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With Robin Curtis
Star Trek III and IV. Robin Curtis is the actres who portrayed Lieutenant Saavik, whom she played in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Robin Curtis Interviewed by Maryanne Scutella. October 2005. When you originally took the role of Saavik where you worried that a science fiction role so early in your career would type cast you? No because I think that goes against my philosophy which is that there is no such thing as type casting, at least for myself. I just really didn’t believe that this role would have the kind of exposure, the kind of popularity necessarily that would impose that kind of a concern or type casting as you call it. I felt confident in my abilities to do other things and the fact that I was so unlike the character I’m Robin and so unlike a Vulcan that I thought regardless of how well I played a Vulcan I couldn’t possible be type cast because I’m the antithesis of this character in many respects and that will ultimately you know? I didn’t feel destined to play unemotional characters for the rest of my life given the kind of emotional realm or range that I feel I have but anyway no I didn’t feel it was a concern. What were the differences or similarities between working on the set of the star trek movies than on star trek the next generation? Well, I think the greatest difference for me was the time factor, my age. That’s what I’m refereeing to specifically I was younger and less experienced when I did Star Trek III: The search for Spock and the whole experience kind of intimidated me and I had doubts about my ability to play the character and so there was all kinds of insecurity going on at the time and I had paramount concerns about doing the job well and so it felt very pressured and wasn’t as fun, I think, as it could have been had I been less concerned about all of these things. So years later when I did the next generation I just felt a little more familiar with that style of acting, with the world of Star Trek and I think that enabled me to just have more fun doing it and to appreciate interacting with the actors more so than I did on Star Trek III. I will say this, what the cast had in common is that these are very professional people and I just really enjoyed talking to people who cared so much about the work they were doing and when I say that I am referring to people like Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy and the supporting cast members, just really quality people and I felt grateful to have that positive experience with those people, that caliber of group, in both cases. In past interviews you have said that you have an interest in writing. Is there anything in particular you are working on at the moment? Well at the moment and for several years now, a handful of years I should say I have been working on a piece that I’ve written for myself. It’s still evolving but there’s a lot of material there and at this point now I’ve shared it with several audiences enough to know that I think I’ve got something of value on my hands and I’m going in the right direction. I don’t know whether this is fear talking or practicalities but I feel like I need someone now who is objective, who isn’t me. I’m very close to the material because it’s personal, it’s auto-biographical. I feel like I need someone now who’s separate from the story to perhaps share their vision of how I should give it to the audience. I have simply been reading the material aloud and animating it in my own natural way, with my own personality. I don’t know whether it requires more than that or you know how much of a set, music, lights images you know how much all of these things are important or whether or not a very bare, spars delivery is all that’s needed. This is where I sort of stand at a juncture where I need the expertise of someone other than myself. A director, producer type of person who has that kind of vision that I’m not quite sure I have completely yet or I’m not sure I should trust necessarily. What I’ve written is essentially my sexual odyssey and I know that sounds unusual but I came of age at an interesting time, I thought, for women and in the 70s when women were handed a great many freedoms in term of their role, in terms of their sexuality, birth control, abortion. All of these behaviors were sort of up for grabs in a way so it was a very interesting time for women of my generation and how most of us chose to deal with those issues or not deal with those issues to me is fascinating and I have always had the ability to kind of share my own experiences and stories with friends in a very candid, self effacing, humorous way and also in a heartbreaking way I might add. You know, you can’t be engaging with the opposite sex and not have it be glorious and absolutely abysmal. Its like any other experience in life it has its hills and valleys and so forth but anyway those friends with whom I shared my personal experiences and some of them witnessed them first row, left center you know they said you’ve got to write this down. They kept saying to me you’ve got to write it down and I finally decided to start writing it down and apparently I have something here a real different. Some words some people have used are fresh and innovative and I don’t mean to sound immodest but it throws my mind that they say that because some of the things I’ve written are 10 years old, I started 10 years ago and I think to myself, it’s the same old story but they haven’t heard it. You haven’t heard it and so it is fresh and innovative to you and apparently people are still so hung up about the subject that I could possibly put it in a box and drag it out 50 years from now and it still might be cutting edge. So I’m going to do my best effort to honor the responses that I’ve gotten from people. The very positive, encouraging responses and hopefully get it off the shelf and get a little dust of it and get it on its feet in a theatre somewhere which is how I ideally would like to render it. On my own legs, with my own voice before an audience. Just me. So we’ll see. Are there any issues that you are particularly passionate about that you would like to share? I’m passionate about choice. I’m very passionate about planning parenthood. I’m passionate about information and sharing information with young people because I think it empowers them to make the right choices. I’m passionate about tolerance and passionately against intolerance and bullying and anything of that nature where one person is holding force over another in any way. It almost brings about a violent reaction, but I would not like to handle a situation like that with violence. However, I just mean to say that to indicate the intensity with which I stand up against that sort of thing. I think that’s a pretty good list so far. I’m passionate about love, I’m passionate about family and expressing appreciation among family members for one another and showing children the right way, the loving way. What is your favourite hobby at the moment? That’s interesting. I love to do Sudoku which are these mathematical puzzles now that are very popular. Love to do that and I’d have to say that what I’m doing for a living really has become a hobby. I joined forces with a gentlemen and he happens to be my partner so in some respects I’m living out a fantasy. I’ve always dreamed that it would be so much fun with someone you chose to be connected to romantically to also team up and create a business or a living with one another and I’ve had the opportunity to do exactly that with him. We build homes and I never imagined that I would be doing that for a living but we built a home together. I witnessed this, he came to fix my home. That’s how we met and it was a very old home and it needed rehabilitation badly and he did such a beautiful, caring job of it. Respecting what was and repairing what needed it and I so believed in his talent that I decided to invest in them and we built a house together and it worked well and then we built another house and now we are a business and were formally incorporated and its all very kind of exciting because we’re the little engine that could. You know in our city and we are beginning to emerge and we’ve signed our first contract now to build a home for a buyer and all of this is happening and what’s odd is that in the midst of it I remembered that my grandfather built homes and it just totally escaped me up until that point. He was a Mason from Wales and immigrated to the United States early in the century as a young man and stone built homes. He built beautiful homes and so in a way its kind of lovely to think you know I’m doing something that there’s a family connection with it. I don’t know but its sweet to me. But if this man said he wanted to bake bread and deliver fresh baked bread all over the city I would probably love that just as much. In other words, it isn’t the building that jazz’s me or feels much like a hobby as it is working with someone I care deeply for and building something together, creating something together that’s what excites me. Do you have a part in designing the homes? Yeah. When you have your own business you kind of have a little part of everything. I mean I think the bulk of my responsibility in our business is to do the accounting and also to do the marketing and I’m the real estate agent so I list the home and I sit in the home every Sunday and greet people and try to sell the home but also yes I certainly am a consult in terms of materials and colours and that kind of thing. You know, you want to decorate something, in particular when it’s a spec home, you want it to be tasteful but neutral so that people can come in and imagine their own colours or adding colour. You know, you don’t want to make anything too bold you just want to keep it kinda subtle and pleasing to the eye. On behalf of the Management Committee our thanks to Maryanne for her hard work  |
