What happened to the actress Carolyn Farina?

by Julian O’Dea PhD

[“A slip of a girl”. “Audrey Rouget” in Metropolitan (1990)]

The question is often asked, whatever happened to the actress Carolyn Farina? The recent success of “Damsels in Distress” (2011) has put the spotlight back on Whit Stillman, and his first film “Metropolitan” (1990) and its young leading lady have no doubt received renewed attention. The obvious question is, what happened to Carolyn Farina after her charming role as Audrey Rouget in “Metropolitan”?

Carolyn Farina at an event relating to Whit Stillman’s recent film, Damselsin Distress:

The same woman, actress Carolyn Farina, at 26, in Whit Stillman’s movie Metropolitan, playing New York debutante Audrey Rouget:

Another shot of her at the same recent Damsels in Distress event:

There is a website that specialises in picking out “jarring cameo/bit partsin movies” and features Carolyn Farina in Damsels in Distress. Was it jarring? Yes, it was a little. I finally worked out that the actress lookedlike she had had a facelift and the pained immobility of her face in her brief scene as Carolina the waitress contrasted sadly with the mobile expressiveness of her untouched face as Audrey in Metropolitan. I could be wrong, but I suspect a facelift.

“the texasyank: joe mcdade” asked some time ago, here and here, what happened to Carolyn Farina, referring to an earlier cameo appearance in TheLast Days of Disco as the same character as in Metropolitan, more professionally and personally grown up; and suggesting that the evidence was that her character (“Audrey Rouget”) ended up with “Charlie” from the first movie. However, although she is a group with Charlie at the disco, itis not clear that she is his “date”. In fact, she dances with “Fred Neff” from the first film.

She has a low profile and those who do search for information on her seem often to be baffled.Here, for example, is a very sketchy page which leads to three photos purporting to be Carolyn Farina in later life, only one of which is actually her.

We had an in-depth discussion of “Metropolitan” and director Whit Stillman’s other films, including his latest, “Damsels in Distress”, here.

Pretty, even when she looks sad (Carolyn Farina as Audrey Rouget in “Metropolitan”, 1990):

People have claimed that the young Carolyn Farina resembled the young MollyRingwald. Here is a shot of the latter, and there is clearly a resemblance:

Whit Stillman, her director in Metropolitan, has given four reasons why her career did not prosper: 1) She was typecast as a debutante/preppie typebut she wasn’t blonde and WASPy enough for most such roles (except, as Stillman delicately puts it, for Scorsese, who as an Italian-American director was prepared to cast her in The Age of Innocence). 2) She is shy (his word) and did not push hard for more parts. 3) She was unlucky and didn’t get the “breaks”. 4) She is based in New York.

Interesting. I find all these reasons somewhat plausible. And regrettable.

I am not convinced that Farina’s brunette status was the problem. She had amodest but respectable role in “The Age of Innocence” (1993) when she wouldhave been about 29, a few years older than in “Metropolitan”. And a major female role in The Age of Innocence was given to Winona Ryder, a 22 year old brunette. Perhaps Farina looked too “ethnic”, but I would not have

thought so. Arguably she looked no more ethnic than her screen “brother”, Daniel Day-Lewis, both cast as “WASPs” in The Age of Innocence.

You do need a lot of “breaks” as Stillman said. People want to believe thatability is rewarded, but it is not quite that simple, in my experience. Even in ordinary life, you have to be lucky and you have to have continuingluck or “breaks”. It is possible to do everything right, and still not succeed.I get the feeling that Stillman feels a bit troubled by what happened, or rather didn’t happen, to Carolyn Farina. He has obviously spent time thinking about it. Perhaps it was unfair to take a girl from working class Queens and give her a role like that, which simultaneously typecast her andset her up for subsequent disappointment. Some of the other women in the cast of Metropolitan had real-world legal careers and the like to fall backon. For an Australian, the continuing power of class and ethnicity in America can be surprising.

Whit Stillman’s recent success with Damsels in Distress and The Cosmopolitans has no doubt focused new attention on Metropolitan, his firstand arguably his signature film. An obvious question under the circumstances will be: what happened to Carolyn Farina, in the long interval between “Audrey” (Metropolitan) and “Carolina” (Damsels)?

Stillman himself is, of course, no stranger to long creative intervals.

On the positive side, Carolyn Farina will at least be remembered affectionately for her charming portrayal of Audrey in Metropolitan.

“Metropolitan Hair”

The “Metropolitan Hair” blogger girl said she thought Audrey’s hair looked better tousled, not all debutante-y. So, here are two pictures of Audrey’s hair slightly tousled. The first is from a beachside scene in which she delivers the classic line, “Do you really think I am flat-chested?”, a

question Tom handles with aplomb. The second is Audrey at Midnight Mass (Episcopalian), looking deucedly pretty.

The second of these came from The Enchanting Isabelle Gillies Fan Site. Theconnection is that the character of Audrey’s mother was played by Linda Gillies, the real-life mother of actress Isabelle Gillies, who also appeared in Metropolitan.

Another picture of Carolyn Farina (on the left in the “little black dress”,looking quite good, although she was probably not tall enough to have really good legs), apparently released recently by Getty Images:

The legend reads: “NEW YORK CITY – JULY 31: (L-R) Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements and Allison Rutledge-Parisi attend the premiere of ‘Metropolitan’ on July 31, 1990 at the Paris Theater in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage)”

Despite her glam look, she was back at her shopgirl job at Macy’s later in the year.

For completeness, two further similar images from the premiere in New York of Metropolitan in 1990:

https://davidcollard.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/162791642.jpg

Carolyn Farina looks composed and pretty in the last one. Ed Clements looksa trifle awkward.

