Diana Scarwid played Hollywood's most dysfunctional daughter in 1981's Mommie Dearest, but the 47-year-old actress is surprisingly normal. As a single mother in her native Savannah, Ga., she stays removed from the limelight — but she can never escape fans of her campy turn as Joan Crawford's vengeful offspring, Christina. Just imagine strangers chanting Mommie's mantra — "No wire hangers, ever!" — at you every day of your life!
Actually, it's not quite that bad, Scarwid tells TV Guide Online: "I get the wire hangers and 'I'm not one of your fans.' I say, 'What do you mean you're not one of my fans?' And they say, 'No, no! That's your line from the movie!' People just love it.
"I'm living back in Savannah," she adds, "so I haven't totally lost my anonymity. I play a lot of character roles, so people don't know what the hell I look like. They're always surprised, like, 'Don't I know you from somewhere?'"
Sharp-eyed fans recently recognized Scarwid in HBO's Emmy-nominated Path to War. Other memorable roles include Cher's lesbian lover in 1983's Silkwood and Michelle Pfeiffer's best friend in 2000's What Lies Beneath. (You know, the wisecrackin' redhead who joined La Pfeiffer in that silly but spooky bathroom séance.) So what's next?
Look for Scarwid in Party Monster, Macaulay Culkin's much-anticipated return to the big screen, which is likely to premiere at Sundance in January 2003. That same month, she says, "I'm in A Guy Thing with Selma Blair. I play Selma's mom. James Brolin's her dad. She's very sweet. We had fun together." And what sort of movie Mommie does Scarwid play? "I'm a quirky mommy," she grins. "I always do something awful. Something not quite right."
