Interview with Sydney Penny, star of The Passion of Bernadette.

January 5, 2006.

Conducted by Valerie Schmalz

How did you come to star in The Passion of Bernadette?

After doing the first film Bernadette, Jean Delannoy had been very interested in telling the rest of her story, about her life in the convent at Nevers. It was about three years later that he was able to begin the film, and since I had played Bernadette originally he invited me to play the role again. It was wonderful. It was an interesting challenge and it was very different. First, because Bernadette ages quite a bit in the period covered by this film, but she didn’t get very old. I was 18. (Bernadette died at 35). Also, because it was shot only in French whereas Bernadette was shot in French and English.

It is not as widely known a film but I actually think in a lot of ways it is more interesting than the first film, because it’s a part of the story that very few people know.

What is the story that The Passion of Bernadette tells us?

The story covers her life from the moment that she enters the convent at Nevers, because she has found it very difficult to live in Lourdes where she grew up. It is no longer the town she knew; it’s become basically a shrine. And her experience of the Lady in White was very personal and it had become, for lack of a better word, commercialized. And for her, she had been made a part of that commercialization—which of course served to inspire a lot of people to come and visit the grotto. But for her, it distanced her from the experience and she felt a little bit like an object to be ogled at. For instance, people wanted her to bless their rosaries. She was so humble she felt it would be better that she retire from that kind of life and be quiet and meditate.

Going into the convent, she had a very tough mother superior who didn’t believe Bernadette. She was very tough; she didn’t like Bernadette’s celebrity. She didn’t believe in the apparitions but she also saw the opportunity for the convent to receive donations to Bernadette and to the Lady because of Bernadette being there. So shrewdly, she allowed her to come. And then, in the end, she was won over by Bernadette’s innocence and honesty—which is really how Bernadette affects people. She’s a symbol of maintaining integrity and honesty and how it works on everyone. Honesty and truth are immutable.

What does the life of Bernadette after the Blessed Mother appeared to her tell us?

Well, I think it provides a lesson on being an honest person; how that effects change in your own heart and in other people’s hearts and allows greater goodness to come to you because you are open to it. It also serves to show that when you’re put in a situation that demands so much of you, how you need to be bigger than the person you thought you could be. And a lot was demanded of Bernadette and she had to accept this and she had to overcome a lot of things, that maybe she never would have encountered as just a sickly child running around the hills of Lourdes. But, because this was given to her, she had to face a lot of difficulties, a lot of personal disappointment. She was also taken away from her family; everything that happened in her life after the apparitions was a difficult decision. I think every one of us relates to that. That life is just not easy and you have a lot of choices to make and some are very difficult.

You filmed The Passion of Bernadette on location at the convent at Nevers. What was it like? Have you gone back since then?

No, I haven’t been able to go back since then and I loved it there. It is so serene. The grounds themselves are beautiful. The sisters are so lovely. Sister Marie Joseph looked after us—she was our contact. We all felt so welcome. It’s an interesting place. You feel a little bit as though you’ve gone back in time because some of the sisters who are there are cloistered. It’s a very vital place. They have gardens and they grow a lot of their own food and they have many, many visitors, as you can imagine. There’s several services a day. The day was always punctuated by chanting, probably a Gregorian chant. For me, it was a delight for all my senses. But the serenity was amazing.

And, of course, you walk down to the main sanctuary and Bernadette is lying in state in a sort of glass coffin. It’s amazing. It’s surreal, a little bit. Especially because here I am looking at the actual face of somebody who died 150 years before and I’m playing the part of her life. I just don’t know how many people have ever had that opportunity.

Here is an unusual story: I was coming out of my dressing room near the sanctuary and as I came out, the services in the small chapel had ended and some pilgrims from Germany had come out. Just as they were exiting, I was coming out dressed for the day, of course, in Bernadette’s habit. And, in the services there, she’s always present. The sisters always speak of her in the present tense. The pilgrims were really absorbed. So when they saw me there, they—I think they were truly confused and sort of enraptured—and a couple of them, fell on their knees in front of me and asked me to touch their rosaries. And it was so strange because I knew exactly what Bernadette had gone through! I was like, whoa! I can’t bless your rosary, no, you don’t understand. I’m an actress; I’m from California! It was pretty wild.