Below is another shot of her. This interesting shot seems to have been taken around the time of her appearance in Metropolitan in 1990. She was about 26. The photo is from the “Time and Life Images” collection, and is labelled “Salesclerk, actress Carolyn Farina lying on park bench.” It does not appear to have been published.

From her flat shoes and sensible dress, I would guess that was taken on a break from her “daytime job” at Macy’s. But that is just a guess. Here is ashot of her from about the same time at work:

In fact, I think it is the same dress in both shots. She was so young and early in her career that it looks like that in the first shot she has just gone outside from her sales job to a nearby park, plonked herself down on abench, put her little legs in their flat salesgirl shoes in the air, and tried to look like an actress. Cute. In the second photo, in Macy’s, it looks like the photographer, Kimberly Butler, has got her to push her hair back and put on a pair of earrings along with the other pieces from the store’s stock. In fact, here is the evidence:

“Caption: Salesclerk, actress Carolyn Farina posing at costume jewelry counter she tends, bedecked w. bracelets, necklaces & earrings festooned w.price tags from the stock she sells at Macy’s department store. (Photo by Kimberly Butler//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)”It is interesting that she is selling costume jewelry, not fine jewelry. Because she was young and had a working class accent in real life? Maybe.

The IMDb database on movies says this: “The female lead of Audrey was cast after the director’s wife ran into Carolyn Farina while shopping at the Macy’s store where Farina was working at the perfume section. She had no previous acting experience.” Possibly. But most reports are that Miss Farina went to an audition (see the To The Top story above, for example), and she had at least studied acting. I suppose it is possible that Stillman’s wife recommended her for the role, but the IMDb story sounds just a bit too good to be true. I mean, “pretty girl discovered working at the counter in Macy’s”. It sounds like the plot for an early silent film.

According to Google Trends as cited on the LucyWho site, interest in Carolyn Farina spiked in what I take to be mid-2011 and early 2012. I imagine this was related to publicity about, and the eventual release of, “Damsels in Distress”. She had a small role in this film, and interest in Whit Stillman probably led people to investigate “Metropolitan” and its female lead. Interest in Farina seems to have died down of late, although Iget people coming to this blog who have searched on “what happened to Carolyn Farina?”, as well as from her Wikipedia article.

In the interests of completeness, here is a list of the films in which MissFarina has appeared:

Metropolitan (1990) as Audrey RougetLittle Noises (1992) as Cousin LinnyThe Age of Innocence (1993) as Janey ArcherThe Last Days of Disco (1998) as Audrey RougetDamsels in Distress (2011) as waitress Carolina Antonucci.

It is interesting that all these films were apparently shot in or not far from New York; which lends weight to the point Whit Stillman makes about Farina being New York based and therefore perhaps limited in her career.

Whit Stillman is very much a realist, and indeed I suspect he may personally be a bit of a depressive, which is almost the definition of a total realist. His realism extends to his portrayal of the evanescence of youthful activities. He actually labours the point when he has one character in “Metropolitan” say something to the effect that he had thoughtthe clique and its parties would go on, and a worldly-wise girl tells him no. She knows that real life has not begun.

One of Stillman’s themes in “Metropolitan” is success and failure in life, and he has Audrey stress the drama of life as a whole in this regard. So, whereas early joys and successes, such as those the young actors achieved in the movie and in real life, are significant, they are not lasting.

The older man of the WASP class in the bar (“Dick Edwards”, above, played by Roger W Kirby in his only movie role), has had that frustrating thing, moderate success only. He is like a figure from the future; a warning to Tom and Charlie that real, lasting success may elude them. Ironically this could be said to be true of the actors who played their roles. Neither wenton to great success. Like Carolyn Farina (“Audrey”), they peaked early. This is an aspect of the cruelty of life that is one of Stillman’s themes.

As Audrey says to Tom in this scene, there is the “prospect of wasting yourwhole productive life, of personal failure … life is melodramatic if you look at the whole sweep of it … I guess few people’s lives match their own expectations”.

Carolyn Farina was extraordinarily lucky to be plucked from obscurity, thatone in ten thousand girls who gets to live the dream. She was lucky to look

the part, and to appeal to Whit Stillman as a director. And she could act; looking and acting like something she was not, an upper class debutante anda prim bluestocking. Act so well, in fact, that she brilliantly typecast herself.

Carolyn Farina as Audrey Rouget, not joining in the game of strip poker. She and Charlie retain their dignity in the background.

Audrey Rouget reading at the beach house in The Hamptons: “She retains bothher sobriety and virginity …”

The crucial later roles did not come, at least not large enough and in big enough movies to propel her forward. Her last two appearances have been barely cameos, and gave her nothing to work with. In Little Noises and The Last Days of Disco she had no lines at all. There is a hint from her resumethat she was unwilling or unable for some reason to leave New York to work.Perhaps there was some family reason for this, or perhaps her personal background left her unable to leave her roots behind. In the absence of anyhard information, anything further I said here would be even more speculative. She really had only one noteworthy role, but on the positive side, she will be remembered for that role as long as people enjoy good films. Her brilliant performance in the role of Audrey Rouget, a character who seems to have become – in a modest way – a cultural icon or touchstone,suggests that she had a rare natural genius for acting, that mysterious capacity some people have to simply intuit and inhabit a character on the screen. I cannot help but suspect that, with better luck, she might have gone on to do much, much more.

There is another point I would like to make, a rather delicate one. The ability to act does not seem to be related to general intelligence. The French apparently have an expression, “as stupid as an artist”. One could also say, “as stupid as an actor”. Some of the very best actors are not very intelligent people. I can think of a few actresses who are supposedly not very bright, but who can somehow intuit a role, even playing highly intelligent characters. For example, Sean Young is a thoughtful woman, but her behaviour and some of her reported comments do not suggest great intelligence. And yet she made a brilliant Rachael in Blade Runner. I also get the impression that Carolyn Farina is not terribly intelligent, based on her reported education, her “day jobs” and some of her reported remarks.I could be wrong, but I don’t detect great brains. And yet she managed to play a role completely outside her experience so well that people assumed she was “playing herself”. Apparently she had acting genius.

