"I ran to makeup," Allen remembers, emitting a genuine shriek. "I thought, 'He'll be rubbing his hands all over me all day. What am I going to do?' I whipped out an electric shaver." The electricity escalated as Travolta caressed Allen's gams at languorous length. "I kept getting blushed," Allen recalls. "It was more erotic than kissing, having him run his hand up my leg. And I didn't want John to know that. I was like, Just be available."
These days, Allen prefers being unavailable for the sorts of tortured-partner roles that she's been specializing in. After all, she's capable of playing a single woman, as she did in the late '80s on Broadway in Burn This (for which she won a Tony opposite John Malkovich) and The Heidi Chronicles (another Tony nomination). Though director Gary Ross talked her into "one more married mom" for the surreal comedy Pleasantville, due next spring, Allen turned down Whoopi Goldberg's entreaty to play a wife in an HBO adaptation of Strindberg's The Father. Instead, Allen plans a hiatus to cheer her real-life husband, stage actor Peter Friedman, through the Broadway-bound musical Ragtime, while settling their daughter, Sadie, into nursery school.
Would Allen ever pursue a role as outre as Ice Storm costar Sigourney Weaver's interstellar Alien hunter? "She's in such great shape," says Allen, sinking back a bit into the couch. "I think she likes the daring aspect of it." Allen pauses for a moment. "But, you know, I think I could play a rock star or something like that." Especially if the script eschews duets in favor of solo riffs.
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