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Moviemaking can be hard, boring workâbut not always; and for Brooke, as for some of the other kid actresses, summer filming sometimes provides what other teen-agers might find in an Outward Bound course. During the shooting of Wanda Nevada, Brooke got to whoosh through rapids on a raft and ride down a canyon on a mule. Told that Director Peter Fonda had said on the Tonight show that she was as good at acting as his father Henry, and better than his sister Jane, Brooke put her hand to her mouth and said, "Oh God, oh my! He said that? . . . I don't think that is fair to say about his sister."
She is tall enough (5 ft. 9 in.) to be mistaken occasionally for Mariel Hemingway ("I say, 'No, but thank you. That's a compliment' "), and mature enough to play a character in Columbia Pictures' The Blue Lagoon who grapples through a mild love scene, and has a baby. Her parents are divorced, and like other movie kids, she likes location shooting because the set is "like an instant family." But she does see her two half sisters and her stepsister at her Helena Rubinstein executive father's house on Long Island. What may be most reassuring about this child, who has been modeling since she did a soap commercial at the age of eleven months and asks $325,000 a movie, is that her conversation is the kind an adult tunes out, comfortable in the knowledge that things are all right: "Like this weekend at my dad's house, a kid came in while we were watching television. And he kept staring at me. I couldn't believe it. Then we got up and we had to fix our mopeds. You could tell he was acting differently. It doesn't annoy me if he's cute, and he was really cute."
Tatum O'Neal. Zits are not allowed, baby fat is too dreary to think about, adolescent awkwardness is for other kids, and braces, if any, are done by Calvin Klein.
Movie kids are a breed apart, and at 15, tall, slim, poised Tatum O'Neal proves the point. She has just finished starring as a shy, rich girl in Paramount Pictures' Little Darlings, scheduled for release next year. She is thoroughly at home in Manhattan's Pierre Hotel, visiting the city with her father. Yet Tatum says she has reached the awkward age, and from a professional point of view she is right. She can't play little girls now, and she is aware that her best film role was her first, that of the rascally little kid in Paper Moon. She says that she could play a 16-year-old or 17-year-old now, "but 18 is taking a chance. I can't have romances with older guys yet. Maybe next year the scripts will get more interesting, not so bubble-gummy."
She recalls that she was offered the Shields part in Pretty Baby. "My dad turned it down. It wasn't right for me three years ago. Brooke has always had the face of a beautiful woman." She seems close to her father, who is her acting coach and manager too. But she sounds a bit defensive when she says, "I respect his judgment; he has been the greatest influence on my life," as if she is aware that Ryan's reputation is that of a great womanizer, not a great influence.