Filed by KOSU News in Art & Life.
October 20, 2012

The weekends on All Things Considered series Movies I’ve Seen A Million Times features filmmakers, actors, writers and directors talking about the movies that they never get tired of watching.

For actress Susan Sarandon, whose credits include Bull Durham, Thelma & Louise, Dead Man Walking — for which she won a Best Actress Academy Award — and the new film Cloud Atlas, the movie she could watch a million times is John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath.

Interview Highlights

On when she first saw The Grapes of Wrath

“I definitely saw it on TV and I was little, I mean I was probably 11, and I just remember that I was so shaken by the look of it.”

On what she thinks the movie is really about

“I think it’s about family and home and what constitutes a family, and how people under duress reach out to each other.”

On how she thinks the film has influenced her

“I don’t know how it affected me as an actress, but I think that what it did was in some way activate my deep, heart-rending feelings about homelessness.”

On what she remembers most about it

“I just remember Henry Fonda’s face. He managed to register on his face this look of loss and, at the same time, hope. I don’t know how he did that, with very little acting it seemed. I wish that I would be in a classic like that, that would hang around after I’m gone.” [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]