In some fields, talent seems to crop up in the least likely places. Intelligence, good background and personal style are not guarantees of talent. This seems to be true not just in acting, but in other fields such as poetry. Some of the best poets are far from the stereotype, for example.There are many people who feel they have poetic levels of sensitivity, who network hard and associate with all the right people, who nevertheless lackthe true spark. In fields like poetry and acting, it is often the most unlikely people who somehow have the knack. (This is a theme in Little Noises, the film in which Farina had a tiny part. Most of the aspiring writers and actors had no real talent. The only man with a genuine creativegift was the mute and sometimes homeless street poet.)

That said, and despite her apparent natural genius, it is possible that Farina’s modest background, absence of a father at home, and limited education, might have meant that she lacked the personal and family resources to build her career effectively. I read a remark recently that most directors have family resources. I wonder if the same is true of successful actors and actresses. Having family money and resources and the advantages of social class, as a cushion or a launching pad (to mix

metaphors), might also help in that line of work. In short, unlike Whit Stillman, Carolyn Farina did not attend Harvard.

Austin Bramwell, who also appears in the bibliography below, having writtena piece on Stillman’s films from a Christian perspective, had some interesting things to say about the importance of family background and money in facilitating the early stage of careers in America here.

My conclusion on “what happened to Carolyn Farina?” in the sense of why hercareer did not prosper would be something like the following. Most men willsay that a woman looks her best under 25 years of age. Farina was a bit oldat 26 to begin a career as a young actress based largely on her looks (by comparison, Michelle Pfeiffer was 25 in her first hit, the big mainstream movie Scarface, and that was not her first movie). Among other actresses I have mentioned here, Winona Ryder was only 22 in The Age of Innocence, and Sean Young 23 in Blade Runner (whereas the woman – Nina Axelrod – whom she beat for the role because the director Ridley Scott wanted someone young and unworldly looking was about 27).

[Hollywood is perfectly capable of casting an attractive 27 year old as a “spinster librarian”:

Marion the librarian (actress Ashley Gardner) – Kramer’s girlfriend from the Seinfeld episode The Library.]

While her slender and girlish appearance helped make Farina look youthful in Metropolitan, there are nonetheless some scenes in which she looks a bitstringy and drawn. Her acting was very good, but to build a major lasting career like Michelle Pfeiffer would require both the exceptional looks onlyfound in really young women and the opportunity to build a reputation as a good actress. In Little Noises, she was already a bit too old at 28 in terms of peak beauty and the film gave her no opportunity to act. In The Age of Innocence, she was nearly 30 and the film only did an indifferent job of showing off her acting range. She plays Janey, the shy and retiring sister of Newland Archer. Even to the kindest eye, the actress looks a bit too pale and thin in the face in this film. In a word, faded. In summary, Ithink she simply began too late. Also, her small-breasted, short-haired style probably did not have a wide enough appeal in any case. (She appeals to me, but most men want more hair and boobage.)

(Carolyn Farina kneeling on the right in this scene. Feminine posture and style, but clearly not busty.)Another charming picture of the actress, presumably from the film “Metropolitan”. This also shows her gamine, boyish figure:

A possible alternative path would have been playing character parts. It is possible to imagine her making a career of playing quirky young women, wives and mothers, or indeed unmarried sisters as in The Age of Innocence. But her best chances for building this kind of career, in Little Noises andThe Age of Innocence, only amounted to a non-speaking part and a dull part in a fairly dull film. I suspect there is unused footage of her role as Cousin Linny in Little Noises somewhere, possibly playing opposite Crispin Glover. If it ever emerges, it might prove to be a revelation.Another puzzling question is why the actress never seems to have appeared on television. I understand that many New York based actors and actresses get work in the TV series filmed there. Why, for example, did she never

appear on something like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? She would have made a good victim.

A COMPARISON WITH A LATER “AUDREY”, CARRIE MACLEMORE

I discuss Carrie MacLemore and her role in the new Whit Stillman production here. She plays a character known as “Aubrey”, although her nameis confused in the film with “Audrey” and Audrey Hepburn is namechecked. She bears some general resemblance to Audrey Hepburn and also to “Audrey Rouget” (Carolyn Farina). It is as if Carrie MacLemore is Stillman’s new “Audrey”. A tweet from Stillman has tended to confirm the identification and the director discusses his liking for names like Audrey and Aubrey here.

In fact, in my opinion, whereas Audrey is an unusual but classic feminine name, Aubrey is probably most famous as the first name of the male artist Aubrey Beardsley, and is less truly feminine.  Audrey is an Old English woman saint’s name meaning “noble strong”, which suits the character in Metropolitan. However Aubrey is a Germanic name meaning “king of the elves”, although it can be used as a variation of Audrey for a girl.

In any case, it is interesting to compare the careers of the two actresses:Carrie MacLemore and Carolyn Farina.

Carrie MacLemore appeared in her first film, Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress, at the age of about 24. She had had some previous experience on television, including on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Her latest project is appearing as “Aubrey Lee” in Whit Stillman’s “The Cosmopolitans”. She is about 27. The role is a good one.

Carolyn Farina appeared in her first film, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, atthe age of about 26. She had had no previous screen experience. Her next project after Metropolitan was a very minor part in the film “Little Noises” at the age of about 28.

It remains to be seen how Carrie MacLemore will fare, but she has had a better start than Carolyn Farina.

