From Religious Upbringing to Hollywood Activism: The Journey of Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon (EFE)

In New York in the 1940s, Philip Leslie Tomalin and Leonora Marie were two very religious young people who fell in love while attending meetings at their church. When they got married they promised that they would accept all the children that God sent them. God decided to be generous with them and sent them nine. Her eldest was born on October 4, 1946. She was baptized Susan Abigail Tomalin but the world would know her as Susan Sarandon and because of her committed posture she would be considered “the reddest actress in Hollywood.”

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As good believers, the Tomalins enrolled their children in Catholic schools. Between religious images, beliefs and prayers, Susan began to show a lively temperament, the kind that asks common sense questions but that the other perceives as aggressive or uncomfortable. The day in a catechism class she heard that no one was truly married if they did not go through the Church, she raised her little voice to ask: “Were Mary and Joseph never married?” Far from answering her question, the nuns scandalized her parents to assure them that her eight-year-old daughter suffered from “an overabundance of original sin.”

Although in catechism Susan could have learned that – as the saying goes – everyone who goes to the redeemer ends up crucified, she decided that it was important to build a paradise not so much in heaven but on earth. In high school she often skipped school to participate in marches against the Vietnam War and for civil rights. Her attitude scandalized the nuns, but above all her parents, convinced Republican militants.

Cher, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer y Susan Sarandon en The Witches of Eastwick, 1987 (Getty Images)

After finishing high school, he enrolled at the Catholic University to study Dramatic Art. She did not choose that institution because she was religious but because it was the first to accept her and the one that allowed her to leave her house. To pay for it she worked as a waitress, hairdresser and cleaned apartments. When she graduated from a modeling agency, they hired her as an “exotic beauty”; After starring in a hosiery commercial, she was chosen as the Ford Agency’s main model.

In the classrooms he fell in love with his classmate Chris Sarandon, they married in 1968. At the same time, Chris auditioned for the movie Joe, American Citizen. Susan accompanied him as his wife, with a certain reputation as a model, she had decided not to work as an actress. But fate decided to change her destiny: her husband was rejected and she stayed. Years later she would say that “when I took that test and passed, I didn’t think that that small step was going to be a door that closed on my dreams of independence and anonymity.”

His first major role appeared in 1974 alongside Billy Wilder in Primera Plana; Although a novice, she stood out alongside established figures such as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The following year she appeared in the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a musical that unbiasedly mixed rock and roll, science fiction, horror and fun. The public was amazed by this former student of a Catholic school who danced sexy on the screen with a trans woman while she sang: “Touch me, touch me, I want to be dirty.” At the end of the decade she divorced Chris but she kept two things: a very good memory and her ex’s last name: Sarandon.

Susan Sarandon

In the first year of the 1980s, her role as Sally in the film Atlantic City would bring her the first of her four Oscar nominations. In 1983 she filmed The Craving, alongside David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. There she starred in a lesbian scene with the French actress that caused such a stir that she received threatening letters for “attacking morality.” Years later she would remember, mischievously, that to film the shot they suggested she have a few drinks, but she refused because “you don’t have to be drunk to want to sleep with Deneuve.”

Susan often repeats that one of her gifts is that “when something crosses my path unexpectedly, I notice and change my direction. “Life has more imagination than myself.” Thus, she did not hesitate to travel to Nicaragua to help the Sandinista government even though the CIA opened a file for her. When she returned, a doctor assured her that due to her endometriosis she would not be able to have children, but in a fortuitous relationship with the director Franco Amurri and at 37 years old, she became pregnant. “It was winning the lottery,” she revealed. Although many assured her that pregnancy would be the end of her career, she kept going and entered the world of her Eva.

With her distinct beauty and lethal intelligence, she had romances with Sean Penn, David Bowie and Christopher Walken. “I love irony. It’s the only requirement I ask of a man to be with me. If he doesn’t have it, he doesn’t have any option,” she says, of his tastes.

Susan Sarandon y Sean Penn (Shutterstock)

With Tim Robbins they starred in one of those loves that justify and derail life. It was 1988 and she was summoned to film The Beauty and the Champion. Her boyfriend was Kevin Costner, the hottie of the moment, but when Susan saw Robbins she felt that this man, 12 years younger and 16 centimeters taller, was a good invitation to think about life as a couple. He felt attracted to that whirlwind of a woman who, upon hearing her acting training in university workshops, responded without sarcasm: “So much effort for such an easy job, which is not brain surgery and can be carried out by a child.”

They opted for living together without papers and never legally joined forces. “I’m not getting married because I’m too afraid to take him for granted or for him to take me for granted, maybe it will be a good excuse to have a party when I’m 80,” Sarandon once declared. After a year of living together, their first child, Jack Henry, was born in 1989, and three years later, Miles. They never hired babysitters and enrolled their children in a Manhattan school that they chose not for the prestige but because at night its classrooms became dormitories for homeless people.

