Rutanya Alda And Her Miracle Project

Rutanya Alda has been a distinguished actress in film, television, and theater for over 40 years. She is also the only Latvian-born actress who has been voted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Rutanya has appeared in over 100 movies and television shows.

She began her illustrious career with two early films by Brian De Palma, 'Greetings' and 'Hi, Mom!', in which she starred with Robert De Niro. Following these, she appeared in such highly acclaimed films as 'Panic In Needle Park', 'Scarecrow', 'The Long Goodbye', Sam Peckinpah’s 'Pat Garret And Billy The Kid', George Romero’s 'The Dark Half', 'Last Exit To Brooklyn', 'Racing With The Moon', the Christmas perennial 'Prancer', and the Oscar-winning film 'The Deer Hunter', where she reteamed with Robert De Niro.

At present, Rutanya has the distinction of being a cult icon in two categories: 'Amityville II: The Possession', in which she stars opposite Burt Young, and 'Mommie Dearest', about which she published her first book, the critically and reader-acclaimed The Mommie Dearest Diary.

Rutanya has appeared in dozens of theater plays, recently including Tennessee Williams’ The Fat Man's Wife, The Portrait at Theater 54, and John Guare’s play More Stars Than There Are In Heaven. 

Rutanya was born Rutanja Skrastiņa (Rūta Skrastiņa) in Riga, in German-occupied Latvia, the daughter of Vera (née Ozoliņa), a businesswoman, and Jānis Skrastiņš, a poet. Alda, her grandmother, her mother, and her brother spent seven years in a displaced persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany after World War II. She then relocated with her family to the United States, briefly living in Chicago before settling in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Alda studied at Northern Arizona University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in economics. She stated in later interviews that she chose to study economics as "a way of pleasing my mother, who wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. Economics was considered a pre-law degree at the time. I wanted to be an actress, from the age of 5, when I saw my first play and movie, in the displaced person camps. I never wavered from this passion.

Rutanya studied acting with Barbara Loden and Paul Mann in New York City. With a career spanning nearly 50 years in show business and over 100 roles. She has won a Clio and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Additionally, Rutanya has appeared in numerous television programs, such as 'Cold Case' and 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation', and as a featured character in the Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton TV series 'Beauty and the Beast', as well as commercials and stage work.

Alan Mercer:  Rutanya, looking at you now, you defy your age.

Rutanya Alda:  I have fine lines when I look at myself in the mirror, but I’m fine with it. I’ll have more lines soon and I’ll be fine with those. Actresses over 50 tend to all get facelifts and they don’t look like themselves anymore. Why, when you can be a beautiful older woman? You don’t have to be 30 again. It’s alright to be 50 something and 60 something.

AM:  It sure doesn’t help them get cast in anything.

RA:  I don’t think so, and you don’t believe it either. Now you see these older women with young guys. I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of older women having wonderful relationships with young guys, but in these stories it often seems false. I don’t like the message we are sending and that is the message that it’s bad to get old.

AM:  That’s exactly right and that message has got to change. You seem to be always in demand.

RA:  Not really. I’m busy now because I just made a movie.

AM:  Oh, tell me about it.

RA:  It was four years in the making and it’s called ‘Land Of The Mustaches’. I just picked up the hard drives. Now, the next step is to submit it to film festivals and that is a challenge because there are over 500 film festivals. It’s hard to know who are the right ones for my film. Just having to read everything for each submittance takes a half an hour. I have to put the trailer on a web site called ‘Film Freeway’. Unfortunately, I am not a computer person. My son, Jeremy is good at all that, but he’s working and not always available. He will help me next week.

AM:  This must be a passion project.

RA: Yes, it is. Years ago, the director Paul Mazursky and my friend Spalding Gray, both told me I had to write this story. I just kept putting it off.

AM:  What motivated you to write it now?

RA:  What finally motivated me to write the screenplay was in March of 2020, they really shut down New York City. I ended up leaving my apartment and going to the park to breathe in some fresh air. They had police everywhere. It was an awful, unnecessary time. The media was all about how we were going to die, especially if you were my age. I remember being very calm about it, thinking OK, I’m going to die without telling my story. That’s when I sat down and wrote the script in 2 weeks. It didn’t take long since I already knew the story. Then I called my friend who is a member of the academy and my 2 DP friends and a friend who does hair and make-up. I asked them if they wanted to make a movie. They all said yes.