Her personal Life: This piece has focussed on Carolyn Farina the actress. Due to her relatively brief career, it has proved possible to be fairly comprehensive about her professional work as an actress. Something is also known of her work outside acting. However, unlike many actresses, her personal life is largely unknown. She seems to be a private person, so thismay be how she likes it.Nevertheless it is natural to be curious. Tyler Coates, an online journalist in New York, has reported that he spoke to her not long ago. However I have not found a recent interview in any medium. Nor is anything available on her personal life. It would be interesting to know if she married and had a family, for example. Or if she continued in the dramatic field in some capacity, perhaps teaching acting.

A person calling herself “Maria” advised me electronically that Farina never married. Tantalising. I suppose I am naive because one possibility that I never considered, but that now occurs to me, is that she could be a Lesbian. Appearances can be deceptive, and I am no expert. She certainly seems intensely feminine in her early screen and newspaper appearances. On the other hand, is there something a bit too convincing in her portrayal ofa hardened and presumably unmarried career woman in her brief cameo in The Last Days of Disco? Am I imagining it, or does she look  a little hard-faced and even sexually ambiguous in that scene at the disco? Has she movedfrom being gamine and boyish to being hatchet-faced and mannish?

Another thing niggles at me. In the “To the Top” interview, illustrated with her picture taken at her jewelry counter in Macy’s, New York, and shown above, she remarks that she is not “going steady”. The more I think about this, the stranger it seems. Here is a girl in modest daytime employment; twenty-six years old; extremely pretty; who has just finished making a successful independent film. And yet there is no man in her life? She did not meet a man on set she liked? Nobody at the department store? She is in a dead-end sales job at twenty-six. And she is not in a relationship of any kind? It just sounds strange to me, and it makes me wonder again about her sexuality. Maybe she wanted to focus on her nascent screen career (but the right man could have helped her in that respect, a man with good show business connections perhaps). Or maybe the resentment she expressed towards her long-absent father had transferred to men in general. Or maybe she simply did not find men sexually appealing.

Her family: Some details on her family are publicly available and raise some interesting points. It seems from the interviews that I have cited from theBaltimore Sun and People magazine, that at the time when “Metropolitan” wascoming out, she lived alternately with her older brother (30 at the time toher 26) in Brooklyn and her mother in Forest Hills, Queens. The following public records seem very likely to indicate that her mother Harriet is 77, her brother Steven is 54, and Carolyn herself is 50 of course. There is also an Amilda (or “Arnilda” or “Arnilda Alma”), whose age is not available.

It seems that Carolyn has remained in New York. Carolyn’s brother Steven and “Amilda” have apparently spent time in California.

I am unclear on the relationship of Amilda to Carolyn. I imagine that she is either her sister or her sister-in-law (married to Steven).

I am fairly confident that these people are related because of the similarity in their various domiciles. The same locales recur, especially Hollis NY and Oakland Gardens NY. Moreover Harriet Farina is listed as residing at both Forest Hills, Queens, where Carolyn lived for a while at least in 1990, and in Bayside, Queens, where Carolyn is reported to have been born.

These records, here and here, also suggest that these people are Carolyn’s relatives.

It is remarkable that, despite her brush with fame, I cannot find any evidence that Carolyn Farina has ever lived outside Brooklyn or Queens. I have already remarked on the fact that all the films Carolyn Farina appeared in were shot in or near New York.

These details on Steven Farina (which include residences and relatives) and this real estate record are interesting. The latter record indicates that Steven and “Almida” or “Arnilda” Farina shared a house in New Jersey for six years. They also seem both to have lived in Vallejo, California. Itis possible that they are brother and sister, but husband and wife seems much more likely. A commenter suggested that this is Carolyn Farina now and it appears she works in childhood education:

 For comparison, here is a photo of Carolyn Farina at a recent movie premiere for “Damsels in Distress” in which she had a cameo (There is certainly a strong resemblance, especially about the hair, eyes, eyebrows and cheeks; and indeed the facial expression is very similar in the two photos):

I think it very likely that they are the same woman, given that they share a name, and given the physical resemblance. The main difference is that thewoman in the first picture seems plumper in the face, but it is possible that this photo was taken a couple of years later. The photo at the movie premiere was presumably taken in 2011 when the film “Damsels in Distress” was released. If the woman in the LinkedIn site is the actress, it appears that she had been working as a teacher’s assistant at the time when she played her small role as a waitress in the movie. She has since taken up work as a school psychologist. The cast of Metropolitan:

and again, the cast, at Cannes in 1990:

At the close of her best movie, “Metropolitan”, walking between actors Taylor Nichols and Edward Clements:

Bibliography of the actress Carolyn Farina

[In the hope that this account will be as close to definitive as possible on her screen career, I shall gradually add bibliographic items here. Many will be Internet references either to Carolyn Farina herself, or to her character “Audrey Rouget”, or to the director who discovered her, Whit Stillman.]

“‘A Few Sordid Details': An Homage to Whit Stillman’s ‘Metropolitan'”.http://doomedbourgeoisinlove.tumblr.com/ [This includes a recent, long interview with Whit Stillman from “cinephilearchive” as well as several pages of atmospheric images of the milieu of Metropolitan and songs from the soundtrack. A trove of charming material.]

“A Good Stopping Point” blog. Books in Film: Metropolitan (1990).

American Spectator. 1981 article by Whit Stillman, “Sleazy, Soapy and Rich“.

American Spectator. 2012 interview with Whit Stillman.