Susa Sarandon, con Tim Robbins (Shutterstock)

The couple walled off their private lives, but not their political opinions. The couple raised their voices against the Gulf War, sexism, the mistreatment of refugees, the corruption of politicians, the Iraq war, the neglect of the planet and the censorship of information. They were the first to champion the LGQTB cause when it was still something that was perceived as amoral.

In 1993, when presenting the Oscar for best editing, far from smiling for the cameras they asked that a camp for AIDS patients in Guantanamo be closed. His words lasted just 23 seconds. The applause that supported them was followed by the fury of the director and producer Gilbert Cates, who decided to eliminate them from the guest list of the following gala. Susan and Tim, far from accepting their punishment in silence, wrote a letter in the Los Angeles Times. “We think that silence in the face of cruelty is inappropriate,” they declared. “Our appeal was a tiny fraction of time in the duration of the show. How can we not tolerate giving information when so many advertisements are tolerated?

Before that punishment, in 1991 Sarandon starred in one of the biggest hits of her career: Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise. As in all filming, she became close friends with her castmate. “Susan is great, she is strong, she is wonderful. I usually reproach him: ‘When can I be like you?’” said Geena Davis. Although she is 21 years younger, she is also a close friend of Julia Roberts, so much so that she was in charge of organizing the surprise birthday for the Pretty Woman protagonist’s 31st birthday. And Julia was one of 50 guests at Susan’s 50th birthday party, which Robbins threw for his wife, and consisted of an entire week in the Bahamas.

Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts in Stepmom, 1988 (Allstar/Cinetext/COLUMBIA)

In 1995, Robbins wrote and directed Dead Man Walking, where Sarandon played Sister Helen Prejean, counselor to a murderer sentenced to death. Without a drop of makeup, with an austere wardrobe, the actress delivered such a performance that Hollywood lifted the veto and awarded her the Oscar for best actress. Susan was grateful, she seemed excited and even happy. However, in an interview she made it clear what place she occupies in her life. She keeps her figurine on a shelf… in the bathroom of her house.

In 2006, the couple was guests of honor at the Mar del Plata Film Festival. Both gave a talk in a packed room at the Hermitage Hotel. When the “red actress” was expected to start ranting against the state of the world, she confessed: “I am interested in love stories and all the ones I did are of that type. The girls that I had to play have strong characters and, however, when I play them they seem so fragile to me… I choose to act as common, ordinary people who do things and feel afraid. I don’t like it when they start a film being heroes. Courage is demonstrated, perhaps, by being intimate with another person, or by deciding that one will no longer live a lie.” After the conference they went to visit a recovered factory.

Criticized and admired, nothing seemed to matter to them. They had each other and their ideals. But in 2009, the actors broke up. His publicist announced it with a brief statement. “Actress Susan Sarandon and her partner of 23 years, actor Tim Robbins, have announced that they separated over the summer,” and she closed with a blunt: “No further comments will be made.”

The news was very hard for everyone who saw not a model couple but a model couple. And they let him know. “People stopped me in the streets and told me that they started crying when they found out about my separation. But for me it was even sadder. “I never thought that would happen,” said the actress. According to her, it was the very course of the relationship that led to the end of it, the much feared “wear and tear.” “Every once in a while you bring people into your life for a specific reason. Maybe you have a relationship to have children and you realize that after the point at which you have formed them, it has been completed,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

The divorce, although it surprised Sarandon, did not leave her crying in the corners. She got married to Jonathan Bricklin, a 33-year-old boy. She admitted to People that there was a relationship, although she accepted that she didn’t like the word romance: “Dating is such a stupid word. You can say… that we are collaborating together in many different areas.” They broke up after five years together. She recently stated that she is “totally available” and even open to having a relationship with a woman, because her sexual orientation “is curious for anyone who wants to try it.”

Susan Sarandon en Cannes 2017 (Shutterstock)

At 77 years old, the actress continues to teach life. At 69 she walked the Cannes red carpet in a dress that showed off her anatomy but above all her freedom, at 70 she posed beautifully and suggestively for a Mar Jacobs campaign and at 76 she caused a sensation on social media with a four-second video where you can see stylists doing her hair. She looks so beautiful that many wondered if there was any retouching, but she had already given the secret of her beauty. “Appearance, in my opinion, largely depends on what you think about your age: you tell your body what it looks like. I don’t think about looking good tomorrow. “I just focus on what makes me feel good.”

He was recently asked what he wanted to do when he retired and he didn’t answer with the typical “take care of my grandchildren,” but rather he assured that he wants to direct porn films because “most pornography is brutal and not pleasant from the point of view.” female. So when she doesn’t want to act anymore, that’s what I wish to do.”

For her, the most important thing is to remain true to herself and do what she wants and what she believes. She doesn’t run after awards shows, red carpets or glamorous parties. For her, fame is a pure story: “I do not live obsessed by success nor do I believe that commercial failure necessarily responds to artistic failure. We should not overstate things: being an actress is just another job.”

Happy birthday Susan, one of those people who, when life hits you, always gives you dreams back.

2023-10-04 10:27:32
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