What the Hell Happened to Rebecca De Mornay?

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Posted by lebeau

Rebecca De Mornay starred opposite Tom Cruise when they were both young actors on the rise. Cruise went on to star in Top Gun and became the biggest movie star in the world. De Mornay, on the other hand, struggled to capitalize on her early success.

What the hell happened?

In 1982, De Mornay was an extra in Francis Ford Coppola’s musical, One From the Heart.

One From the Heart starred Terri Garr and Raul Julia. Coppola had intended to make One From the Heart on the cheap after going over budget on Apocalypse Now. Instead, he insisted on building costly sets which caused the budget to balloon from $2 million to over $25 million.

Unfortunately, One From the Heart grossed just over half a million dollars. As a result, Coppola declared bankruptcy. He has said that the movies he made in the 80′s and 90′s were done to pay off the debts incurred by making One From the Heart.

In 1983, De Mornay starred opposite a young unknown, Tom Cruise in the sex comedy, Risky Business.

Cruise played an over-achieving high school student trying to get into Princeton. When his parents leave him home alone for the weekend, Cruise’s character engages in a little rebellion by raiding the liquor cabinet, cranking up the stereo and dancing around in his underwear.

But his best friend is unimpressed. He takes it upon himself to call a prostitute for Joel against his wishes. Soon, his carefully planned future is turned upside down by one night with a call girl played by De Mornay.

Up until this point, Cruise was just one of the up-and-coming Brat Pack actors. He hung out with the rest of the guys while making The Outsiders. But once he was cast in Risky Business, Cruise knew there were bigger and better things in his future.

I have often said that Cruise rarely has chemistry with his leading ladies. De Mornay in Risky Business was one of the exceptions. The co-stars also dated in real life.

Reviews were positive and Risky Business was a big hit at the box office. It made Cruise a star if not yet a household name. And it put De Mornay on the map. All she needed to do was find the right role to put her over the top.

Later that year, De Mornay appeared opposite Kevin Costner in the Cold War drama, Testament..

If you grew up in the 80′s you remember the being afraid of nuclear war. A month before Testament was released, the TV mini-series The Day After aired on ABC. Both the movie and the mini-series depicted the fall-out from a nuclear war.

The English counterpart to Testament and The Day After was a TV movie called Threads. As much as The Day After scared the hell out of me as a kid, Threads sounds so much scarier.

De Mornay’s role in Testament was a small one. She and Costner played a young couple who decide to leave town after losing their baby.

Testament was originally filmed as a an entry for the PBS TV series, American Playhouse. It received a small theatrical release before eventually airing on PBS. Reviews were mostly positive.

In 1985. De Mornay had three at-bats. The first was the Neil Simon written baseball comedy, The Slugger’s Wife.

De Mornay played a singer who fell in love with a baseball player played by Danny Noonan (aka Michael O’Keefe who apparently continued working after Caddyshack). Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back and hits a home run. Sound familiar.

Reviews were terrible and the movie flopped at the box office. It was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Song “Oh Jimmy” sung by De Mornay. How awful was “Oh Jimmy”? You be the judge.

I only made it half way through.

Director Hal Ashby was canned during post-production. He encouraged his actors to improvise which did not sit well with the famous playwright.

Later that year, De Mornay appeared opposite Jon Voight and Eric Roberts in the thriller Runaway Train.

Voight and Roberts starred as two men who had escaped from an Alaskan prison. They board a train which has no brakes and no driver. De Mornay played a railway worker who helps them try to stop the runaway engine.

Originally, Tom Berenger was cast in the Eric Roberts role. But when Berenger dropped out to film Platoon, Roberts stepped in. De Mornay replaced Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Animal House.

Reviews were positive and the movie was a hit at the box office. Voight and Roberts were both nominated for Oscars. There wasn’t a lot of glory left over for De Mornay.

De Mornay ended the year with a supporting role opposite Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful,

Page played an elderly woman who wants to return to her home town. Her son and daughter-in-law won’t let her travel alone. She attempts to travel by train, but the train no longer runs to Bountiful. Which is probably just as well given De Mornay’s history with trains. Instead, she boards a bus where she meets a young woman played by De Mornay.