“An Alan Smithee Podcast” on “Metropolitan”.http://alansmitheepodcast.com/2009/12/12/episode-32-metropolitan-1990-whit-stillman-of-unknown-origin-1983-george-p-cosmatos/ [Interesting, but containing a lot of false notes and inaccuracies. There are too many to mention, but they say that Audrey’s little brother makes fun of her small bust at the beginning of the movie. No, he poked fun at her “enormous” bottom (which is silly because she had a slim, boyish figure). They do make the suggestion to google on “Whit Stillman Republican”, which is actually worth doing.]

“Apartment 303″ blog. Metropolitan Hair.

“Are the hills going to march off? Film criticism” blog. Review of Metropolitan. [” … Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina), a timid Jane Austen fangirl with the kind of vaguely tomboyish look that characterizes French New Wave starlets.”]

“Ask Andy About Clothes” blog; [a thread which segues into some interesting commentary on “Audrey Rouget” and “Metropolitan”.]http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?53620-For-Cooly-(Metropolitan-s-Charlie)

“audreyrouget” Tumblr. [This is maintained by a film fan who also has a Twitter account athttps://twitter.com/audreyrouget, which includes some comments on Carolyn Farina and Whit Stillman.]

“Audrey’s Theme (The Hamptons)”: Metropolitan Soundtrack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rVEze1ENo

“Austenprose: A Jane Austen Blog”. On Metropolitan.

A.V. Club. “Laugh With and At Manhattan Rich Kids” by John Teti. [Longish intelligentish discussion of Metropolitan and other Stillman films.]

Badt, Karin. June 2014. Huffington Post. “Franco-American Film Festival on the Champs Elysees: From Whit Stillman to Agnes Varda.” [” Stillman smiled. “I am very appreciative of this festival — and of Sophie Dulac, its president,” he said. “It is because of SophieDulac that my film Damsels in Distress received distribution in France in 2012, and that my film Metropolitan is being re-released this summer.” “]

Baltimore Sun. September 1990. Story on Carolyn Farina, “A new Audrey Hepburn?”

Blu-ray.com. Metropolitan. [The screenshots are probably of most interest here.]

BOMB Magazine. 1991. Whit Stillman by Betsy Sussler. [Interview focussing on Metropolitan.]

Boston Globe. August 2013. Hot For Films That Make Waves. [Refers briefly to the concluding seashore scene in “Metropolitan”.]

Bramwell, Austin W. “Films of the Spirit“. In First Things magazine, June/July 2002. [A serious consideration of Stillman’s films from a Christian perspective.]

Carolyn Farina on Tumblr. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/carolyn-farina

Cineoutsider. “The Discreet Charm of Downward Social Mobility” by “Slarek”.A comparison review of two releases of “Metropolitan” on DVD. [Fairly short but quite intelligent discussion of the film. The reviewer comes to grips with the idea that Stillman really does have some conservative views. He remarks how good it is to have well-rounded female characters. But since this is drawing room comedy with elements of romantic farce, that is perhaps not so surprising. Men have to have women worth wooing and making love to.]

City Journal: Julia Magnet. “A Great Conservative Filmmaker“.

Collider. June 2014. Talia Soghomonian. “Champs-Elysées Film Festival Honors Indie Genius Whit Stillman, Plus a Retrospective on His Films and

More on His Upcoming Project THE COSMOPOLITANS.” [On Metropolitan: “To find the actors, Whitman placed an ad in Backstage magazine. He also went to all the private school[s] to holdauditions”; “Audrey Rouget, portrayed by Carolyn Farina, is ‘the secret of this film. She also plays a small part in Damsels in Distress.’ And the character appears briefly dancing the night away in The Last Days of Disco.”]

CraveOnline Australia. September 2012. William Bibbiani. “A Doofi Orientation: Whit Stillman on Damsels in Distress.” [This interview with Whit Stillman is mainly about “Damsels in Distress”, a later film from the director of Metropolitan. But it contains this interesting exchange which refers to characters from Metropolitan, including Audrey Rouget and Charlie Black:Interviewer: What is the [Sally Fowler Rat Pack] up to these days? Because they showed up in The Last Days of Disco …Stillman: Did you notice that Taylor Nichols was in this film?Interviewer: I did. Is that his character?Stillman: We didn’t want to press that. One idea was that it was Charlie Black. He doesn’t really play it as Charlie Black, but that character could be Charlie Black. He could be teaching seminars at a prestigious [university]. Audrey Rouget would still be top editor at Strauss, or she might have moved on […] I’m sure Fred and Sally are still having a good time.]

“Dusk in Autumn” blog on “Audrey Rouget”. http://akinokure.blogspot.com.au/2008/05/i-gave-older-women-chance.html [“ … would you rather date the Audrey Rouget character from Metropolitan or who she will tend to become at age 30?”]

“Ellen and Jim Have a Blog, Too.” [On Metropolitan in the context of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.] http://www.jimandellen.org/austenblog/941.html

Famous Fix website on Carolyn Farina. http://who.famousfix.com/tpx_241449/carolyn-farina/[This website gives her birth date as 1 January 1964. It gives her height as unknown. I would estimate it at about 5 foot 4 inches or a little taller.]

Fort Worth Weekly: Kristian Lin. 2012. “DVD Review: Damsels in Distress“. [“Whatever happened to Carolyn Farina, anyway? Aside from Stillman’s films, the only other movie role she’s taken on has been as Daniel Day-Lewis’ sister in Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. What has she been up to in the meantime?”]

Guest of a Guest: Daily Style Phile: Whit Stillman[Six “slides”]

Henrie, Mark C. (ed.) (2001). Doomed Bourgeois in Love : Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman. ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware: http://www.amazon.com/Doomed-Bourgeois-Love-Essays-Stillman/dp/1882926706/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

ioncinema. 2012. Review of the Criterion Collection Blu-ray version of Metropolitan. [An appreciative if somewhat awkward review.]

