Not Just Another Perky Face: Mary Stuart Masterson's got guts on-screen and off
Written by Cindy Pearlman
Granted, she did play sort of a kook in Some Kind of Wonderful. But with that cropped blond hair and terminal perkiness, Mary Stuart Masterson still seems like the girl-next-door. In Chances Are, her latest role as a Yale law student involved with a guy who may be the reincarnation of her dead father, the 22-year-old proves there's a lot going on behind that well-scrubbed face.
Actually, it's what critics have been saying all along. While her other films, At Close Range, Gardens of Stone, Mr. North, never hit big, Masterson herself got raves. Although she's been in the biz for years (she landed her first role in The Stepford Wives at age eight), acting isn't all she knows. She recently finished filming a documentary in the Soviet Union that she plans to show at high schools after it premieres on MTV. Aimed at dispelling ignorance about the Russian people, the video was shot on a ten-day trip she took with Judd Nelson and Helen Slater.
The New York City native also has a million other projects. "I'm writing a play. I have 250 poems I'm thinking about having published one day. I cook, play the piano, and the drums." Masterson chides herself for being "kind of a scatterbrain" but notes she's gotten better at finishing things: The odds are now about 1 in 5, she figures. "It used to be 1 in 100." As long as she keeps finishing up those films...