone who attended the same Toronto high school as Page. I’m referring to a recording artist named Drake, who dropped out of the film because he was too busy working on an album called Take Care (2011).
Like Susan Sarandon, Iris Berben has been in nude scenes since the hippy era. The above ceremony was the 50th event of its kind. In a May 2017 interview for the Los Angeles Times, Susan was reminded about her declaration about directing female-friendly p*rn in her 80s. She said: “The reason I said that was that p*rn has become so easily available on your phone, on your iPad, and kids are watching it to get an idea of what’s expected. I prefaced the conversation by saying that I’m not an expert on p*rn, but what I have seen doesn’t seem that friendly towards women. And also a lot of the acting is bad, and that always turns me off. So there must be some way in to discovering that, and I’ve had volunteers from real actors saying Well I’d be down for that.”
In an August 2021 interview for People magazine, Susan put herself on the market: “I would like to have a travel companion, male, female - age doesn’t matter, but I would like to find someone who’s up for an adventure kind of attitude. I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman. I mean, I’m open to all age, all colour. And those for me, those things are just details. But what I’m interested in is someone who wants to be adventuresome.”
Four years after the above photo, Susan and Omar were seen in a remake of Alfie (1966). In a November 2014 issue of The Daily Express, Sarandon talked about her sex scene with Gary Cole in Melissa McCarthy’s Tammy (a forgotten 2014 comedy). Referring to the fact that she was made up to look older, Susan told Stefan Kyriazis: “Gary made me feel as if I was actually desirable. That was really helpful, because I certainly wouldn’t have gotten that when I looked in the mirror. He completely, generously, from the first day made me feel like I was worth having sex with.”
Get Joseph Kuby’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
In May 2017, she told Garth Pearce for The Express: “As for ageing, it is a number and I have never given it much thought. Just get on with it and enjoy the years as much as you can. I look forward rather than back.”
Susan and Danny acted in a TV movie called The Exonerated (2005). In 2020, they could be seen in a Julia Stone music video called Dance. In the spring & summer 2013 issue (#7) of The Gentlewoman, Susan told Jina Khayyer: “I believe every film is a political film, because every one tells you what it means to be a woman, what’s funny, what the justice system is, or whatever. Some films reinforce the status quo and some films challenge it. The ones that challenge it are called political films; the ones that reinforce it are called comedies. But if you see The Nutty Professor with Eddie Murphy, that’s incredibly political. The whole audience roots for this girl to be with this fat guy. I think you have to take seriously what you’re saying in a film, and I think you have to know that you’re affecting people.”
In the below photos which were taken two years earlier, Susan and Eddie were attending a Help Haiti benefit in New York. The event was organized by The Ben Stiller Foundation and The J/P Haitian Relief Organization at the Urban Zen Center inside the Stephan Weiss Studio.
Both Susan and Eddie have starred in vampire movies. In November 2014, Susan did an interview for Vanity Fair where she told Jennifer Vineyard. Talking about her sex scene with Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983), Sarandon said: “The beginning of the sex scene was shot completely on a paint-board mixer thing so that I was jiggling all the time. That went on for an entire day, and they didn’t even use any of those shots. Like the section that was with me on a board vibrating back and forth getting my brains scrambled never made it in. That was a special-effects thing they did, and I actually think it probably wasn’t good for me to be on mixer that long, for my brain. I started to get kind of slurry afterward.”
Susan Sarandon and Morgan Freeman lent their voices to a documentary called For Love of Liberty: The Story of America’s Black Patriots (2010). Ten years earlier, Morgan attended a tribute to Susan at the Deauville Film Festival in France. In the below photo, they attended the Mandela Day celebration concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Samuel and Susan lent their voices to an animated movie called Our Friend, Martin (1999). This year, they delivered different kinds of cameos during Sabrina Carpenter’s set at Coachella i.e. Samuel was heard but not seen. In the above photo, they had attended the 15th annual Critics Choice Movie Awards held at the Hollywood Palladium.
Susan Sarandon has never gone public with a young black boyfriend like when she had a young white boyfriend i.e. a ping-pong entrepreneur by the name of Jonathan Bricklin. In March 2012, Susan told People Magazine that they had been a couple since 2010. Perhaps Susan was thinking of thinking of how old-fashioned that terminology when she said: “Dating is such a stupid word. You can say…we are collaborating in a lot of different areas.”
When it comes to ageing, they say black don’t crack (which might explain why white people are derogatively referred to as crackers). Before she turned 70 in 2016, Susan Sarandon lived up to her age by saying something sexual. In a May article for Daily Mail’s spin-off magazine, You, she said: “Sex - that’s good for your skin, right? To stay young and healthy, you need to weed out toxic things - and toxic people! Oh, and laugh and have sex - if you’re lucky enough to find that - those are really important, too.”
In the above photo, Susan and Victor Cruz were attending the FIFA 13 Launch tournament at the headquarters for the Spin ping-pong club. Victor is not an actor but a football player. He played himself in three episodes of Dwayne Johnson’s Ballers (2015).
Between Morris and Lynn, only the latter is a thespian. She had acted with Susan in Stepmom (1998) starring Julia Roberts. In April 2016, Susan played Rose Byrne’s mother in The Meddler (2015). In April 2016, both actresses were interviewed concurrently by Buzz Feed. When asked what is the one thing that they think women in their twenties should experience, Susan said sex, travel and rock & roll.
