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Paula Yates agrees with that T Rex - Jeff Goldblum is hot enough to eat.Meeting Jeff Goldblum I fully expected that my underwear would melt, and possibly the experience would prove so transcendentally thrilling that my liberty bodice might combust. In order that I would feel like a steamy cross between Dolores del Rio and Mata Hari's left buttock, I'd taken the precaution of wearing a pair of red drawers that I'd got in my Christmas stocking two years ago - instead of the usual satsuma. In the event, the main reason that our meeting was steamy was because my allocated 12 minutes with him occured in the bathroom of his suite while he had his nose powdered ready for a TV appearance. As Jeff Goldblum is the reason I haven't passed water during a commercial break for two years just in case I miss his Holsten Pils advert, I'd doused myself with Jungle Gardenia perfume on arrival. The smell was now slowly stripping the paint off the shower unit. Determined to create an atmosphere of allure and intrigue, I'd switched the thermostat up to 400 degrees and administered several valium to the make-up girl who said she hyperventilated every time she thought about him in The Fly. Goldblum is best known for his roles in The Big Chill, The Tall Guy and, on TV over here, he was the sexy American half of the Nobel prize-winning Crick and Watson team. Although prior to that TV epic nobody had realised that Watson was such a love god. This year he has been very busy. Lush Life, with Forest Whitaker, comes out on US TV in December, and the hit Deep Cover is now available here on video. Fathers and Sons, in which he stars with Rosanna Arquette, is scheduled for a UK New Year release. And over the Christmas period he'll be back in more of those Pils ads. But most of us will have seen lots of him already in the world's biggest film, Jurassic Park, where he not only gets all the wittiest lines but also - wearing soaking black jeans and armed with only a twig - single-handedly fights off a 45ft T Rex. Which, as I looked at him in the steaming bathroom, seemed perfectly feasible. "It was a tricky movie to make because half the time the dinosaurs were there and you had 15 guys working them. One doing the tongue, the blinking, all the different bits so that for all the worldyou felt there was a dinosaur there. But for the other half the time there was just some guy there off camera with a long stick with a dinosaur's picture stuck on it so we'd know where to look and go 'Arrrgh' at." Originally in the T Rex attack they had Jeff running away from the dinosaur, like the other guy who gets eaten in the toilet. "But I said, 'Please Steven', to Steven Spielberg and we did this different version were I got to be heroic." After only a few moments of talking to Jeff Goldblum a number of thoughts assault you. One is the sheer size of him - 6ft 5in of solid cappucino-coloured muscles with vast feet that look like he's wearing mahogany sea barges on them. Then there's his astonishing resemblance to the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, all vulpine smiles and glittering eyes. Suddenly I felt like I was at the end of the chain, being mesmerized by a hypnotist. And everything sounds like an invitation to re-enact the fall of the Roman Empire with him in a secluded spot... After three minutes the make-up artist and I were convinced that the only thing keeping him from eating us up for breakfast was the heat in the bathroom. Is that how his current romance with his Jurassic Park co-star Laura Dern began? "Well, you know, I'm very easily stirred," he drawled, causing the make-up artist to retreat from the room to blow into a paper bag. "And she's a remarkable woman. So I was struck with that from the beginning. But it wasn't until the film was over that we formed an alliance. I had been discreetly casting glances across the dinosaur. It's mysterious what attracts you to a person. "I don't know if I'll ever get married again. I've been married twice, once for nine years and then for five years." I said I was always reading thaat he was still pining for Geena Davis, star of Thelma And Louise, his ex-wife. "Really," he said, astonished, hand pausing mid-thigh "Really, I never read that. I've read that she's pining for me. We are good friends and she's a wonderful person and a wonderful actress." Twelve minutes with Jeff Goldblum in a small room is like a four-month holiday in the Galapagos with another man. He moved his tanned taut body over the towel rail and I was firmly convinced that he was going to ask me to run away with him after his next 47 interviews. "You know Hawaii can be heaven and it can be hell," he told me, flicking a tongue out and gesturing with that worrying concerto playing hand. "We were only meant to be there for two weeks but we had a lovely time. Then on the last day Hurricane Anniki hit the island. It was such a brutal force, people died and everybody lost their homes. But we were all safe in the ballroom; in the dark, Spielberg, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, we were there hours with this amazing natural force outside." All I could think was that poor Steven Spielberg must have felt like a gooseberry sitting there in the pitch black ness with Jeff and his pulsating pheromones. It was time for me to leave anyway. I felt as wrung-out as a face flannel. And Jeff was due to return home to Hollywood later, back to the house he shares with his sister Pamela, where he paints and listens to the radio and charms the birds out of the trees. I just hadn't realised that every girl he meets feels like I did. During the course of the day, every woman he met was greeted with a flashing smile and a compliment. When I got home I rang a girlfriend in Hollywood. "Oh, you're silly," she said, crushingly. "He's known to be the biggest heartbreaker in Hollywood. Anyway, did you notice how he waves his hands all the time?" Wanly, I said I had, resolving to start going to the loo from now on in all commercial breaks. "By the way," said my actress friend. "Do you think all of him is in proportion?" And with a hideous giggle she was gone. Back to Interviews |