9 ½ weeks: the film ruined Kim Basinger’s marriage – CinéSéries

SUMMER FILE / PART 4 ​​- Continuation and end of our summer file on “9 ½ weeks”. A film that Kim Basinger does not regret having made despite a humiliating audition, complicated relations with director Adrian Lyne and exhausting filming, which had harmful consequences on his love life.

9 ½ weeks : a harrowing experience

When director Adrian Lyne asks her to crawl for tickets during her audition with Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger leaves the date disgusted and doesn’t want to hear about this project titled 9 ½ weeks. Nevertheless, the actress understands that this movie can get his young career off the ground and “make it stronger”as she explains to New York Times in 1986. She finally accepts the role of Elizabeth, an employee of a New York art gallery who begins an affair with John (Mickey Rourke), an enigmatic Wall Street executive, after their brief encounter in a grocery store.

9 ½ weeks ©20th Century Studios

A relationship begins between them where Elizabeth completely submits to John, accepting most of his sexual proposals. Gradually, her partner’s need for domination becomes suffocating for the heroine, who becomes more and more dependent.

So that Elizabeth’s emotional state is fully perceptible on screen, Adrian Lyne does not hesitate to push his interpreter to the limit during production. Between the filmmaker and Kim Basinger, the tensions are numerous and the shooting is marked by “moments of rage and despair”.

The director manipulates the actress, deliberately keeping her away from Mickey Rourke. He even makes her “afraid of him”. A process far from being “pleasant” but “useful” according to Adrian Lyne, which reaches its climax during the filming of a sequence where John convinces Elizabeth to kill herself. The heroine understands after having swallowed a pill given by her lover that she is participating despite herself in one of his many “games”, and becomes aware of all the influence he has on her.

A marriage that collapses for Kim Basinger

As a prelude to the shots of this scene cut during editing, Mickey Rourke goes so far as to slap Kim Basinger. When the actress ends in tears, Adrian Lyne believes he can shout “Action!”, convinced that she is finally in the right state.

The overall experience of 9 ½ weeks is so painful for the future star of Batman and LA Confidential. During production, Kim Basinger also witnesses the collapse of her marriage with makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton, whom she married in 1980. New York Timesthe actress explains:

I was lost. After a while, I no longer knew who I was. My husband and I had some bad times during the movie.

9 ½ weeks
Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) – 9 ½ weeks ©20th Century Studios

She believes that the way shooting the movie ’emotionally drained’ her is partly at the origin of his marital problems:

It would have hurt any partner. I totally neglected him emotionally for an entire year. I just had nothing left to give, and you can’t do that in a relationship.

“This movie changed my life”

In 1986, Kim Basinger assures us that these problems are behind them. But in 1989, the divorce was pronounced. Thereafter, Kim Basinger lives in particular a love story and a tumultuous separation with Alec Baldwin. For his part, Ron Snyder-Britton unveiled in 1998 the book Kim Basinger: Longer Than Foreverin which he looks back on their relationship and discusses the actress’ affairs with Richard Gere and Prince.

A publication that proves that 9 ½ weeks was indeed a turning point for the actress, became an essential Hollywood figure. In 2015, Kim Basinger claims to have seen Adrian Lyne only once. When they meet “on a street in Beverly Hills” a few months before this interview quoted by the Brazilian version ofEl Paísshe says to him:

This movie changed my life.

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9 ½ weeks: the film ruined Kim Basinger’s marriage – CinéSéries