The Trip to Bountiful was a big screen adaptation of a 1953 teleplay. Page won an Oscar for her performance.

In 1985, De Mornay starred in one critical and commercial disaster and had supporting roles in two well-reviewed hits. Oh, and she did this too:

One could say storms were brewin’ in her eyes.

What’s up with the old timey black and white footage and the tornado? If someone could explain the story of Starship’s Sara video to me in the comments section, it would be greatly appreciated. So far all I can figure out is that De Mornay gets drunk and knocks over lamps while attempting to dance 80′s style.

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In 1986, De Mornay turned to television. She played Slew Foot Sue opposite Steve Guttenberg’s Pecos Bill on Shelly Duvall’s cable TV series Tall Tales and Legends. Martin Mull sure does look happy to be a singing cowboy in a purple hat.

She also appeared opposite George C Scott and Val Kilmer in a TV adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

It wouldn’t be a What the Hell Happened article without an appearance by Val Kilmer.

In 1987, De Mornay returned to the big screen for a musical version of Beauty and the Beast.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t Disney’s musical adaptation of a classic fairy tale. It was a production of Canon Films who were best known for their low-budget action movies.

Not exactly a tale as old as time. This Beauty received beastly reviews and disappeared quickly from screens.

In 1988, De Mornay starred in a remake of the 1956 film Et Dieu… créa la femme which translates to And God Created Woman. Both the original and the remake were directed by Roger Vadim.

Before we look at the ’88 remake, here’s the trailer for the ’56 original.

Bardot? Don’t get me wrong, I like De Mornay. She was plenty sexy in Risky Business. But there is only one Bardot.

So, how did De Mornay fill the legend’s shoes?

Not well. Reviews were terrible and the movie flopped. De Mornay was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress. And Vincent Spano was forgotten for all time.

Later that year, De Mornay starred opposite Mary Gross in the action comedy Feds.

Who is Mary Gross you ask? She’s one of the many Saturday Night Live alum who never ,made the transition to movie stardom. Uh-oh. That doesn’t bode well for Feds, does it?

The critics hated Feds and the movie bombed at the box office ending Gross’ movie career before it started.

In 1989, De Mornay starred in the British film, Dealers.

Reviews were mixed. Dealers played at film festivals in the US, but was never released theatrically. De Mornay’s film career appeared to be over.

In 1991, De Mornay starred opposite Jason Robards in a TV movie based on Dominick Dunne’s novel, An Inconvenient Woman.

De Mornay played a waitress who has an affair with a rich and powerful older man.

Later that year, De Mornay starred opposite Kurt Russell in Ron Howard’s tribute to firefighters, Backdraft.

De Mornay played Russell’s devoted wife. Co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh complained about her similarly thankless role as William Baldwin’s girlfriend.

The star-studded cast also included Scott Glenn, Donald Sutherland and Robert De Niro. Reviews were mosty positive and the movie was a hit at the box office.

In 1992, De Mornay followed up Backdraft with a starring role in Curtis Hanson’s thriller, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

De Mornay played a crazy nanny who tries to kill Annabella Sciorra and steal her life. She’s kind of a cross between Mary Poppins and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Also, she threatens Winston from Ghostbusters.

In a lot of ways, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was just another 90′s thriller with a title that’s way too long. But director Curtis Hanson showed promise of the film-maker her would become with LA Confidential.

Reviews were mixed to positive. But the movie was a big hit at the box office. With two hits in a row, De Mornay was back in business. All she needed now was to cement her A-list status with another solid hit.

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Instead, De Mornay decided to kill her comeback in its infancy by starring opposite Don Johnson in Sidney Lumet’s courtroom drama, Guilty as Sin.

If that title doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the movie, here’s the trailer.

Look, Melanie Griffith had to make movies with Don Johnson. She was married to him. But De Mornay should have known better. Reviews were mostly negative and the movie tanked at the box office.

Later that year, De Mornay appeared opposite Time Curry in Disney’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

Disney’s approach to adapting a literary classic was to hire the director of The Might Ducks and the cast of Young Guns, The Musketeers were played by Kieffer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Chris O’Donnell and Oliver Platt.

