She commanded the weather, Anjelica Huston intones with quiet awe.
[Then the men] would go off and play backgammon, Huston says with a laugh.
Wed always listen to her because she was always right.
Photo: Justin Downing
From her bedroom lookout, she excoriates them as a nest of vipers.
Shed lost her footing some years before, and she was making do.
It wasnt a happy existence, but shed found her way of controlling it.
Huston and her father in 1980.
And she doesnt miss out on a lot of action.
She knows whats going on at all times.
Huston and her father in 1980.
Huston in the United Kingdom in 1971.
Huston remembers them all as tough, very present, and very beautiful, but in unusual ways.
One would be hard-pressed to call her a classical beauty, Huston recalls, but she was very impressive.
She was all eyes and nose on this little tiny neck.
She was more like a child than a woman… very fragile.
So it was an odd combinationshe and my father.
McCullers died only months after her departure.
They were the stories that stirred me, she says.
I remember the element of fear.
Fear and beautythat mixture.
It was almost operatic: beautiful but not without dread.
During this time, she also made her acting debut with an abortive drawing-room performance as one ofMacbeths witches.
It was a little bit Edward Gorey, she muses.
Ditto during her time in West London, where her mother relocated after separating from her father.
It was a kind of a Victorian romance.
Huston in the United Kingdom in 1971.
Its this crossover between the scarily Gothic and these grand ladies…
I think they kind of come together in my history, she says.
I got up in the morning and went to work and to bed.
Then, I got out of bed at work and went home to bed.
I think its like old lace that you find.
You know the lace has been there for years, but youre just rediscovering it.
