Dee Wallace Interview

Dee Wallace will forever be known for her portrayal of Mary, the newly divorced single mother in Steven Spielberg’s classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. This fact rests well with Dee partly because she views E.T. as one of the most pivotal family films since The Wizard of Oz. She’s also had an esteemed following with the horror genre, securing memorable roles in such classics as The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling and Cujo. She recently took on Rob Zombie’s retelling of Halloween and in the process became known to a whole new generation of casual horror fans.

A native of Kansas, Dee’s first aspirations into the arts were dancing. She quickly became an accomplished ballet dancer and soloist. After the appearance on several popular television shows in the seventies, Dee stood out in films and enjoyed a prolific acting career throughout the eighties.

She constantly shared the screen with her real-life husband Christopher Stone, who passed away in 1995 from an unexpected and unfortunate heart attack, while Dee was in New Zealand filming Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners. She continues to show up in quality projects to this date and has recently completed a book due in August titled Conscious Creation. Her website, www.officialdeewallace.com, continues to generate thousands of visitors.

In the middle of June, I spoke with Dee and wanted to discuss the films her fans know and love the most, as well as the future of her remarkable acting career.

Bryan Layne: Do you have any new projects coming out that your fans can look forward to?

Dee Wallace: I’m going to Kansas City soon to work on a little film called Matchmaker Mary. I’m also heading to Canada to do a film called Killing Ruth. In October I’ve got a film coming up called Scratching the Surface. So, I’ve got some things on the board. I’ve got a lot of my healing work going on and my book will be available in August. It’s called Conscious Creation. My website has been doing well and is constantly being updated. It’s located at www.officialdeewallace.com and you can find my healing and acting work there.

BL: You had a separate website for The Dee Wallace Acting Studio at one point. Is that still currently active?

DW: No, everything is now available on www.officialdeewallace.com. All of the healing and acting studio information has been brought together into one location. I’ve got some great on-line acting classes available and I’m very excited and happy about that. There are ten of them up there that are currently available and they’re very affordable. I think we did a great job with the classes and people with a little bit of interest should find them successful. So yes, I’ve been very busy (laughing).

BL: You seem to always have new projects coming up and it would appear you stay busy.

DW: Well yes, but if you’re an actor– I don’t care who you are– you’ve gone through a period of not working. I used to carry this story around with me that was of Jimmy Stewart and another actor. They were on their way back from finishing a film. One of them looked over at the other and asked, “What are you thinking about?” He replied, “Oh, I was just wondering if I was ever going to work again.” The other one replied, “Oh, my God…You too?” They were at the height of their stardom when this story originated. It’s just an actor’s thing to wonder when a gig is over if another one is going to come along. It’s part of the business of being an actor. So, sure I’ve been out of work, but for twenty some-odd years I have made a living and a pretty good one in this business. I am much luckier than many. I feel that, on some levels, you make your own life, too. You are your own creation, after all.

BL: How did acting come about for a career choice for you?

DW: Oh, you know, I was born (laughing)… No seriously, I’m not so sure that you have a choice, if it’s in your blood. I wanted to be a dancer and that was my first love.

BL: And that would have been ballet, correct?

DW: Yes, it was. I was a big fish in a little pond, but when it really came down to getting out of that pond, it just wasn’t going to happen. I had always acted. My mother had done all of the religious dramas at our church and I started out as baby Jesus and ended up playing Mary. I always had acting around me. My mother always gave me what we called, back then, eloquation lessons (laughing). They were speech lessons and I learned how to give dramatic readings and humorous readings– which are now called monologues. My mother was an extraordinary actress in her own right and I grew up really watching her affect many, many people on a community level. I really do feel like I learned just about everything I know, that I didn’t already know when I came in, from my mom.

BL: Do you remember any films you viewed in your youth that might have influenced your decision to get into acting?

