New Again: Ione Skye

Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film Say Anything… is considered a cult classic for a reason. It’s a summertime romance between Lloyd Dobler, a kind misfit played by John Cusack, and Diane Court, the a beautiful but removed high school valedictorian played by Ione Skye. The iconic scene where Lloyd stands outside Diane’s bedroom window in a tan trench coat, blasting her favorite Peter Gabriel song from a now-extinct boom box set the standards for all subsequent adolescent romantic gestures.

The many fans of Say Anything… will be pleased (or maybe not) to hear that NBC plans to adapt the film into a TV series. It will be set 10 years after Lloyd and Diane graduate from high school, but in the present day. The two have been broken up for a long time and Lloyd isn’t where he had hoped to be. But when Diane returns to their hometown, he is inspired to achieve greatness and get back his high school sweetheart. Crowe and Cusack, however, are not too happy with the news and have taken to Twitter to express their opposition. We’ll have to wait and see whether the TV series will transpire in spite of their disapproval. In honor of the classic film, we’ve reprinted the below 1987 interview with Ione Skye, two years before she would be known as the precocious good girl Diane. At the time of the interview, Skye was dating Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ frontman Antony Kiedis.—Christiana Tiches

Ione Skye
By Staff

“I have a black puppy named Elvis and three cats: Zooey (Franny ran away), Pretty Paws, and Hudson (named after Rock),” actress Ione Skye proudly declares, quickly adding, “I named them all myself.” Joining her brother, Donovan Leitch, as one of Hollywood’s Bright Young Siblings (like their friends the Zappas and the Phoenixes), Ione has come into cinematic bloom. She stars in this month’s River’s Edge, under the direction of Tim Hunter, and this summer will costar in Jimmy Reardon with River Phoenix. Stranded, due in September, features Ione as an orphaned girl living with her grandmother—played by Maureen O’Sullivan—whose house is invaded by aliens. “The aliens are fabulous,” says Ione, describing the film as “funny-scary.” David Wolper’s Napoleon and Josephine, produced for ABC television, has Ione cast as Pauline, Napoleon’s youngest and favorite sister. “She was a wild thing,” the actress observes. “She went wild with clothes and boyfriends.” To prepare for the role, Ione is reading The Letters of Marie Antoinette: “I’m a total sucker for love stories.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FIROOZ ZAHEDI. HAIR: KATHRINA EHRHARDT/CELESTINE-CLOUTIER, L.A. MAKEUP: JEFFREY BEATON/CELESTINE-CLOUTIER, L.A. STYLING: CESARE ZUCCA/CLOUTIER, L.A. CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES: GIANNI VERSACE. PRINT: FILM WORKS, L.A. COORDINATE BY JOAN A. QUINN.

THIS ARTICLE INTIALLY APPEARED IN THE MAY 1987 ISSUE OF INTERVIEW.

New Again runs every Wednesday. For more, click here.