Fairuza Balk on "When I Began to Realize It Was Work"
The 1985 film Return to Oz has always been one of my very favorite child-actress movies. I hate to pick just one film as "the best," but if I had to, Return to Oz would probably be it. At age 9, Fairuza Balk played a large leading role as Dorothy Gale, and this is an excerpt from her interview from the 1999 VHS rerelease. (Fairuza was about 25 at the time of the interview.)
"My mom was there with me, though, so she - every night, before I went to bed, we'd sit and look at the scenes for the next day and just memorize them till I had them down for the next day.
Dorothy and the Scarecrow during the film's final scene in Oz before Dorothy returns home to Kansas
"Um, it was a lot of work, and I think towards the end of the filming - um, it was a very long shoot. It was about eight or nine months. Um, towards the end of the filming, I got a little tired, and that's when I began to realize it was work. Because it wasn't just, you know, what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it. You had to get up every morning and go and be a professional, and as a child, that's kind of a hard concept to grasp, and you have to get it. You have to grasp it like that. [snaps] There's no fooling around, you know. You can't not go when you feel like playing, you know? [laughs] You have to be responsible, and I think it makes you an adult very quickly."
"My mom was there with me, though, so she - every night, before I went to bed, we'd sit and look at the scenes for the next day and just memorize them till I had them down for the next day.
Dorothy and the Scarecrow during the film's final scene in Oz before Dorothy returns home to Kansas
"Um, it was a lot of work, and I think towards the end of the filming - um, it was a very long shoot. It was about eight or nine months. Um, towards the end of the filming, I got a little tired, and that's when I began to realize it was work. Because it wasn't just, you know, what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it. You had to get up every morning and go and be a professional, and as a child, that's kind of a hard concept to grasp, and you have to get it. You have to grasp it like that. [snaps] There's no fooling around, you know. You can't not go when you feel like playing, you know? [laughs] You have to be responsible, and I think it makes you an adult very quickly."