Leelee Sobieski: Leelee Land

https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/03/02/leelee-sobieski-leelee-land/

Leelee Sobieski was never a big deal. You’d be forgiven if you don’t remember her. Younger readers may not have had the opportunity to forget Ms. Sobieski. Twenty years ago, she was very nearly a big deal. She had the potential to be one. In fact, it seemed like such a certainty that Sobieski was headed on to bigger and better things that she was chosen for the cover of the March 2000 issue of Movieline magazine despite never having starred in a hit movie.

Contemporary Hollywood teems with temptresses who know how to make teenage sexual provocation look good. Seventeen-year-old Leelee Sobieski makes it look classy. The insolent aplomb she brought to her portrayal of an uninhibited teen expatriate in A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries gave the first notice of that. Then in last year’s Eyes Wide Shut there was that devastatingly sly, come-hither look she gave Tom Cruise as the half-clad nymphet being pimped by her papa. Even her Emmy Award-nominated performance in TV’s Joan of Arc radiated healthy sensuality alongside the requisite religious fervor and valor. The offscreen Sobieski is a refreshing, delightful change-up from the odd, sometimes dispiriting Hollywood twinks, too. Like Jodie Foster in the ’70s, she manages to radiate brainy sexuality, otherworldly beauty and playful humor. She recently lamented to one magazine journalist that, like Joan of Arc, she remains a virgin; to another writer, she described her ceaseless search for Mr. Right–or rather, Mr. Right Now. You’ve got to wonder where someone so young comes by this unflappability.

Sobieski hails from what she likes to call “a daring family.” Born Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta, she’s a direct descendent of King Jan Sobieski, the Polish monarch who aided the Holy Roman Empire in defending Vienna against Turkish invaders in 1683 and was so illustrious in his own land that even today, Leelee could, if she chose to, dwell in the city of Sobieski, Poland, puff Sobieski cigarettes and quaff Sobieski vodka. And if she decided to nosh a bagel, it would be with the knowledge that the genre of breadstuff in question was invented in her ancestor’s honor. Leelee herself was born in France to Jean Sobieski, an accomplished painter, and Elizabeth, a writer, and shows the pleasing effects of her background as she floats into the dining room at The Argyle on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Statuesque, hair flowing, she looks like a princess out of an illuminated manuscript, only she’s dressed in a man’s dress shirt and vintage tie. There’s a lovely bohemian rebellion written into this fashion contradiction, I decide to find out right away how playful a spirit Leelee is. With that in mind I ask how she feels about Milla Jovovich, whose portrayal of Joan of Arc in The Messenger presented a big-screen alternative to her own mini-series saint. Sobieski’s expression lightens and her eyes twinkle at the question.

“I danced with her at a premiere,” the young actress recalls, speaking in precise, clipped tones that suggest the Upper East Side with a touch of Continental added in. “I was like, ‘Would you like to dance?’ and she said, I have to go get another drink,’ She did, and then she came back and we started dancing. I felt like, ‘I’ve got to dance with her like she’s my bitch.’ Which I did.” Leelee shoots me a conspirational look. “This is Leelee the exhibitionist at work now, you understand. It was a merengue kind of tune and she was touching her face, rubbing her hair, like, ‘Oh, I’m just a little androgynistic thing,’ while I was just coldly watching her. She came up to me and I just pushed her away. Our mutual agent was there and going, like, ‘Stop–don’t do this!’ Oh, I got a real kick out of it. Not only two Joan of Arcs dancing together, but also the whole Joan of Arc lesbian intonation. I mean, I think Joan must have been a lesbian, don’t you? Milla is really nice, lovely and so gracious.”

So I’d say we’re off and running with our inquiries into the sensibilities of young Leelee Sobieski. It quickly becomes apparent she’s been a singular, highly dramatic handful from the beginning. “A friend of my mom’s told her that when she saw me as a newborn she knew who I was right away. Apparently, all the other babies were either serious or crying or sleeping, and I was the only one making faces and looking around at everybody else.” When I ask Sobieski how she became an actress, she repeats the word “actress,” skewing it with a dose of irony and says, “Do you know, I really hate it when friends introduce me as ‘Leelee the actress? I’m not Leelee the actress. I’m Leelee the wacko. Leelee the really annoying girl. Anything but, ‘actress,” How’s that? “This wasn’t supposed to happen at all,” declares Sobieski, referring to being an actress.