Sarandon goes for that role

SUSAN Sarandon freely admits the part she plays in In the Valley of Elah, is so small you can “see the entire thing in the trailer.”

SUSAN Sarandon freely admits the part she plays in In the Valley of Elah, is so small you can “see the entire thing in the trailer.” But she took the role, that of a mother whose son goes AWOL after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq and is then found murdered, because it covers a subject dear to her heart.

“Basically I have been so frustrated with the disconnect between the real war and the politicised war that I felt this film would at least acknowledge that war changes people, especially this war.”

Not that Sarandon’s politics influence every role she takes. The ubiquitous actress turned up as a singing, dancing wronged wife in John Turturro’s karaoke musical Romance & Cigarettes, and she’ll be sharing the big screen in Mr. Woodcock, the Billy Bob Thornton comedy.

Of course, there was also 1995’s Dead Man Walking, for which Sarandon won a best actress Oscar. It was about as anti-death penalty movie as they come, but it’s also one of the most pro-Catholic movies ever made.

Chatty and open, Sarandon switches easily from impassioned condemnations of the Iraq war to jokey stories about herself and her career choices.

Asked, for example, if her alma mater, Catholic University in Washington, took a particularly spiritual approach to the study of drama, she responds that “the thing that really influenced me was I was there at the end of the ‘60s, when the priests were running off with the nuns, and I learned in depth the evolution of the institutionalisation of the church. That influenced me, not the drama department.”

Sarandon made her first movie, Joe, in 1970, and hasn’t looked back since. The kind of actor more interested in the role or the filmmaking experience than in how she looks or whether she’s the star, Sarandon says, “I consider myself a character actor, and that helps.”

LAT-WP