DW: Oh, My Gosh. There are a lot of them I remember. We were a really poor family, so we didn’t get to go to the movies all that often. I viewed most of the films in my youth off of television. Obviously, every year we would watch The Wizard of Oz. There was also the one about the monkey trials, Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy. I loved Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. I would watch everything they were involved with. Because we didn’t go to the movies that often, my older brother and I would stay up late and watch old movies together all night. It was kind of our bonding time together. We would watch all of the old black and white movies that, I guess weren’t terribly old at that time, but they seemed like it to me. I think the moment I was truly hooked was when I watched my mother deliver a dramatic reading about the crucifixion at church. I looked around and all of these people had come from four states to see my mother perform this. Everybody was crying and the entire audience was moved. I was taken aback and thought to myself, “Wow, you can help people feel like this. You can make people feel like this. You can move people like this.” I think it just ignited whatever I brought in from forty thousand other past lives where I probably was an actor at some point. It was just ignited in that moment. I mean, for myself, acting is soul work. That’s the easiest description for me about the power of acting in my life. It’s just what my soul has to do this time around.

BL: Do you remember a few early roles you acquired that made you feel like you were accomplishing something with your acting?

DW: The first one worth mentioning was a guest star part on the popular, at the time, television show Police Woman, where I played a battered wife. Then there was the television show Lou Grant where I played the hooker trying to get out of that life. That particular role led to the Blake Edward’s film 10. I feel like in my early career just about everything that came to me was part of the soul mission for me. Then, of course, later on when strikes hit and you’ve bought a house, etc. Then you start doing things for the money, instead of for your soul work and you actually start running into problems. Then you get yourself back and, you know, it’s just a process of life. You loose yourself, you find yourself. You loose yourself again, you find yourself again and you begin to look for more answers. That’s just a process of life that all of us are a part of and it’s the reason we choose to come to this plane.

BL: Were you a fan of the horror genre before you got into it and are you a fan at the moment? I only ask because you’ve had some success in that particular genre.

DW: (Laughing) You think? I’m a fan of true horror films, of which we have very little of these days. Cujo and The Howling… all of the horror films from the eighties were true horror films. You had complete character development and you had people you honestly cared about up on the screen. Now, there are the slasher films and the torture films. Those aren’t horror films to me. I would have to say yes, I’m a horror fan, but with definite definition that I said earlier. Film like, the original Haunting of Hell House and Don’t Look Now. The classic horror films for me are hard to surpass. The short answer would be that I enjoy the classic horror films.

BL: You were a part of the original The Hills Have Eyes with Wes Craven…

DW: Yes, and if you play the original and then play the new one, interestingly enough made by the same producer, you see the difference where society is with horror films. Actually, in the original one you didn’t see a whole heck of a lot with the violence. It was disgustingly frightening as a result. In the new one you see everything and it was really more of a slasher film for me.

BL: Was The Hills Have Eyes a good experience for you?

DW: I loved Wes Craven. When I worked with Wes he was very gentle, quiet and nurturing. I really liked Wes and would love to work with him again. However, when you are doing a film, it’s all a lot of hard work, a lot of long hours and a huge expenditure of energy. The film comes out, everybody loves viewing it and the audience goes, “Oh my goodness! That was fun (laughing). I mean, some of the films are absolutely more fun than others. We had a blast shooting The Howling. I was working with Christopher [Stone], who was my fiancé at the time. Who wouldn’t enjoy working with director Joe Dante? He’s just a great person who’s fun to work for. I loved doing The Frighteners as well, even though my husband passed away during the shooting of it, the film itself was wonderful and Peter Jackson will be endeared to me forever. So, some films are more fun and more nurturing than others.

BL: What’s it like to be involved with a modern classic like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?

DW: It certainly is my Wizard of Oz, isn’t it? I believe it is our generation’s Wizard of Oz, also. It’s held up and it’s continuing to go on forever. I go out for public appearances and there’s a whole new generation of kids that are discovering E.T. all over again. For me, E.T. will forever live like The Wizard of Oz because they’re both about truth. They’re about the truth and they’re about our hearts. It doesn’t matter what generation you are in– that message will always be the most important message for any generation coming along.

