Hi, everybody! It's JA from MNPP here again, all set to rampage across your computer screens once more. Yay! This time I'm doing exactly what I did last time... only different! Last time it was Geena Davis' birthday that made me all nostalgic for an AWOL actress. This time, same spiel, different actress - today is the 45th birthday of Bridget Fonda, and I miss her something terrible too.The last time Fonda worked was seven full years ago for a couple of television projects, but the real shining gems in her resume, as far as I'm concerned, go back a few years further to Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan in 1998 and Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown in 1997 (side-note: These remain both of these director's finest films. Discuss.)
Honestly, smacking those two performances beside each other right now is a little mentally overwhelming, so large does my love for both of them loom. In the former she's Sarah Mitchell, her pregnant belly disguising a mounting villainy of Lady MacBeth-like proportions, and in the latter she's Melanie Ralston, for whom the bell tolls an echo in the sound of "Huh, Looooooouuuis.... where's the car, Looooooouis?" Chills, just thinking about that gal's fate.
Of course, Fonda had done plenty of fine work outside of those two roles, but it was this terrible two-some that forever cemented my love for her. And then, within a couple of years, she was gone. Poof! You don't know whatcha got, et al. That tunefully prolific bastard Danny Elfman went and stole her away with apparently happy off-camera living and now I'm left with a Melanie's-bong shaped hole in my heart. Sadness. Hopefully she'll get the itch back like her Auntie Jane did and come back to us. Fingers crossed!
FUN FACT! I just learned this while skimming her IMDb page: Fonda was a big fan of Italian horror-maestro Dario Argento and was supposed to play the main character in his 1997 flick The Stendhal Syndrome. The role went to his daughter Asia instead, who then got to roll around with a mostly naked Thomas Kretschmann in her place. I hope Fonda had a damned good excuse for missing out on that hotness..
