Elaine Stritch Almost Played a Nun in John Turturro's Movie FADING GIGOLO

In an interview with Vanity Fair, director John Turturro talked about a shocking and hilarious idea he had for Broadway and film star Elaine Stritch in his movie FADING GIGOLO.

"I thought of her as a woman who is an 80-year-old nun, because Elaine is Catholic," Turturro told the magazine, "...my original idea was to have her as a retired nun who was a virgin who wanted to have sex before she died. And she had this whole relationship with [Turturro's character] Fioravante. And it didn't make it into later drafts, but there was a scene where she goes to the bathroom and washes her face and when she looks up, she is, like, 25 years old with the nun's habit with no clothes on. She comes out bare-assed and [gets] into bed. It blacks out. And then you see Elaine, 80, smoking a cigarette, saying, 'Wow, that was it, huh?' And she is really disappointed. The guy was like, 'Well you have to practice.'"

Read the full interview here.

In the film, Woody Allen plays as bookseller-turned-pimp to Turturro's middle-aged neophyte hustler, in actor-writer-director Turturro's inspired left-field comedy. This is Allen's first appearance in a film he didn't helm in ten years. Also in the cast are Sharon Stone, Sophia Vergara, Liev Schreiber, Aida Turturro, Bob Balaban and Tonya Pinkins, among others.

The new documentary about stage and screen actress Stritch - ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME - is currently playing in select theaters around the country. A Broadway icon, Stritch has delivered fabled performances in plays by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Delicate Balance), William Inge (Bus Stop), and Tennessee Williams (Small Craft Warnings), and in musicals such as Pal Joey and Stephen Sondheim's Company, in which she created the role of Joanne and introduced what would become her signature song, the show stopping "The Ladies Who Lunch." She has also appeared in several films and on television, including 30 Rock, enchanting a whole new generation of fans with her performance as Alec Baldwin's mother, Colleen Donaghy. A long-time resident of Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel, Stritch became a featured act there in 2005, appearing regularly in critically acclaimed Cabaret engagements at the Café Carlyle.

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