BL: Was Mary your favorite character you’ve ever played?

DW: I loved Mary. That character was the closest to myself and possibly to my true personality out of any character I’ve ever portrayed in a major film. For actors, sometimes those are the hardest roles to do. I had no children when I did E.T., but now that I do have a daughter, I can see how much like Mary I truly was back when I portrayed her.

BL: I hate contact lenses. Did you have to wear those hard lenses for The Howling?

DW: Yes, in that transformation scene I had hard, fourteen carat gold contact lenses in my eyes.

BL: I’ve heard from other actors I’ve interviewed that those are quite uncomfortable, especially the early, hard lenses. Did they give you a lot of trouble during the shoot?

DW: Well, you know what? I don’t remember it being such a big deal. It wasn’t annoying and I wasn’t really required to have them in for very long. I do remember they really did bother Christopher [Stone] most of the time. They played a painful number on his eyes, especially the ones he had to use for his big transformation scene. Surprisingly, the contacts didn’t bother me all that much.

BL: For the film Cujo, were you as miserable from the heat as it seemed in the film or was that just tricks for the camera?

DW: Actually, we were freezing to death during Cujo. It was filmed in Northern California and it was beginning to get very, very cold with rain constantly coming down. They had to put a heater in the car for us during the production because we were freezing. So, thank you, that’s a tribute to all of our acting and directing abilities on all parts involved there for that film.

BL: How about the dogs? What were they like on the set?

DW: They were very well trained and very sweet on the set, actually. We weren’t allowed to interact with them much. Karl Miller, God Bless him, he just recently passed away and he had those dogs so well prepared. You know, it could have been a real nightmare to shoot using those dogs and because of Karl’s amazing work that he did on that film, it was so much easier and professional than it ever could have or should have been.

BL: How did your role in The Frighteners come about?

DW: I went in to audition for Peter Jackson and Michael J. Fox. It was at the Universal studio and I showed up, did the audition and got hired that way.

BL: Did you realize that Peter Jackson was going to have the amount of success he wound up with from working on The Frighteners?

DW: Well, hell no and neither did Peter Jackson (laughing). I was so enamored with Heavenly Creatures. You have to understand, Peter is just not your typical Hollywood director. He’s just a wonderful, wonderful heart person; not that I haven’t worked with heart people before and since. Joe Dante and Lewis Teague certainly were a couple of higher consciousness heart people, also. With Peter, there is just something available, caring and down to earth with him. As I said before, Christopher died while I was shooting The Frighteners. First thing that happened, Christopher suffered a heart attack, so I had to fly back to California. He turned out to be all right and I flew back to the set in New Zealand to go back to work. He then passed away and I had to fly back to California. Again, I had to fly back to resume filming and finish the movie. They kept saying to me, “We’ll take care of the flights, Dee and you can settle up with us in the end.” By that time, it was pretty much taking up my entire salary; flying back and forth across the world and I think it totaled four times to New Zealand. I went in to settle up with them after the shoot wrapped. They told me that Mr. Jackson and Mr. Zemeckis just wanted to give this to me and take care of all the expenses. Things like that don’t just don’t happen very often during film productions. It was a beautiful gesture of love and support for me that I will never forget.

BL: The passing of your husband, Christopher Stone, was quite sudden, was it not?

DW: Yes, he really hadn’t been sick at the time. Now, he did have an aneurysm in his past before I met him, but in our relationship he was never sick. So, when this happened it just kind of came out of the blue. They performed an angioplasty on him and he began to feel fine, but ultimately, he was just ready to leave this place.

BL: How was your recent work on Rob Zombie’s telling of the classic horror film Halloween?

