VinessaShaw

Oddest fan encounter?

I think my oddest fan encounter's actually really interesting.

Back in the day, when Macaulay Culkin was a HOME ALONE phenomenon, I got invited to his HOME ALONE 2 wrap party by Michael Jackson, who was going to be hosting. And somehow, my agent told me, "This is MIchael Jackson's phone, he wants to personally invite you to something."

And as I went through this phone call, there were myriad assistants, people who were answering the phones, being transferred to him, and as I get on the phone with Michael Jackson, I'm like "Hi... is this Michael?" I was so awkward, how do I address him?

So he says "is this Vanessa?" and I say "Yeah, I'm kind of nervous," and he says "No, I'M the one who's nervous." and I was like, I lost it! I was like "That's crazy, how are YOU nervous?" and he laughed very shyly and so he said "You know" - I think he had seen HOCUS POCUS and really enjoyed that movie and was a huge fan! And I'm like This is crazy. I grew up listening to his music, and was one of HIS hugest fans, and the fact that he was MY fan just blew me out of the water.

So the wrap party didn't happen, because the L.A. Riots happened. So I never got to meet Michael in person. But that story is enough to tide me over.

Another funny story - most people don't know that the black cat was MANY black cats. There were actually 100 cats that were with the animal wrangler, because a cat can apparently only learn one trick. A dog can learn many tricks, and remember them. A cat can only learn one. So all the things we had to do, there was a different cat for each trick! So if a cat had to jump on you, there was a cat trained to jump, if a cat had to sleep in your arms, the cat had to be trained to do that... we were laughing every time we had to learn a new cat's name. We don't even know who the real Binx was !

I apologize that there is no "haha" laugh out loud situation. Most of it is just interesting or fun.

Yes.

The one story I have is when Dani (Thora's character) says "A virgin lit the black flame candle" - I could NOT stop laughing, because she kept pulling her witch's hat over her eyes, and couldn't see anything, and I was off-camera having to be, you know, so she could look at us off-camera. So that was one funny story.

Originally, my character Alison was supposed to go through the entire night fighting off the witches in her costume that was the 17th Century costume from her parent's party. So the costume designer, as well as myself, we were both thinking "This is impossible - how am I going to go through dirt, and climbing things, and falling, and scrambling away from the witches in this fancy dress?!" So thankfully, the producers were willing to change their ideas and have me change my clothes. So that's some behind-the-scenes trivia.

HAHA!

Um... let me think about this.

I did this movie called THE WEIGHT OF WATER. It was one of Kathryn Bigelow's movies. In the movie, I was playing a Norwegian immigrant in 1871, and one of the scenes called for me having to run out of my house in the middle of the night in only a nightgown. Now, this isn't a skimpy nightgown, thankfully, it was an 1871 nightgown, so there was a little bit of coverage, but not nearly the amount you'd need to stay warm.

So... we were shooting in Nova Scotia, which is in Canada, during the dead of winter, and I had no shoes, nor socks on. And it was below freezing, I'm not sure how much below freezing, but it was below freezing, and I had to run out in the middle of the night, and escape - I won't ruin the story, but escape - and I was in the middle of it, feeling really in the mood and very excited, but after a while, I realized I couldn't feel my feet, and I told the director and she said "Oh my god, we have to do something about that!" so they threw me into one of the set beds, which had real fur and real animal skins, and they threw hot water bottles with me, and even the producer got in the bed with me and blew on my feet because she realized if we didn't stop, I could've gotten frostbite. Kathryn apologized afterwards and said "I should've stopped you earlier" but again, when you're acting, there's a moment when you forget what you're experiencing and you feel like you're the character and you don't even feel cold until it's almost too late.

Oh!

No one knows that one of my cousins is Doris the Lunch Lady on the Simpsons. She was actually a script supervisor for the Simpsons, and apparently everyone on the show loved her voice and created the character Doris for her. She's passed away now, but she was my second cousin and was exactly like her character.