Whitney Houston breathes easier now
Pop singer waited three years to follow The Bodyguard

Date: December 22, 1995
By Dan Yakir

From The Toronto Star
Submitted by: Larry A.


SAN FRANCISCO - "I never really wanted to be a movie star," declares Whitney Houston in the velvety voice that has turned her into a singing sensation the world over. "I just wanted to do good work."

Already a multiplatinum recording artist widely recognized as possessing one of the finest voices in the business, Houston reluctantly became a bona fide box-office draw following the success of her megahit 1992 debut, The Bodyguard. Still, it took her three long years to find the right vehicle to return to Hollywood - the comic-dramatic ensemble piece Waiting To Exhale.

"The success of The Bodyguard scared me because I had no idea that it was going to kick off the way it did," Houston explains during a recent interview. "I knew that if we had the right soundtrack it could be successful. But I had no idea that 'I Will Always Love You' would sell a million copies in its first week or that the movie was going to gross $24 million in its first week of release. But it did.

"It became bigger and bigger, and I had to do more and more work. Then I went back on tour - it was just another career! I had a baby, I got married (to rapper Bobby Brown) ... I was tired. So I wanted to wait for the right film."

"Whitney was committed from the start," says actor-turned-director Forest Whitaker, who's making his directorial debut with the film based on Terry McMillan's novel. "Whitney did great work and was always there - ethereal yet warm. I can't imagine anybody else doing her part. I trusted her completely."

Adds Exhale co-star Angela Bassett, "She has an extraordinary talent and she's an honest lady. And that translates into her acting."

In the film, Houston plays a woman who tires of seeing a married man with no plans to leave his wife. "Everyone falls in love sometimes," explains the singer-actress. "Sometimes it's wrong, sometimes it's right. For every win, someone must fail, but there comes a point when you exhale."

She smiles when we realize she's been quoting from her own song "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)."

The movie, Houston says, is about "four African-American women with class, dignity, pride and gusto. I like that, and I liked my character, Savannah, because she's like me without the fame."

The actress responded to the sentiments and vulnerability of these women - their feelings of betrayal, loneliness, their search for true love and their cherished friendship with one another. Although the film's title refers to a moment of grace when things go right for each of the heroines, these instances of victory remain isolated. The men in the film are depicted as weaklings or heels (though Houston insists that they are presented merely as flawed, not unlike the women).

"Men have this thing where they get together in the locker room and say, 'It's bigger than yours!'" she observes. "That's what you guys do - you've got an ego problem. We women, we reveal our feelings and we're true to them. I was talking to Wesley Snipes (who makes a cameo appearance in the movie) the other night and he said, 'I like to be around women, because they laugh when they laugh, they cry when they cry and they're mad when they're mad. That's honesty that you don't find in men'"

For Houston, the film isn't only about black women, it touches a universal chord. But on the set, she and her co-stars, Bassett, Lela Rochon and Loretta Devine, shared intensely personal times. "Angela Basset is outstanding," she enthuses. "And Lela and Loretta were just funny - we had a great time. We had a system where we would encourage each other to go all the way. We'd say, 'Go, girl, go!'"

If the film breaks new ground in depicting wealthy, sophisticated and educated black women on screen, Houston says she witnessed images of similar glamour early in her life. "Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll, who I saw on TV, were the closest thing to what I knew, what I saw in my family - that beauty, that class, that dignity. In my family, Dionne (Warwick, her aunt) was the classiest thing I ever knew. But other than that we didn't see our own people on TV."

Part of the film's message, she says, is that a woman shouldn't consider herself a failure if she stays single. "Savannah may have to accept that she may have to live alone for the rest of her life, but she accepts it because she's happy with herself." Then she adds, "If you're Miss Right, then the right man will come along, too."

But while the actress still wears the huge diamond ring given to her by Brown, she won't discuss her own marriage, rumored for months to be on the rocks. Mention her infant daughter, Chris, however, and she won't stop talking.

"She's a handful," Houston says, chuckling. "Like three kids in one. She travels with me almost everywhere I go, but I don't like to have her exposed (to the public) because the press has no respect. If anything, motherhood has made me tougher, because now I have to fight for her, too."

The fight, as she puts it, is to maintain her privacy in a world where photographers track her every move. "That's the downside of success," she says. "When they sit outside your house with cameras and stuff, that's very intrusive and imposing and it's rude and disrespectful. And being followed around ... it's weird, and I have to take extra precautions with protecting my child."

She also reveals the sense of humor she's developed from being a constant subject of tabloid rumors. "It's not easy being green, honey," she says, smiling. "That's all can tell you. You're a target, you are the focus, so why not pick on you?

"The biggest misconception about me is that I'm hollow, a zero - just a pretty girl with a pretty voice. And I've read so many ridiculous things written about me. But the most hideous is the one they wrote that I overdosed on diet pills. It's still in litigation.

"All this has sure toughened me up."