Kubic, Amanda Marie. 2013. Mansfield Park and Metropolitan: Austen’s Morality in Whit Stillman’s Modern World. Persuasions On-Line: A

publication of the Jane Austen Society of North America. V.34, NO.1 (Winter2013).

Liberation Next Cinema. 1 July 2014. Julien Gester. “‘Metropolitan’. Hors du Temps‘”. [A new review of “Metropolitan” in French. The title describes the film as “timeless”. A fairly brief review, which includes a reference to “Dry Your Eyes” by Brenda Payton’s group, which plays in the background as “Audrey Rouget” shops sadly for Christmas Presents: seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VCzq726DHw for the song.]

LucyWho. Carolyn Farina. [Brief notes, including Google Trends information on interest in theactress. One of the pictures supplied, the second from the left, is not her, but is Frances O’Connor, an Australian actress. This collection of videos, some of which are interviews of Whit Stillman, is also worth noting.]

“Man Without a Star” blog on “Metropolitan (1990)”.http://manwithoutastar.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/metropolitan-1990/

“Mirror80 Reflecting on 1980s Style” blog on “Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan”.http://mirror80.com/2012/04/whit-stillmans-metropolitan/ [“Audrey wears a variety of big-sleeved dresses that she somehow manages to pull off with style. It must be the voluminous short hair and bright red lipstick.”]

New York Times. 2012. Feature on Whit Stillman.

New York Times. About Carolyn Farina.

Nitehawk Cinema. August 2012. On Metropolitan. [Gothamist Q&A with Whit Stillman and Chris Eigeman on Metropolitan. The discussion moves on to Carolyn Farina and her truncated career at 8:10.]

O’Dea, Julian. 2013. “Catholic Sensibility from a WASP Woody Allen“. Oriens. Journal of the Oriens Foundation. [This is an article of mine that discusses the moral universe of Stillman’s films, with references to the character of Audrey Rouget in Metropolitan as well as the young men and women in later films.]

ofakind tumblr. In Character: Audrey Rouget. [A brief appreciation of the film, with some fashion notes.]Official Podcast. Episode 2 – Taylor Nichols. [Released 12 February 2014. An audio interview with the actor who played Charlie in Metropolitan. There is some discussion of the final scenes in the movie in which Audrey, Charlie and Tom interact. It is clear that Nichols has a sound career with regular television work as well as a variety of other projects.]

Official Podcast. Episode 3 – Chris Eigeman. [Released September 2014. An audio interview with the actor who played Nick Smith in Metropolitan and appeared in other Whit Stillman films.]

otsoNY. Metropolitan (1990). [otsoNY is an online guide to film locations in New York. This page shows a number of the locations used in Metropolitan. There are scenes from the movie itself, some of which include “Audrey Rouget”.]

“past//relevance.” blog. “metropolitan“. February 2012. [A pleasant reverie rather than a serious review of “Metropolitan”. Refers to “the insufferable jane austen”, which is an odd way to describe perhaps the greatest female novelist in English. This blog post is accompanied by a good selection of stills from the movie, which show both Carolyn Farina’s extraordinary expressive range and, sadly, that schoolmarmish side which does not bode well for “Audrey”.]

“People” article from October 1990 on the recently discovered Carolyn Farina. Here.

“Playtime Magazine”. 2008. “New York and New Friends, Auld Lang Syne …” by Matt Schneider.[This is a very appreciative review, but I think it contains some mistakes, which I addressed here.]

“Power Animals” blog. “Girl Crush: Carolyn Farina“.

R V Young. “From Mansfield to Manhattan: The Abandoned Generation of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan“.

“Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two” blog. “Mansfield Park at the Movies“. [This places Metropolitan in the tradition of film treatments of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. I would see Metropolitan as simply influenced by Mansfield Park. The authors of this blog post also suggest that the actors in Metropolitan had trouble finding further work because of “class antagonisms”, but I doubt that, and in fact Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nicholls, and even Carolyn Farina to a degree, got later movie work. Isabel Gillies went on to play the character of Elliot Stabler’s wife, Kathy, in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit from 1999 to 2011. Dylan Hundley continued to act and has done some producing. A trivial but annoying error in this blog post is the suggestion that Tom asked Audrey to dance the Cha-Cha with him. No, he didn’t.]

Sharon C McGovern at Cobra Movies. Commentary and references on Whit Stillman.http://www.thecobrasnose.com/xxmovie/stillman.html [An excellent essay, remarking on the sheer rarity of films that portray feminine charm and virtue in a positive light, although I wish the writer knew how to spell Jane Austen’s surname.]

Slate. 2006. “Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan”.http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2006/02/whit_stillmans_metropolitan.html

Sluka, Jean-Gavril. 2014. An article in French on the films of Whit Stillman. Translation here at the Unofficial Whit Stillman web page. [The translation naturally introduces a few errors, but it includes one of the rare references to Carolyn Farina’s role in The Age of Innocence.]

“soul food movies” blog. 2009. “Metropolitan”.http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/metropolitan.html [A good appreciation, and the dullness and pretentiousness of Tom is well-observed along with the mystery of his appeal to Audrey, but it repeats the doubtful story that Carolyn Farina was discovered at the Macy’s perfume counter. In fact, she seems to have answered a casting call in a trade paper.]

“soul food movies” blog. 2009. “The Last Days of Disco”.http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/last-days-of-

disco.html [Touches on the characters from Metropolitan, and says that Audrey Rouget is to be observed in this Disco film “deep in conversation with Charlie, Fred and Sally {from the earlier movie Metropolitan}”. “Audrey” (Carolyn Farina) is seen here with that group at the disco in her cameo appearance in The Last Days of Disco:http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitti/3530040965/in/photostream/

and dancing with the man on the right, who is apparently “Fred” from “Metropolitan” and credited as the same actor, which surprises me because, even allowing for ageing, he looks much less pudgy and easy-going than “Fred” in the earlier film:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitti/3530040971/in/photostream/

She is in a group with “Charlie” but it does not appear that he is her “date”, as some people have suggested. And, in fact, Whit Stillman has stated that she is not “with” Charlie. They are just friends.]