AM:  Wow! That worked out well.

RA:  One of them could have said no and I wouldn’t have been able to do it. The rental place where we would need to get our equipment was only open 2 hours a day, so Jeremy and I would go there and lug all the stuff back. It was all filmed in my extra bedroom. We used everything I had in my apartment to decorate the set and it all worked out.

AM:  How long did it take to film the movie?

RA:  We shot the film in two 18-hour days. It was amazing. Then in the fall, we went back with our editor, David Ray who edited Scarface, Reds, All That Jazz and many more. This man is amazing. He is semi-retired, so I called him through a friend who knew him, and I introduced myself. I told him I had 3 hours of film that needs editing. He asked me to send him the film because he liked the story. He didn’t know he would be working on it for 4 years.

AM:  This is incredible!

RA:  Then I emailed Charles Bernstein because he taught one class in composition film scoring at UCLA. He has done like 150 mainstream movies. I asked him if he had a student who was ready to do a score. He asked for the film, and he got back to us 4 days later and told me he loved the story, and he wanted to do the music. This is my third academy member. It’s been a miracle project. I am finally ready to send it out into the world.

AM:  What is your movie about?

RA:  It’s about growing up in the refugee camps in Germany post-World War 2. It’s told through the eyes of a child. That story parallels my father’s story who fought in the red army. The war wasn’t over for them because the red army was sent to the East to fight the Japanese. Then when the war was over for them, he came back to Latvia to look for us when Stalin started his mass deportations to the Gulags and he met another soldier who told him he was arrested. When my father asks why, he was told it was not for him to know. He was just guilty.

AM: Oh my! How horrible!

RA:  They shoved him into a cattle car with lots of other men, farmers, engineers, doctors, soldiers, across the board. They were all sent to the notorious prison, Stalin’s Gulag and he disappeared. I didn’t know this story until I found out he was alive in 1969 when I meet him and find out this story. He told me he would only speak of it once and never again. It was too painful. So that’s the story and it’s really a celebration of the human spirit.

AM:  I can’t wait to see your new movie! Rutanya, you are in a rare position of being a name actress who has made a career of supporting roles. Do you credit ‘Mommie Dearest’ with helping to establish you as a name actress?

RA:  That’s another miracle. It’s a cult movie beyond cult movies. Who knew? I never dreamed it would have such a life. I thank all the people who have supported it. It’s a phenomenon that I don’t know how to explain.

AM:  You mention in your fabulous book that you played Carol Ann as a lesbian secretly in love with Joan Crawford.

RA:  I talked to the director about playing Carol Ann as a lesbian and he liked the idea but decided to keep Carol Ann in the closet. I wrote that book, The Mommie Dearest Diary to keep my sanity. I never intended to publish it, but I did, eventually. I journaled daily without commenting on Faye Dunaway in any way. I just told what she did. (Laughter) It was an extremely stressful time making that movie. That’s how I kept my stress level down.

AM:  You were also going through a lot on a personal level.

RA:  Yes, it was a very challenging time for me. I have never journaled another movie before or since. A few years ago, Faye Dunaway called me and wanted me to come to LA and help her write her version of events. She was on her sixth ghostwriter. I said to her, “Why don’t you just buy my book, or I can send it to you, and you can see what happened every day and maybe that will bring back the memories. She couldn’t remember anything. I wouldn’t have remembered what happened if I hadn’t written that journal.

AM:  We are talking 1981 after all!

RA:  I never heard from her again. I wasn’t going to write her story for her. It’s up to her to write her story.

AM:  She was mostly kind to you, wasn’t she?

RA:  Well…I lived in terror of being fired. That was the hardest part. There were people getting fired and Frank Perry told me himself, “You can’t look good, or I’ll have to fire you.” That was a challenge every day.

AM:  At least you were smart enough to know how to handle that tricky situation and you weren’t afraid of looking bad in the movie. Not every actress can do that, but every actress should be able to.

RA:   I love those character parts. Also, I am in another cult film, ‘Amityville Two: The Possession’. That movie has been resurrected because originally it got really bad reviews. Looking back at it now with our Italian Director who had a different take on it. His approach was more psychological, even though it is a horror movie. It impacted a lot of people. I never expected this resurrection.

