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Salman Rushdie, Thespian?
April 15, 2008

Last week my colleague Mike Rogers blogged about actors playing writers, citing some of his favorite performances. (My own pick, by the way, is Mary Steenbergen  as Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in Cross Creek,  the 1983 film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winner's  memoir.) His post got me to musing: about writers who act. Playing themselves doesn't count. They have to perform as characters other than themselves to be considered a true actor. The only name that sprang immediately to mind was William Shakespeare.

But then last Tuesday I went to an advance screening of  Then She Found Me, Helen Hunt's adaptation (and her directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman's 1990 novel, starring Hunt, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick. Probably the biggest sight gag in the movie is novelist Salman Rushdie as Dr. Masini,  Hunt's gynecologist who performs several sonograms on Hunt's character.
 
In the question-and-answer period following the screening, author Lipman explained that Rushdie had actually auditioned for the part (director Hunt thought it was strange enough to be a good idea) , and that when he told his editor he had been cast over his competition, she teasingly asked: "Who? Philip Roth? John Updike?" The film opens April 25 so you can judge for yourself whether Rushdie should pursue a new career or stick to his writing gig. Interestingly, Rushdie appeared in another film with Colin Firth, Bridget Jones's Diary, in which the novelist played himself at a book party.

Posted by Wilda Williams on April 15, 2008 | Comments (0)