The Wright Stuff

SPOTLIGHT

actress Robin Wright has always kept her balance while keeping admirers temptingly off theirs, Blonde, blue-eyed, she is blessed with the shier shades of female beauty, yet on-screen she swaggers with a colorful self-assurance. Once a soap-opera ingenue on Santa Barbara, she made the treacherous crossover a few years back to big-screen leading lady in The Princess Bride, State of Grace, The Playboys, and Toys. The mother of two children by filmmaker Sean Penn (for whom she will costar with Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston in The Crossing Guard), the actress is still able to conjure the image shared by all great cinematic seductresses, that of a high-flying goddess—her landing gear down—who has not lost her virginity, but instead has slyly, mortally, misplaced it.

Worshiped by Tom Hanks in the upcoming Forrest Gump, she portrays his childhood soul mate, Jenny, a postmodern damsel in distress pursued by villains both viral and mnemonic. Wright even makes us believe that her character's dream of being the next Joan Baez is coming true when, wearing only high-heeled pumps and an acoustic guitar, she performs in a sleazy strip joint filled with rednecks. ' Blowin' in the Wind'' has never been more heartbreakingly rendered. Indeed, when Wright stomps offstage after Hanks ruins her performance by attempting to rescue her from aggressive hecklers, it is not her butt that bowls us over, but her dignity.

KEVIN SESSUMS