Proud Mary

SPOTLIGHT

At first glance, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio shouldn't have a movie career at all. She prefers the stage to the screen, insists on using her real and decidedly nonmarquee name, shuns Hollywood for London—where she lives with her Irish filmdirector husband—and brazenly told interviewers about the bloated budget and egos that plagued her 1989 movie, The Abyss. And yet ever since Brian De Palma plucked the onetime opera student and Opryland graduate out of a chorus of hopefuls and handed her—without a screen test—the plum part of Al Pacino's sister in Scarface, she's done nothing but work steadily, most notably as Tom Cruise's girlfriend in The Color of Money and

now as Kevin Costner's Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. For all her highfalutin standards, Mastrantonio relished the opportunity to play a wench—and says the part isn't quite as lusty as she'd like. Still, she's convinced that even a massive hit won't stop audiences from confusing her with her lookalike, Amy Irving. "Hollywood thinks of me as a hot tamale with a truckdriver's mouth," she has said. "I'm tom between loving this business and hating it. Frankly, I don't trust any of them." And that, says Kevin Costner, is exactly why it was so satisfying to work with her. "In a very unsure business, she's very sure of herself," he says. "I hope we make another movie together."

JESSE KORNBLUTH