DW: Oh my God, I just have to tell you how much I love this guy. I just absolutely love him. He’s fun to work for and unbelievably creative, as well as being inventive. I just went in and did some voice-over work for him on his The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, which is the animated film that he’s been working on that is so close to his heart. We all had a really great time. Rob allows you to come in and stretch your part out as far as you can take it with acting. I hope I get to do many more projects with Rob.

BL: How do you feel about the horror conventions?

DW: I do about five of the bigger ones every year. I like them and I’m happy to be a part of those. I enjoy meeting the fans and love hearing all the stories they have. While attending one, a woman told me the story about her autistic son. He was twelve years old and his mother had never heard him speak. She took him to see the twentieth anniversary of E.T. and he came out saying all of E.T.’s lines. To me that’s a miracle. To be able to say that you did a film that’s creating miracle’s in people’s lives is pretty amazing.

BL: Tell me about your acting studio.

DW: Well, I shut my acting studio down two years ago this September. It was hugely successful, even when I shut it down; it had been going on for eleven years. I taught all of the classes, except for a few of the beginner’s courses– one of my advanced students taught those. It truly was Camelot in my life, you know? It was where a lot of the healing works in my life started. I just attracted the most loving and amazing people into my studio. I’m a friend with many of them now and we were just like a family. It was absolutely an amazing experience in my life, having that studio.

BL: And since you shut the studio down, you are offering on-line classes presently?

DW: Yes, on my website I’m offering ten on-line classes. Whenever I travel, I always found that there was never anybody to study with on the road. It’s so, so important that people do not get the wrong information when they are just starting out or when they are making the leap from stage to film. There is just so much incorrect information that is readily available out there. You can’t do this, you don’t do that, they won’t let you, they won’t like you if you do and all of that is just BS. It truly is and what it boils down to is each individual’s perspective. There are no rules in film acting, except to be good. And there are no rules to being good, except for being truthful to whom you are. So, in ten lessons I cover a plethora of information. It varies down to business terms and what terms they use on a set, how to do comedy, the secrets of drama– I honestly feel that I cover all of it.

BL: You played the Senator on NBC’s My Name is Earl, do you enjoy doing sitcoms?

DW: I had my own sitcom on television two years ago called Sons and Daughters. Let me tell you, when you show up on the Earl set, they’re just there to have a lot of fun. There’s a lot of laughter on that set among the entire cast and crew. I wish the writer’s strike hadn’t hit when it did because maybe we would have been able to take the characters a little further. But the strike did happen and that storyline ended. It was a blast though, while it lasted. I honestly had a lot of fun working on that show.

BL: What can you tell me about your book Conscious Creation?

DW: Conscious Creation will be available through Amazon and Barnes & Nobel, as well as some of the smaller stores, in August. You will be able to order it on-line as an E-Book or as a hard and soft cover novel; whichever you prefer. It really is eight full years of my life on this journey of rediscovering and remembering who I really am. I think it’s important for all of us to realize why our lives aren’t exactly working– if they aren’t. Truthfully, I think it all comes down to how much we love ourselves and, unfortunately, I feel as though we are all taught not to. From the time that we can understand anything, we are taught to love everybody else in front of us and to give ourselves up for him or her. Then we turn around and say, “Self, could you give me all of the dreams that I’m asking you to give me? Even though I’m in judgment of you and I don’t love you?” And, you know, it just doesn’t work that way. The people that we want to give everything to are the people that we love in our lives and we are the first person that should be in that line.

BL: How long have you been working on this novel?

DW: I’ve been working on this book for six years. It is a joyful labor of my life.

BL: I wish you the best with Conscious Creation and it sounds like the subject matter is very important to you.

DW: I think it is important to the whole world. I truly do feel that way. We keep looking outside of ourselves and to everyone else to blame to create what we don’t like. Until we sit down and know that we are the creation, things are not going to change in our world.

BL: Thanks for allowing me to speak with you Dee. I had a blast and I think I have plenty to work with here.

DW: Honestly, my pleasure. You’re courteous and polite. I’ve enjoyed it. I want to thank you and wish you good luck, as well as a great rest of the day.