Q 13

PLAYBOY: Why is it so hard for the studios to make a good love story?

Jack Lemmon: Maybe because we're all so damned confused now. For at least ten years, I've been looking for a love story about--at this point, obviously--a middle-aged man. But I would love to do a really good love story. I'd love to do it with Sophia Loren or with Audrey Hepburn. A story about people old enough to know something, who don't just go with the flesh.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: You have a 15-year-old daughter, Courtney. Do you want her to be an actress?

Jack Lemmon: Only if she wants to, just as with my son, Chris. I never pushed him at all. If he drove a cab and that was what he loved to do, Godspeed. My old man was in the baking industry. He did not have a college education--just about got through high school--but ended up as a senior officer in a large company in the baking industry. He would have loved it if I had started at the bottom, as he did, and worked my way on up. You know, I think every father would like that. After I got out of Harvard, I asked him if I could borrow 300 bucks, which I would pay back, and go to New York and try to be an actor. I had already done some summer stock, but now I was going to go save the theater. Except nobody would let me. So he said, "OK. You don't want to come into my business?" He knew. I said, "I got to find out, or I'll live always wondering." And he said, "You love it," and I said, "Yes," and he said, "Well, that's good, because the day I don't find romance in a loaf of bread, I'm going to quit."

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Are you going to write your autobiography?

Jack Lemmon: I have no desire to. It's a bloody bore to me, because I know what's going to happen on the next page.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: How will your epitaph read?

Jack Lemmon: That's simple. Jack Lemmon in ______________.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Who are the best actresses you've worked with?

Jack Lemmon: That's like asking, "Who's your favorite leading lady?" I always say Walter Matthau, because I don't want to slight anybody. I've never worked with anybody I didn't get along with or didn't like. I've never had any of that temperamental bullshit going on.

Judy Holliday has to be up on the top; she was the first lady I ever worked with. Not only was she a great actress, she was the Carole Lombard of her time, as far as being able to do comedy. She was one of the reasons I really began to concentrate on films. I did my first and third pictures with her and those experiences were so sensational. Annie Bancroft and Lee Remick are just sensational. Shirley MacLaine is one of the best instinctive actresses I've worked with. She would rather work spontaneously, which is fine by me. And how can I not include Jane Fonda, who may be rapidly becoming the best actress of her generation? Working with her is heaven. She's not only an incredibly bright lady but also totally professional--and fun. All of those actresses have one thing in common: When you're working with them, you never, ever get a feeling that they give one goddamn about how the lighting is on their faces or where the camera is. It's into the eyeballs and you do the scene and you act with the person and not at her. Ninety percent of actresses are listening for cues, but they're not listening to the point that's being made.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: Who's your best friend?

Jack Lemmon: I've got three or four of them. Walter Matthau and Billy Wilder and there are a few others you wouldn't know--Freddie Jordan, Dick Elliott--guys I've known for a large part of my life. Freddie and I went to school together. He now owns Producer Studio.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: What is it about Matthau that you like so much?

Jack Lemmon: I don't know, but he's got a lot of it, whatever the hell it is. I love Walter. I respect him immensely as an actor. He's never been tapped. He's bright and terribly funny. And that face! It's the map of the world. It really should be on Mount Rushmore.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: There are a number of extremely talented young actors in Hollywood these days. Are you ever jealous of them?

Jack Lemmon: No. The emergence of incredibly serious, immensely talented younger stars--Hoffman and De Niro and Pacino, just to name a handful--is sensational. I'm delighted that guys like them are immediately recognized by the public for the marvelous actors they really are, and not as sex symbols or something. And, me, jealous, when I'm the greatest? No, I'm not jealous. But I'm only half joking with that. Of whom should I be jealous? Nobody's had it better. As an actor, nobody has had more marvelous parts over the years. Christ, a good actor would give anything just once in his life to have one of those parts and I've had a number of them.