So, the sisters do have collective memories of St. Bernadette that they’ve handed down?

Yes they do. But there were some things that even Bernadette didn’t share with anyone. There were certain announcements that she made after she had a vision of the Lady and she would say certain things to the crowd and certain things to certain people. But, she said there were certain things that were just for her.

One of them, the only one I think she ever shared, was that she was told that she would not be happy in this life but she would be in the next. I think that probably went a long way for her, considering that she was so ill with so many different things and was actually given the last rites three times before she died. It got to the point that every time a priest would be called the priest or sisters would be saying, “Are you faking it this time or are you really going to die?” She had a great sense of humor—she’d just laugh at that. That’s what comes out in film—a great sense of humor.

Do feel your experience in filming Bernadette as the young girl helped in playing Bernadette as an older person?

Oh yes. Whenever you play a role for a period of time, it stays with you. It’s easy to slip the shoes back on and you know this person and those little things start changing, your speech patterns change, the way you walk—you change. You put the costume back on and it changes your posture—and so that felt very familiar. It was very easy to concentrate and focus because so much of the work had already been done, all of the research had been done.

What will the viewer come away with from The Passion of Bernadette?

Obviously a sense of what the facts of her life at the convent were. But a deeper portrait of who she was in terms of how she related to people on a daily basis, outside of the noise of her celebrity. You really see what a passion she had for life. I think the word passion has a double sense—it, of course, refers to the culmination of her life, but it also refers to what she loved in life, how she loved life, how she clung to life. Even though she was always very willing to give it up, sort of both metaphorically and literally. And she was an inspiration to people in her own time just because of the person that she was. Not because of what she had seen or the celebrity that she had become but the way she approached things with such humility and honesty. That’s really the person you get to see in this film. It makes you feel, hey, you know what—I can be like that too.

What was it like to work with director Jean Delannoy on these films?

I never think of films, even these films we did, as religious. Really they’re not. He went about—with both of these films—to tell this amazing woman’s story. But he has a very strong spiritual sense and I do think he has the great ability to highlight the spiritual side as well as the very secular side that people display. Like in the first film, he brought out how the townspeople thought this was the most embarrassing thing for Lourdes because no one ever would want to come there because they would think they were backswoodsy and stupid. He has a very good perspective. Sometimes in films that are purely made to elevate faith or just to retell an old story you miss a lot of the angles. So, I think that what makes these films really rich is that they are told from a filmmaker’s point of view; they’re not told from any partisan point of view and it allows for a lot more color. He didn’t really have an agenda. And that’s what’s interesting about these because neither did Bernadette. She’s just living her life and he’s just telling her story and what you come away with, he doesn’t color too much. He just gives you a really clear portrait of her.

Is he Catholic?

No, he’s not Catholic; he’s Protestant. So am I. That’s what so funny about this. So when we first did the film—the French press were asking “Why are you guys involved in this?” The answer is because it’s a wonderful story for a director and an actress—it draws you to the story and to her. It’s just nice; it’s nice to be near her.

How did the making of the two movies, Bernadette, and The Passion of Bernadette, affect you?

On many different levels the movies affected me. They are something I’m very proud of. The films are now part of Lourdes legend. On a personal level, I don’t think anyone ever watches her or learns about her story and doesn’t come away with something that relates to himself personally. I think it helps me retain my sense of wonder.

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What Sydney Penny Is Doing Now:

Penny began doing All My Children (a daytime soap opera) in November and is under contract so says she probably will be there for three years. She is commuting between New York and her home in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband Robert Powers, a painter, and where they are fixing up an old 1890 Victorian. Penny played the All My Children role of Julia from 1993 to 1996 and is playing Julia again. She says: “I love my role and I love the show and everyone I work with is great. I play the character of Julia, which I played before. It’s been really nice to be back; it’s kind of fun. Very different role from Bernadette—Julia’s a good person but, boy, she makes a lot of mistakes along the way.”

Penny also stars in a Hallmark Channel project, airing January 28 th and then again on February 3 rd, called “Hidden Places.” “I play a woman who during the Depression has to keep her orchard farm going after her father-in-law dies and she has to take care of her kids and eventually she gets to fall in love,” the actress said.

She is also participating in the “Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS” benefit with cast members of All My Children February 6 th and a Mardi Gras benefit with All My Children to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina.