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thought she was going to be the biggest lady star in the world.
    Hasn’t happened. I don’t know her, have seen her once in five years, we have no friends in common. Still, I think I know why. She doesn’t want it.
    To be a star, yes, you have to have talent, and my God, do you ever have to be lucky, but riding alongside is this: desire. One so consuming that you are willing to piss away everything else in life. Stars have no friends, they have business acquaintances and serfs. They can only fake love on screen.
    But they get the good table at Spago.
    And if that is your heart’s desire, and it is a lot of people’s heart’s desire, get rid of everything personal that might hinder you, and good luck. I promise to stare as you go by.
    Wright has been in a few movies, and her work is always fine. But I think what she wants is to spend some time on the occasional job, and tospend a lot of time with her family. She had not been in a big commercial success until Forrest Gump. She was almost in one earlier; she was to be the lead opposite Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. But she had to drop out because she was having a baby.
    I remember, when I read that, thinking: Barbra Streisand does not get pregnant at such a time …
    A. R. Roussimoff was the other new kid on the block that rehearsal morning. Actually, he was not precisely new to any of us, he was just new as an actor, because as Andre the Giant he was the most famous wrestler in the world. I had become a lunatic Andre fan, would go to the Garden to watch him entertain the masses. I became convinced that if there ever was to be a movie, he should be Fezzik, the strongest man.
    Andre was always still. When he entered a room he would look for a place in a corner and go there. A man with a great and good heart, I suspect he had grown weary of the strange ways humans reacted to him. They either took to him immediately, as we all did—Andre was by far the most popular figure I have ever been around on a movie set—or they panicked.
    Andre came from France and his voice came from the basement, so he was not always a thrill to understand. When Reiner gave him the part, he also gave him a tape that had his part recorded on it. Reiner, a wonderful actor, had done the line readings himself. He hoped Andre would take the time to memorize his role. Which in point of fact he had. But his readings that morning, to be honest, had a certain rote quality to them.
    After the script was read, Reiner broke some scenes down and had the actors work on them. One such occasion involved Andre andCary Elwes rehearsing their talking fight scene. They stood in front of us, went through it very slowly, said the words, and it was cool in the room as Andre began to perspire. We are not talking a little shvitz here. As we watched we were all stunned to see Andre’s shirt become, suddenly, sopping. We kept watching. In a few moments more the shirt was dry. You turn your head away—soaked. It was simply the first physical manifestation of how different giants are from the rest of us. There was never any odor to the perspiring. It just became part of the day, “Oh, Andre’s wet again.”
    It was a beautiful afternoon when we broke for lunch and we found a nearby bistro with outside tables. It was perfect except the chair was far too small for Andre—the width was for normal people, the arms far too close. There was a table inside that had a bench and someone suggested we eat there. Except Andre wouldn’t hear of it. So we sat outside, and Ican still see him pulling the arms of the chair wide apart, managing to squeeze in, then watching the arms all but snapping back into place, pinioning him for the rest of the meal. He ate very little. And the utensils were like baby toys, dwarfed by his hands.
    After lunch we rehearsed again, and now Andre was working with our Inigo,Mandy Patinkin. They were doing one of their scenes and Mandy was trying to get some information out of Andre and Andre was giving one