The life and times of Rosanna Arquette seem like one wild adventure after another.
“I had a really hippie-artist childhood, where my family was around Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and the folk coffee houses,” the 64-year-old actress told me during an interview as part of an oral history of Martin Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy, After Hours. As a ten-year-old, she attended Woodstock, a true flower child running naked through the crowd.
“My godfather was the actor and singer Hamilton Camp,” Arquette said. “His group, Gibson & Camp, was a big influence on the likes of Neil Young. For a time we lived in a commune in Virginia called Skymont, which was all musicians, actors, activists. We eventually lived in Chicago, and my father, Lewis, was a member of the improv group the Committee and worked at the Second City. He also did Paul Sills’s Story Theatre on Broadway, and later was in a bunch of Christopher Guest films.” (This is to say nothing of her famous actor siblings.)
While living in New York City in the 1980s, Arquette said, “I went to a lot of the gallery openings. I was around Julian Schnabel. I hung out a bit with Basquiat; there’s a photo of us at a Jacksons concert.” (She failed to mention that the photo was taken by Andy Warhol.) “I knew Keith Haring through Madonna. She had this amazing motorcycle jacket on which he had done a painting on the back,” said Arquette, who shared the screen with the Queen of Pop in Desperately Seeking Susan.
The night before we spoke, Arquette had sat down to dinner with her close friends, Jane Fonda and Melanie Griffith. As the interview wrapped up, she indulged my curiosity about another fascinating episode in her life: unwittingly serving as the muse for Toto’s monster hit from 1982, “Rosanna.” She touched on her romance with the band’s then-keyboardist, Steve Porcaro (who, it must be noted, did not write the song), and explained why she’s misidentified in the liner notes to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Share this post