AM:  That’s actually one of your bigger roles.

RA:  Yes, I star in it with Burt Young. Interestingly, the director of ‘Prancer’, John Hancock, just called me up and they are flying me into Indiana where we shot it. I hope Sam Elliott comes too. They are having a 35^th Anniversary celebration.

AM:  Is this for the Christmas season?

RA:  They are flying me in on December 13. The original ‘Prancer’ had a life every Christmas. You never know when you’ll get a classic.

AM:  You don’t think about how the movie will end up when you are filming, do you?

RA:  You have to let go. I learned early on that I could do wonderful scenes in a movie, and they were cut.

AM:  This reminds me of Robert Altman cutting you out of the movie. That was kind of heinous.

RA:  Well, that was Bob. He believed in revenge. (Laughter) You can’t do anything about that.

AM:  You seem to be able to process negativity without going into a deep depression.

RA:  I learned a long time ago that it didn’t help if I went into a depression. It’s OK to feel bad for 2 or 3 days, but there is nothing I can do about it. It’s out of my hands.

AM:  Do you help other actors learn this skill?

RA:  Yes, I tell other actors you just have to practice letting go. When you submit an audition tape, ask yourself, “Did I do the best I can do?” The answer will usually be, “Yes, I did the best that I could” under the circumstances of that day, my life and then you have to just let it go. It takes practice. You don’t get it right away.

AM:  Are you auditioning these days?

RA:  Well, I am, but very little. There’s not a lot of parts for older women. Also, a lot of the roles go to name actors. Basically, I’m thrilled I’m in my movie. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. If this is my encore, that’s fine with me. I know my life is in the winter of its years and I am going to enjoy these years. There is no use sitting around and moaning because everybody has challenges. Just do the best you can. Some days are better than other days, but that’s the way it goes.

AM:  I know your upbringing was harrowing. Did you feel damaged by that?

RA:  10 years of therapy helped! (Laughter) And this is when I could hardly afford it. I remember one time I got to my therapist a little early and I saw this dress in the window. It was such a beautiful dress, and I needed a new dress so badly. But then I said, it’s either that dress or my therapy session and I decided to go with my therapy session.

AM:  You have really found balance in life. You are a Libra and that’s what they are known for.

RA:  I think that’s true. I didn’t use to believe in horoscopes, but I now think it’s true because I see myself seeing both sides of things. I could really be a judge. I see both sides of a person’s issues. It’s a good thing but at times a challenge. People want you to be on one side only.

AM:  Is there anything career wise that you still want to do?

RA:  I think my career went the way it did by accident a lot of the time. It just happened. I love the early films were Brian DiPalma following Kazan and Michael Camino.

AM:  You have worked with the most iconic and legendary names in film.

RA: You know why it worked? They would see everyone in person. They would talk to you in person by themselves. There's an energy that happens when you are there in person. None of them asked me to audition. With Kazan, I walked in the door, and he was about 50 feet away at his desk. He watched me come in and by the time I sat down, he told me I was hired. They don’t do that anymore. They make you go through jumps and hoops.

AM:  Do you send in audition tapes now?

RA:  Yes, that is the norm now. You don’t get the energy exchange, and some directors want you to try a different approach, so you don’t get that chance anymore either. You used to have the opportunity to show that you were flexible. You don’t get that opportunity now. The casting tape is so limiting. It’s impersonal and I don’t think it’s a good thing for actors or directors. It is cheaper and it’s all about money, but we really lost something in the process. I think it shows in some of the films today. I watch a lot of foreign films since I’m on the International Film Committee. I will be watching about 70 films this Fall. A lot of them are so much better. The stories are better, and the performances are real. It’s what our industry should be aiming for. They could be creating real stories, but they don’t trust the audience will show up.

AM:  At least we have your movie to look forward to.

RA:  My film is low budget because a lot of wonderful people helped me, but toward the end I mortgaged my apartment. I have a beautiful apartment, but when I die will I be known for my beautiful apartment? Or will I be known for a film I made that I absolutely had to tell. In the Spring I will be selling everything and paying off my debts. I don’t know where I’ll wind up except it will be somewhere in Manhattan.