Splitsider. Lindsey Bahr. 2012. “Rich, Beautiful and Surprisingly Virtuous:A Whit Stillman Primer.” [Some discussion of the morality in the first three Stillman films. A few errors (Audrey went to “midnight mass” at St Thomas’ Episcopalian Cathedral, not St Patrick’s), a few good points, but fairly superficial analysis and the writer is clearly out of sympathy with Stillman’sworldview.]

Steve Sailer. February 2014. Moneyballing Movies: “The Gender Gap in ScreenTime”. [Interesting for its discussion of the differences in the career trajectories of actors and actresses, given what I have suggested about the problems that Carolyn Farina may have had in getting properly established. “Actors have longer to perfect their crafts as leads in big pictures than do actresses (e.g., Best Actor last year was 55-year-old Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg’s Lincoln versus 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.) While Judy Dench and Meryl Streep continueto get Best Actress nominations, the size of their movies drops as they age.” Sailer also states that “Martin Scorsese, for instance, thinks about guys, all the time”, which if true makes one wonder why he bothered making The Age of Innocence, which is a quintessential women’s film, and may explain why he did so little with Carolyn Farina in that film.]

Taste of Cinema. September 2013. “10 Underrated First Films You Still Haven’t Seen Yet.” Includes “Metropolitan”.

The Quietus. 2012. Interview with Whit Stillman.

The Toast (an Internet site): “The Cull: A Short Story“. [I only include this very short story, which at first glance seems to be a sort of feminist horror tale, because the writer has used a shot of the Audrey Rouget character primping in “Metropolitan” as an illustration.]

Tom Cunha. n.d. Play That Funky Music Whit Boy!: “The Last Days of Disco’s”Stillman. “The Director’s Chair Interviews.” [A fairly brief interview which touches on“Metropolitan” and “Barcelona” as well as “The Last Days of Disco”.]

“Udolpho” blog. Whit Stillman and Metropolitan.

Unofficial Whit Stillman web page. http://www.whitstillman.org/

Vanity Fair. March 2015. “Vanity Fair Picks the Top 10 Greatest Movies About Manhattan Ever.”[“Metropolitan” is listed tenth, and briefly discussed. The accompanying excerpts from the movie are worth looking at, if only for pleasant vignettes of “Audrey Rouget”.]

Washington Times. 2012. Interview with Whit Stillman.

Whit Stillman interview after Metropolitan screening at The Royal in Toronto, December 2012.Video. [Includes discussion of the casting of Metropolitan, includingof Carolyn Farina.]

Whit Stillman is active on Twitter. Here.

Wikipedia article on Carolyn Farina. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Farina

Wikipedia article on Whit Stillman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whit_StillmanYou and Your Whatever. “I Wanna Be Audrey Rouget”. Free digital track here. [I assume this refers to the character “Audrey Rouget” from “Metropolitan”. Her surname is mispronounced as “Roget”. Quite a cute song though.]

Some further notes on her various roles in films.

The appreciation at the above “Udolpho” blog is very good. I first became aware of this actress from that site. I think the following portion of the review there is worth quoting:

“Farina is simply a treasure. Her gifted and real performance as Audrey lends the story nearly all its consequence. She shapes not only Audrey’s identity but that of the characters who respond to her. On repeated viewings her sweetness and un-self-consciousness grow even more appealing as one discovers in her performance further glimpses into the character — her face has that malleable quality which expresses the exact mixture of emotion that her character feels[Precisely.]. That she was discovered for the part at a perfume counter [sic – I doubt this, as I said above] and had no prior acting experience makes this brilliant portrayal all the more impressive — one is hard pressed to recall another actress of her generation or subsequent generations who belongs in the same class. As Stillman mentions in the film’s commentary, there is a depressing footnote to this performance: Farina was typecast by the film, assumed to have been playing herself, and was subsequently unable to find work beyond a few minor film parts immediately thereafter. “I expected to see her everywhere,” Stillman recalls, but it was not to be; casting directors saw her only as an upper class Connecticut girl (Farina is actually from Queens). If there is a silver lining to this, it can only be that her work in this movie survives unspoiled by efforts in lesser films. Farina can be seen playing Daniel Day-Lewis’ sister in the inept and monumentally tedious Scorcese movie The Age of Innocence although believe me it’s not worth it.”

I find much of this very telling and accurate, although I suspect that “Udolpho” is predisposed to like Metropolitan because of its politesse and moral stance. Nor is The Age of Innocence quite that bad. It is a perfectlycompetent and enjoyable film, although personally I dislike the progressivemoralising, which makes the film feel like Jane Austen rewritten by a committee of feminists (yes, I know it is based on an Edith Wharton novel).As for Miss Farina’s malleable face, I agree it is a delight, but I have a

suspicion that, being of Italian descent in real life, she was also more willing to show her feelings; whereas the more nearly WASPy actors and actresses in what was a WASP scenario in Metropolitan simply adopted the stone-faced mien one associates with such upper class types.

Turning back to The Age of Innocence, I find Michelle Pfeiffer in the moviedeeply irritating. I cannot believe that any man would find her as intriguing as we are supposed to imagine. Compared with the Winona Ryder character (22 years old in real life at the time), she seems a real old boiler, as we say here (35 years old in real life, and I think she looked it). There is no point in trying to have us believe that some woman is deeply fascinating when there is nothing on camera that suggests it. I findPfeiffer tiresome in the role. Winona Ryder may look like a young bit of fluff, but Michelle Pfeiffer looks like a stuffed chair.

