Screensaver: Hope springs eternal

Hope Davis talks about her upcoming features, "Mumford" and "Arlington Road," and why she's no Hollywood day-tripper.

By Edward Lewine

Dec 11, 1998 | Her name is Hope Davis and on this cool fall afternoon in New York City, when the leaves in Central Park are turning yellow and swirling about the Metropolitan Museum, she is still able to walk unnoticed through the crowded galleries. In her black skirt and leather coat, with her blond hair lank against her face, she has an aura of jaded New York cool about her. She fits right in.

Davis has come for the second time to see an exhibition of 90-year-old photographs by the impressionist painter Edgar Degas. The actress is drawn to the photos, she says, because the people in them seem unconcerned with the camera. "It is so disarming to me how little they cared about what their faces looked like," says Davis. She moves to a photo of Degas himself, who is staring gloomily into the distance. "You would never see anyone with that expression nowadays, because nowadays the man would be like this --"

Then Davis turns around, sets her eyes in a seductive scowl and purses her lips in a perfect imitation of a supermodel pouty face. She waits for a reaction and when she doesn't get one, she laughs quietly and heads off in another direction.

Hope Davis is a charmer. She has the knack of being funny and deadpan and dramatic and seductive all at the same time. She is polite and engaging in person, and yet another part of her seems to be watching you from behind the veil of her eyes. This sense of distance is also part of Davis' allure. So far she has exhibited her particular talents in a handful of well-received performances in independent films, including "The Daytrippers," "The Myth of Fingerprints" (both 1997) and "Next Stop Wonderland" (1998).

Now she is taking a few months off, hanging out with her mother, her sisters and actor friends like Stanley Tucci and Julianne Moore, because it looks like 1999 is going to be hectic. She'll have two big feature films out, "Arlington Road," a thriller with Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges, and "Mumford," a comedy by Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote and directed "The Big Chill" and "Body Heat."

"Hope is in a great spot," says Kasdan, who is currently editing "Mumford" in Los Angeles. "Everybody is interested in her. There is a huge buzz about her. I think she has come out of the indie world in a big way. Some of the public hasn't seen her yet, but she's getting offered big parts. And she has the acting chops to pull it off."

Davis, 33, says she's thrilled with the way things are going. "You know, everything for me is pretty rosy right now." And yet, Davis admits she harbors a lot of anxiety. For all her good fortune, she can't stop fretting.

"I worry about being alone for the rest of my life," says Davis, who in the past two years has been through a divorce as well as the death of her father. "I've been worrying about that for two years, even though I'm seeing someone really nice. I'm worried about not being able to get a job in five years and being right back where I felt I was five years ago. You are totally out of control in this profession to some degree."

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