Talia Shire: No Longer the Kid Sister

Judy Klemesrud
Nov. 22, 1976 - The New York Times

For years, Talia Shire's main claim to fame in movie, circles was that she was Francis Ford Coppola's sister. Even the Academy Award nomination she got in 1975 for playing the part of Connie Corleone, Al Pacino's headstrong, sluttish sister in Mr. Coppola's “The Godfather, Part II,” didn't help erase from some minds the notion that she was just a big director's little sister.

Those days are probably gone. The reason is “Rocky, a John Avildsen film that opened here yesterday about an aging, down‐and‐out boxer (played by Sylvester Stallone) who almost becomes world champion. Miss Shire is so convincing as Adrian; the hero's Painfully shy girlfriend, that from now on she will be thought of in terms of her talent, rather than her brother.

“I've even thought about changing my name back to Copppla,” the sloeeyed, 29‐year‐old actress said the other day insuite her brother owns in the Sherry‐Netherland Hotel. “I used to use it but then Francis got famous, and I didn't want to seen, like I was trying to cash in on his fame. But now I don't think he would mind. And besides, I think a woman should keep soniething of her own.”

Ugly Duckling Transformed

Miss Shire, who is married to David Shire, the Hollywood composer, plays Adrian in a manner reminiscent of the schoolteacher role Betsy Blair played in “Marty.” Adrian is a plain, bespectacled, 34‐year‐old pet‐shop salesclerk who lives with her brother and has seemingly never had a date, Bill after meeting Rocky, she tosses aside her glasses, fixes herself up and turns into a beautiful swan.

“It's the best part I've ever had,” Miss Shire said, looking like a schoolgirl in a white shirt, and argyle plaid sweater vest worn over a wool plaid culotte. “Whenever you see a transformation or a metamorphosis, when people go from here to there, it's exciting to play, because people like to watch change.”

Miss Shire said that in preparing for the role of Adrian, she worked mostly on the “outer statement,” meaning how she thought the character should look. She bought a pair of old‐fashioned glasses (with her own prescription in theM; she is very nearsighted); dug up some stained sweaters from her own wardrobe, and bought a tacky gray wool stocking cap from a bargain basement.

“Everything about Adrian was mousy and lower class, although sensitive,” she said. “I felt she was the kind of girl who prObably would not make it through high school. You see those women all around you: they go from being young to old with no middle age. They take care of their mothers or their brothers or their cats —or nothing.”

Miss Shire bristled a hit when it was suggested that she got the part in ‘“Rocky” because of her brother. “I got it because I was called to audition, and 1 went in and gave the best reading I had ever given in my life,” she said. “Normally, I'm really bad at readings. But for the first time I went in there, and I was a little bold. I had just had bahy—he was six weeks old—and he was very sick after he was born, and I had spent a lot of time in the hospital, and all that Hollywood stuff, that career stuff, had been cleaned out of me. So I thought, ‘So what if I'm rejected? It really doesn't matter.'”

The actress said she had been almost as shy as Adrian when she was growing up in Lake Success, L.I. and attending Great Neck South High School. “I was painfully shy,” she recalled. “Whenever someone looked at me, it felt like an energy impact. My physical body would feel it! Sometimes when I thought I was going to be late for school, I hid in the.basement all day. I still cannot walk into a room if I am late.”

Her other memories of Lake Success, she said, were of growing up as the only daughter in a male‐dominated Italian‐American household; of being poor and going to school in Miles shoes: of being terrified of Roman Catholic schools, and of getting a strange pleasure out of self‐denial.

“I used to go alone to the Radio City Music Hall at Christmas time,” she said with a strange smile. “I'd stand and wait in those long lines, and then when I finally got to the ticket booth, I'd turn around and go to the end of the line again. There's a real thrill in denial. My whole life has been that way.”

And that's why, she said, she could never bring herself to tell her brother Francis, now 36, that she seriously wanted to be an actress. “Everyone wanted something from him,” she said. “I didn't want to hurt my relationship with him, which was tender and complex because I was the girl in the family and a lot of my own creative desires had to be routed behind those of the males in the family. So I entered into a position where I said I didn't want to he an actress, and didn't want anything from him. So I was kind of unmotivated as an actress, unaggressive and unassuming, and nobody ever knew I was serious about it.”

Then one day she summoned up enough nerve to tell him she'd like to try for a part in the first film of “The Godfather.” He said no. “He was not a secure power at that time,” she said, “and he was very young. And I think maybe he was scared for me. What if I was no good? And I think he saw Connie Corleone as kind of a maid. I certainly didn't see her that way.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Coppola went off to Britain and Miss Shire was called to do a screen test for “The Godfather” for Robert Evans and Mario Puzo. By then, she was using the name Talia Shire. “Evans chose me,” she said excitedly, “and when Francis found out, he was scared that I'd fail. He was under enough pressures already.”

But, she didn't fail, and she went en to appear also in “The Godfather, Part II,” for which she was nominated for best supporting actress. An hour after the nominations had been announced, she learned she was pregnant with Matthew Orlando, now 14 months.

“You know, Francis never did say anything about my Oscar nomination,” she said matter‐of‐factly. “But he did say, ‘Congratulations on your pregnancy.’ That's just the way he is. He thinks women should stay home and have babies. He's never told me to this day whether he thinks I can act. My sisterin‐law will say, ‘Francis says you have some abilities,’ but he just can't say it.”

Miss Shire, “Tally” to her family, is the youngest of three children of Carmine Coppola, the arranger‐conductor who won an Oscar for his score for “The Godfather, Part II.” The other son is August, 40, a former professor of comparative literature at the California State University's Long Beach College. He is now writing a novel.

After having been raised by composer, Miss Shire was also married to one, six years ago. She and her husband and young son live in Sherman Oaks, Calif. The curly‐haired, 38‐Yearold Mr. Shire composed the music for such films as “The Conversation,” “The Taking of Pelham 1‐2‐3” and “All the President's Men.”

Met at a Hollywood Party

The Shires met at a party in Hollywood, where Miss Shire, then known as Talia Coppola, had moved after two years at the Yale School of Drama. She quickly appeared in a string of forgettable movies, including “The Dunwich Horror,” “Gas‐S‐S” and “The Christian Licorice Store.” She recently played Theresa, the tarty wife of ‐Tom (Nick Nolte) in the ABC‐TV novel‐fortelevision, “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

Do the Shires’ careers ever conflict? “No,” she replied. “My career does not dominate the house. You could walk in and not see anything to indicate that I was in the acting business. Growing up the way I did, I was prepared for marriage and to live anonymously. I learned not to have the focus on me.”

Still, Miss Shire sounds like a closet feminist at times. Right now, for example, she is working on a comedy script for Roger Corman, the producer‐who gave her brother his start, about an actress who kidnaps several big male stars because she thinks that's the only way she can get any good movie parts.

“Eventually, I'd like to direct,” she said, “and then I'd like to get to a certain position where I could help other women get going. There are so few good roles for women today, and the only way that's going to change is if women start writing and directing. You know, I'd like to head a studio and be a moguless, in the most positive sense.”

And what would Francis Ford Comola say about that?

“Make me my breakfast!” she said, laughing.

NB: L'articolo intitolato "Talia Shire: No Longer the Kid Sister" è stato pubblicato lunedì 22 novembre 1976 sul quotidiano The New York Times (a pagina 63, all'interno dell'inserto speciale Westchester Weekly).

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