IN 1995, Elizabeth Berkley was the talk of Hollywood, having won major acclaim and a huge fan base with her role as high school student Jessie Spano in the TV series Saved by the Bell, which ran for four years.
But Berkley’s casting as Nomi Malone in Paul Verhoeven’s heavily-panned movie Showgirls made her an outcast in Hollywood, Verhoeven told the New York Daily News.
“Showgirls certainly ruined the career of Elizabeth Berkley in a major way,” he said.
“It made my life more difficult, but not to the degree it did Elizabeth’s. Hollywood turned their backs on her.
“If somebody has to be blamed, it should be me because I thought that it was interesting to portray somebody like that.“I had hoped the end of the movie would explain why she acted that way, when it’s revealed she has convictions linked with drugs, but that too turned out to be a big mistake.”
Verhoeven was insistent that Berkley, whose performance won her a Razzie Award in 1996 for worst actor and worst new actor, was not to blame.
“I asked Elizabeth to do all that — to be abrupt and to act in that way, but people have been attacking her about for that ever since,” said Verhoeven, who directed box office hits Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992)and Starship Troopers (1997).
“I did consider that people would think she had a borderline personality, but that was because her character had a history of drug abuse, so I tried to express that through her abruptness.”
Berkley, who was nominated in 2000 in the Razzie Awards’ worst actor of the century category, stripped naked in Showgirls and took part in a lesbian sex scene.
“We did exactly what we intended to do and we didn’t stop at anything, we just went for it. There was never any problem, we just did what we were had set out to do. There was never any question about the nudity and we actually had a very pleasant shoot and everybody thought we were making an interesting movie,” Verhoeven said.
“In retrospect, Elizabeth may have regretted being so heavily involved with the movie and being so vulnerable to her critics, but when we did it we never had the feeling that this would happen.
“I’ve heard a lot of people criticising Elizabeth’s acting, but they criticised everything about the movie so we will never say we were shocked. Also, half of the audience only ever had their eyes below her face, so of course they would say that!”
He claimed that Hollywood studio executives shunned Berkley.
“They were just so shocked by the movie that they hated her.
“Elizabeth could only have recovered from the movie by being offered a very different role, but that just didn’t happen for her otherwise she would have taken the job.
“New roles were never offered, so it was impossible for her to make a comeback.”
Verhoeven also said that Oscar-award winning actor Charlize Theron had a lucky escape — she had desperately wanted the part of Nomi.
