Anjelica Huston Takes Charge

Having been around Hollywood her whole life, Anjelica Huston knows how the system works, and how even as a sultry 53-year-old actress it doesn't work in her favor. "In most movies, you either get to be the girlfriend or the sex symbol or the adjunct," she says disdainfully, sitting in a downtown Manhattan hotel before a premiere event for her latest film, The Life Aquatic. "And most starring roles for women don't really take them on much of an adventure."

This latest role, however, is the kind of journey that's worth her time. She's just a supporting player in a large ensemble, but as the other characters repeat over and over, her Eleanor Zissou is "the brains of the operation." Filming took her to the open seas off the coast of Italy with Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum and Owen Wilson for a movie about a washed-up Jacques Cousteau type who goes chasing after a shark who ate his friend. "If you read this script and didn't know who was in charge, you'd question it," says Murray, who was sold after director Wes Anderson read him the script on a speedboat while he was sunbathing. "You have to have faith in who you're with."