Richard E Grant, who had a small role in The Age of Innocence, does not even mention Carolyn Farina in his published account of the “making of” that film. However, at least she does get to speak in this role (unlike in two of her other roles) using an accent not unlike her voice in Metropolitan. She appears in a few scenes, and it is a perfectly respectable part, into which she sinks unselfishly. It is not a role that demands much range, her character being effectively only social scenery, and I suppose it is not a good career sign for an actress to be playing a starchy female relative – although there is an even starchier female in herscenes who gets even less to do. Nevertheless there are some pleasing glimpses of her beautifully expressive face, and a more subtle and delicatedirector would have done more with her. I fear this was a serious missed opportunity, and her being underexploited in this film – which was of sufficient quality and standing and made at a time when Miss Farina retained some of her physical charm – is a lasting shame.

Whit Stillman credited Scorsese’s Italian background as being conducive to his casting the Italian-American Farina in The Age of Innocence. (I assume that Carolyn Farina is of Italian extraction, given her surname and appearance, and Stillman’s comments.) But another possibility suggests itself. Daniel Day-Lewis is a fairly dark haired, pale-skinned, angular faced fellow; and casting Carolyn Farina as his sister made visual sense.Where I differ from “Udolpho” is in feeling that Miss Farina’s later roles do, in fact, rather tend to spoil her image. Her short appearance in The Last Days of Disco, while she has no lines, is respectful of her original character, although it is obvious that the actress is looking her age at the time, being well into her thirties. But I found her scene in Damsels inDistress rather “distressing”. It was sad to see her in such a thankless, hackneyed role, playing literally opposite the new hot young star, Greta Gerwig.

It is probably worth touching briefly too on her role in Little Noises. Farina appears as “Cousin Linny” in this film, made when she was about 28. She only appears in one scene, cleaning up in the background (to be blunt, she is scrubbing the ground outside her parents’ fish shop, near a man who appears to be passed out – a far cry from the drawing rooms of

Metropolitan). She reacts to the events, but has no lines. Her character isnot even named in the film itself, but only in the credits, and her first name is misspelt there as “Caroline”. (Her character, “Carolina Antonucci”,is also named in the credits of Damsels in Distress but not in the film; but the reason in this case was apparently to make it clear that she is not“Audrey Rouget”.):Little Noises shares a couple of the themes of Metropolitan, although the writers and directors are different of course. Namely, success in life and the importance of money, class and education. I suppose that, by appearing in Little Noises, Farina might have hoped to be spotted for further roles. She apparently still had her girlish figure at 28 years of age in this film(although she seems very pale as far as I can see in her brief appearance);but it was her acting in Metropolitan that stood out as much as her appearance, and her acting was not on display in Little Noises. If she had an agent at this time in her career, he did a good job in getting her into The Age of Innocence but did her few favours in landing her in Little Noises as Linny, in which she is on screen for less than fifteen seconds.

Perhaps because it was an “indie” film, there are loose ends in Little Noises. I have already mentioned that Farina’s first name is misspelt in the credits. I am surprised she appears in the credits at all because her role amounts to a brief appearance in the background. I am not an expert, but perhaps an extra becomes an actor if he or she reacts to the events rather than just being present. I suppose it is a grey area. As I mentionedabove, Farina’s character is not referred to as “Linny” in the movie itself. Perhaps she had a larger role, and it was mostly cut from the finalversion. There are scenes at the fish shop in the trailer for the film thatare not in the movie as it is available on YouTube at least. So I wonder ifFarina was in some such scenes that were cut from the final release. In fact, she states in this interview that she had a scene with the lead actor, Crispin Glover, but no such scene appears in the version of the filmI have seen (unless she meant in the background outside the fish shop, but surely not).

A scene with Farina and Glover interacting could have been fascinating, if hard to imagine. Another oddity is that an attractive woman who plays the mute poet’s mother in a sort of dream sequence at the end, and who is on screen for quite some time, is credited as Rosanna Quaglieri, but she is nowhere to be found on the IMDb database or on the Internet in general. Curious.

The director of Little Noises, Jane Spencer, seems to be interested in unsuccessful creative types, and also later wrote and directed “Wake Up Running: A Story of Losers” (2003).

If this article. a screen biography of Carolyn Farina, has a unifying theme, it is success and failure. Films like Metropolitan and Little Noisesexplore the nature of and reasons for success and failure in life. In a way, so does this post of mine here, with particular reference to the career of Carolyn Farina. She was a good example of early success, at least

critical success, which did not last. Was she therefore a “loser”? I would conclude, clearly not. She will always be remembered for her role as AudreyRouget. It is not a huge thing, but it is a genuine achievement, and far more than most people ever accomplish.The recent success of Whit Stillman’s “Damsels in Distress” has led to renewed interest in his first film, including in France, as this poster shows:

More images of Carolyn Farina as “Audrey Rouget”: Not the most beautiful actress ever, but wonderfully expressive:

NOT CAROLYN FARINAThe photo below is often described as a picture of Carolyn Farina, acting in a film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. But it seems actuallyto be Australian actress Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price.

And this photo is sometimes described, here for example, as Carolyn Farina in The Age of Innocence (1993) but it is in fact Domenica Scorsese, the director’s daughter in the role of Katie Blenker. This actress was about 17at the time to Carolyn Farina’s 29 years.

https://davidcollard.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/320611_full.jpg

I suppose there is a vague resemblance, but not every smooth-skinned brunette in a decent dress in recent movie history is Carolyn Farina! This page gets it right.About these adsOccasionally, some of your visitors may see an advertisement here.Tell me more | Dismiss this message