FFWD Weekly
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Film by Cynthia Amsden Black & White starring Brooke Shields, Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller directed by James Toback opens Wednesday, April 5 During the last Toronto Film Festival, Claudia Schiffer was bubble-wrapped and imported to promote the new James Toback film, Black & White. While the film is a message movie – one of edgy mall sentimentality – it is also stacked with names that, in and of themselves, would pack a theatre regardless of the plot: Brooke Shields, Robert Downey Jr. (pre-prison), Marla Maples, Ben Stiller, Mike Tyson, Power and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan, and oh, yes, Claudia Schiffer. It’s like watching Vanity Fair, Vogue, Vibe and The National Enquirer come to life. Set in Manhattan, the story follows a group of uptown white youths who would rather be black and downtown. Add a documentary filmmaker (Shields) and her husband (Downey, Jr.) who want to know why, so they inveigle themselves into the hip hop world of a band confronting white business politics. Schiffer plays the girlfriend of Rich Bower (Power), who is trying to leave crime and move into a legitimate existence. Schiffer has fielded 33 interviews on this publicity tour – 31 have been with men. She has seen a lot of drooling by the time I reach her. While you’d expect to see a woman who embodies Ginger from Gilligan’s Island, Schiffer is much more a Mary Ann. Born in Rheinbach, Germany, she could carry off pigtails as easily as a Chanel gown (given that it was the fan-toting Karl Lagerfeld – god of all that is Chanel – who discovered her back in the 1990s). On the day I meet her, she is all loose blonde hair, blue eyes and fluffy pastel sweater with jeans. What exactly does one say to a supermodel? Based on FashionTV’s Jeanne Bekker’s interviews, not much. But Schiffer is the embodiment of earnestness and good will. She claims B&W is her fifth film, but a quick check of her filmography shows she has 12 under her little snakeskin belt – which is wrapped around what may well be a 17-inch waist (but that’s just an estimate). With her hint-o’-Rhineland accent, she explains that in spite of liking to make films, she has been strenuously counselled against doing them. "Many of my advisors do say that what I’m doing right now, with the acting, is completely crazy, that I’m taking big risks and I might be destroying something that I’ve built up." It can’t be easy – being beautiful, that is. You know you’re banking on your looks, which, out of spite, will fade when you least expect it. Claudia knows she is a commodity of slowly diminishing value on the open market. "The safe way would be if I just stayed where I am, which is in fashion, and continue that way like Lauren Hutton or Isabella Rossellini have been doing, not taking any risks by trying myself out in a field that I could be hurt in or could be criticized in." But she is approaching 30 years old and she’s been in front of the camera for one third of her life. This kind of high wattage exposure has to have a psyche-rotting effect on one’s personality. In her case, it did. She claims to dislike being the centre of attention. Nice answer. Pat answer. Hollow answer. People in the modeling/acting profession might be shy, but they never claim, in so many words, to dislike being there. Then a more believable answer comes out. "The one thing that makes me able to perform is makeup. It’s not me any more. It’s a mask. It also comes from my being the kind of person who turns red easily. I blush and when you have makeup on, nobody notices that. You can completely hide your own feelings. I’ve always blushed and it’s terrible because everybody knows what I’m feeling at that moment." Ah! So, being the centre of attention isn’t so bad as long as you aren’t wearing your heart on your sleeve like a wet, red stain. This makes sense. So does her method for acting, which is also her motivation for acting. The quiet. "If you can manage to get the noise out of your head when you are acting, then you can be really good," she says. "If I listen to everything else that goes on in the world, I cannot get the noise out of my mind when I am on set. "I am so lucky that I can allow myself to have an assistant and an office and I can say, ‘OK, you make all the decisions right now, I don’t want to hear anything about what’s going on so I’ll be able to concentrate on my character and what I’m doing.’ I don’t want to be reminded of who I am."

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