2 Susan Sarandon Quotes: Political Activism + Sexy Older Women

Susan Sarandon in Shall We Dance: Like the recent Sarah Michelle Gellar horror drama The Grudge, Peter Chelsom’s romantic comedy-drama is a Hollywood remake of a Japanese hit. Unlike The Grudge, Shall We Dance has been a box office disappointment.

2 Susan Sarandon quotes: The need for political activism + sexy older women

Below are a couple of recent Susan Sarandon quotes apparently delivered while the Oscar-winning actress (Dead Man Walking, 1995) and liberal activist was taking a break from promoting Peter Chelsom’s romantic comedy-drama Shall We Dance, the Hollywood remake of Masayuki Suo’s 1996 Japanese-made international hit Shall We Dance?

Susan Sarandon quote no. 1, referring to the U.S. presidential election and, indirectly, to the Iraq War (via The Toronto Star).

“I was talking with one of my kids, and he said, ‘You’re so involved in politics.’ I said, ‘When you’re talking about current events, that’s not politics, that’s your life. It’s easy to dismiss that as politics, but what we’re talking about is, you may be drafted depending on who wins this next election, and that’s something you should be aware of.’”

In other words, “politics” involves everything in life.

Susan Sarandon quote no. 2, about her being offered roles as sensual older women involved with younger men (via TV Guide).

“I think I’ve done just about every role [of that kind]. There are a few more that have been offered to me lately. I think I have cornered that market. Sigourney [Weaver] did [Tadpole] and I thought, ‘How did that get by me? I didn’t get offered that one?’”

In the 2004 Shall We Dance, Richard Gere stars as a Chicago businessman in dire need of new interests – and ballroom dancing might just be the thing. Also in the cast: Jennifer Lopez as a dance teacher and, in a subordinate role, Susan Sarandon as Gere’s wife.

George W. Bush’s wife reads to Iraqi children’s ghosts

Next in line for the Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, and Thelma & Louise actress is Bob Balaban’s cable TV movie The Exonerated, based on Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank’s real-life-inspired play about several people sentenced to death after having been wrongfully convicted of murder and other crimes.

On a lighter note, Susan Sarandon is also scheduled to appear in John Turturro’s musical comedy Romance & Cigarettes, featuring an international all-star cast that includes Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mary-Louise Parker, Bobby Cannavale (also seen in Shall We Dance), Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, and Amy Sedaris.

There’s more: Playbill reports that Sarandon will portray Laura Bush – that’s the wife of Fahrenheit 9/11’s scary villain George W. Bush – in a reading of Tony Kushner’s Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, to be staged at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, on Oct. 25.

According to the play’s press release, Kushner’s exploration of “political morality and moral relativity” centers on Laura Bush reading Dostoevsky to the ghosts of Iraqi children dressed in pajamas.

“2 Susan Sarandon Quotes: Political Activism + Sexy Older Women” notes

An aside: Neither the Japanese film Shall We Dance? nor its question-markless U.S. remake is related to the 1937 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Shall We Dance. Instead, they’re named after the Deborah Kerr & Yul Brynner ballroom-dancing sequence – to the tune of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “Shall We Dance?” – found in Walter Lang’s 1956 blockbuster The King and I.

See also: Playwright Tony Kushner is redrafting Steven Spielberg’s in-the-works terrorism drama (Munich), while Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan says his latest movie is not ‘anti-British’ propaganda, and movie veterans Joan Collins and Lauren Bacall opine on Nicole Kidman’s Movie Legend status (or lack thereof).

Susan Sarandon Shall We Dance movie image: Miramax Films.

“2 Susan Sarandon Quotes: Political Activism + Sexy Older Women” last updated in December 2022.