There were several casting changes made prior to filming. Sheen changed roles due to a schedule conflict. Pretty much any young actor who was hot at the time was at least considered for a role. The role of the villainous Milady De Winter was originally supposed to be played by Winona Ryder. But when Ryder dropped out, De Mornay was cast.

Reviews were mostly negative. The film disappointed at the box office despite making a small profit.

In 1995, De Mornay starred opposite Mr. “Too Sexy” Antonio Banderas in the thriller Never Talk to Strangers.

God help me, I think I watched this one in the theater.

De Mornay plays a psychologist who is reluctant to trust her sexy new boyfriend. Is he a psychopath or is something far more ridiculous going on? Spoilers – it’s the latter. Turns out De Mornay’s character has multiple personality disorder and is stalking herself.

De Mornay got a producer credit on this one. So she is at least partially to blame for this shit sandwich ever being made in the first place. Reviews were terrible and the movie flopped. This effectively ended De Mornay’s mainstream movie career.

Fortunately, she still had TV to fall back on. Later that year, De Mornay appeared on an episode of The Outer Limits.

In 1996, De Mornay starred opposite Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael Madsen, Billy Bob Thornton and Delroy Lindo in the quirky indie, The Winner.

D’Onofrio played a naive guy who hits a lucky streak in Vegas. De Mornay played a lounge singer who seduces him and tries to con him out of his winnings.

Great cast, right? Sounds like it could be a lost gem of the 90s indie film scene? Not so much. It’s actually another one of those Tarantino rip-offs from that era. De Mornay was once again a producer on the film. She and the other producers had the film re-edited against the director’s wishes. Alex Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, asked to have his name removed from the film.

In 1997, De Mornay starred opposite that guy from Wings in the TV miniseries version of Stephen King’s The Shining.

King famously hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel. But everyone else famously loved it. Admittedly, Kubrick took a few liberties with the source material. So someone decided it would be a good idea to make a more faithful adaptation for TV.

The miniseries is almost painfully true to the book. And yes, Wendy Torrance in the book is a hot blonde like De Mornay and not so much like Shelley Duvall. However, anyone who has seen a few adaptations of King’s works knows that faithfulness is not always a good thing. Some of King’s writing doesn’t translate all that well to the screen. The Shining proved to be a case where Kubrick’s less faithful version was far superior.

Reviews were mixed, but the ratings were good.

After that De Mornay sightings became less frequent. She had a five-episode stint on TV’s E/R in 1999.

In 2003, De Mornay appeared in a supporting role in the psychological thriller, Identity.

Identity is about a bunch of strangers stranded at a motel. People start dying. That sounds simple enough, but the movie’s final reveal defies explanation.

Despite mixed reviews, Identity was a hit at the box office.

In 2004, De Mornay appeared opposite Hilary Duff in Raise Your Voice. Remember Duff? Raise Your Voice was supposed to establish her as a movie star. Instead, it bombed and all of her roles went to her rival, Lindsay Lohan.

In 2005, De Mornay appeared in the skater movie, Lords of Dogtown. Although Heath Ledger’s performance was praised by critics, the movie was not well-received and bombed at the box office.

In 2006, De Mornay had a cameo in the Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy, Wedding Crashers. The movie was a huge hit, but did you even remember she was in it? I didn’t.

In 2010, De Mornay appeared in the horror movie, Mother’s Day. In 2011, she appeared in Apartment 1303 3-D. She appeared on TV shows like The Practice in 2004 and John from Cincinnati in 2007.

In 2012, De Mornay had a cameo in American Reunion. She played Finch’s hot mom with whom Stifler finally evens the score.

Currently, De Mornay has been cast in a pilot for an NBC show about two feuding families. The show is called Hatfields & McCoys despite the fact it takes place in the present day.

So, what the hell happened?

De Mornay had two real shots at success; Risky Business and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. She was never able to capitalize on the success of either one. She was a sex symbol, but never really a box office draw on her own. Frankly, most of her movies were pretty terrible. In the 90s, she got stuck in one lousy thriller after another. And then, despite still looking great for her age, she was replaced by younger sex symbols.

But the future is still bright for De Mornay. TV has proven a great place for actresses to stage career comebacks.