Actresses have long lobbied for meatier roles, but the current search for female action stars is about profit, not political correctness. Studios realize the adventure-comedy genre has been wrung dry-after “Die Hard” and “Die Harder,” the world may not need “Die Hardest.” Says producer Denise Di Novi, “I’ve seen so many action movies where the women’s characters were so boring. And they’re always being rescued by some guy. Why shouldn’t a female star fill that same archetypal heroic role?”
And why shouldn’t she seek heroic wages? Because action movies do well abroad, a heroine who hits it big could make $10 million-more than double what any actress commands today. Geena Davis’s bid for box-office greatness is" Mistress of the Seas," a $50 million-plus pirate flick to be directed by Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct”). Jodie Foster will star in" Track-down," a thriller set beneath the English Channel. Meanwhile, out West, Sharon Stone will test her gunslinging in “The Quick and the Dead,” and Madeleine Stowe and Drew Barrymore will play vengeful prostitutes in “Bad Girls.”
The trend toward hard-body heroines probably started with the guerrilla warfare of Linda Hamilton in “Terminator 2.” “When Linda is cover material for New York magazine, that makes it sexy,” says Mark Gill, a senior vice president of Columbia Pictures. Yet it was the tame baseball comedy “A League of Their Own” that persuaded Columbia to take a risk on" “Trackdown” and “Mistress of the Seas.” “League” didn’t have much of a body count, but it pulled in more than $100 million. That fact, coupled with the resurgence of Westerns (“Dances With Wolves,” “Unforgiven”), has also spawned the female Western. “Two years ago every actress in Hollywood was working out in the batting cage,” says Gill. “Now they’re all taking riding lessons.”
The new action heroines owe their existence in part to such women behind the scenes as Di Novi, who coproduced" Batman Returns" and is now taking on “Trackdown” and the all-female Western “Outlaws.” But in the end, success will depend on the young men who dominate the action-movie market; they may not care to see women shoot to kill. “Point of No Return,” which starred a trigger-happy Bridget Fonda, grossed a disappointing $28.5 million. “Thelma & Louise” made a relatively modest $55 million. Says “Die Hard” producer Joel Silver, “I always felt the young male audience would not react well to a female lead.” Yet he’s hedging his bets, developing a heroine’s story called “Final Descent.” Even aikido ace Steven Seagal is into role reversal. Next year he’ll star in “Dead Reckoning,” which was originally written for a somewhat different body type: Michelle Pfeiffer.
