I Heart Sean Young

Let's get it right out in the open and be done with it--Sean Young is loony. At least that's her reputation now after all kinds of highly publicized events that have helped to derail her career. If it wasn't dust ups with directors it was volatile affairs with co-stars or showing up dressed in a homemade catsuit thinking you are auditioning when no audition was scheduled and then getting forcibly removed from the studio. Her most infamous embarrassment was the James Woods fiasco that involved all kinds of bizarre claims and counterclaims (and lawsuits). Even earlier in 2008 Young was ejected from the Directors Guild of America awards for a bit of drunken heckling (she entered rehab soon after). Young is a wild one!

Okay, that's done. Let's talk about Sean Young the actress in some films of hers I like. In May I re watched Blade Runner while in Lisbon and one of the things that struck me was just how much I adored Sean Young in her films from the 1980s. She was perfectly cast as the android love interest in Ridley Scott's landmark sci-fi noir. I can't think of a better suited actress in the early 1980s who could combine the needed qualities of sexiness and coldness that she does in Blade Runner as Young just seems like an android to me.

When I got back to Tulsa I watched another Young film from the end of the '80s in Cousins. I'm fond of this romantic comedy despite its flaws and probably Young's last hurrah before she went the way of crazy behavior, b-films straight to video and one off TV appearances. Young's role in Cousins is as warm and friendly as performance in Blade Runner was cold and distant.

1987 was Young's most visible year as she appeared in two popular, well received films: Wall Street and No Way Out. Her role in Wall Street was rife with turmoil as she battled director Oliver Stone repeatedly over whether or not she should be playing the Daryl Hannah role (Stone later admitted that Young was right). In No Way Out she was the dangerous femme fatale and was in one of the steamier love scenes of the era as she and Kevin Costner got after it in the back of a limo.

One other thing that Young has going for her in my book--maybe the greatest eyebrows in film history. I sort of have this thing for eyebrows on women and Sean Young c. 1980s sits near the top of the pedestal. She's got some unbelievable eyebrows and those and no amount of erratic behavior can change that!

I have to admit, I haven't seen a single Young movie since Cousins in 1989 so my fondness for her strictly based on 1980s films such as Stripes (she was the MP that Bill Murray woos with a spatula!), Blade Runner, Dune and her '87 double feature mentioned earlier. I doubt I see anything else too as her reputation (and behavior) has her permanently stamped in the realm of "troublemaker."