Susan Sarandon Is the Real Deal

"Though it was a marriage and I took his name," Sarandon explains, "I never approached it like this is for the rest of our lives. We said, 'Every year we'll visit it and see if we want to renew.' " Eventually, the couple settled in New York, where Sarandon landed her first film role, in Joe (1970), followed by The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Pretty Baby (1978).

She also got increasingly involved in social causes. "I didn't see myself as a flamethrower or a convention breaker," Sarandon reflects. "I felt as if I was just Zelig in that I was a baby boomer, and I held on to some of the things that were going on then that some people lost as they became landed gentry. I certainly wasn't more moral. I tried to do what my core said was right for me."

Still, despite her work in front of movie cameras, Sarandon was reluctant to thrust herself on a political stage and speak publicly. She recalls a gathering for the Equal Rights Amendment in New York in 1981, with feminist luminaries such as Marlo Thomas and Bella Abzug. "There were TV cameras, and I said, 'I can't do this — I don't have anything to say.' And Marlo said to me, 'It doesn't matter what you say. The important thing is that it gets on the news.' " So Sarandon walked up to the microphones and simply declared her support for the ERA.

Meanwhile, her acting career took flight. Sarandon's role in Atlantic City (1980) earned her the first of five Oscar nominations for Best Actress. By then, she and Chris Sarandon had divorced. ("He wasn't a mean person. It was about my choosing myself.") She then had a tumultuous two-year relationship with director Louis Malle. "And I crashed and burned," she says.

In a back room at SPiN, Sarandon holds up her right hand and points to a delicate bracelet made up of the letters A-N-D-A-N-D inked around her wrist. The letters, she says, stand for "A new day, a new dawn." Though she got the tattoo just a few years ago, she reveals that it hearkens back to that emotionally draining journey in her 30s. After that, "I completely rebooted everything," she says. "I think a lot of people at some point leave behind their conditioning and examine fundamental myths they've been taught."

Sarandon next moved to a small town outside Rome with her then-boyfriend, the Italian filmmaker Franco Amurri, and their daughter, Eva Amurri Martino, now 28. While there, in 1987, Sarandon paid her own way to fly back to the U.S. to audition for — and land — the role of Annie Savoy in Bull Durham. "It was the first time that I had a part that was bigger than I was," she says.

The hit movie established her sultry screen image to this day. " 'Sexy' is the word that comes up when you think of Susan Sarandon," says Mark Harris, columnist for Entertainment Weekly and author of two books about film history. "Even when she was young, her sexuality seemed mature. There's a self-confidence to her. She knows who her characters are, and her characters know who they are."

In "Bull Durham," Sarandon, as minor league baseball groupie Annie Savoy, romances Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins.

Everett Collection

It was on Bull Durham that Sarandon met Tim Robbins. "Tim had a sense of morality that I hadn't found in any actor," Sarandon says. "And he was very good as an actor. I definitely thought that he was pretty special." Though they never married, Sarandon and Robbins became partners not just of the heart but on numerous film and social-activist projects. They had two sons together, Jack Henry, now 24, and Miles Guthrie, 21.

Soon Sarandon was doing some of the best acting work of her career, in Thelma & Louise (1991) and Dead Man Walking (1996), on which Robbins served as screenwriter and director and for which Sarandon won the Oscar for her portrayal of anti-death penalty crusader Sister Helen Prejean. (Just two years earlier, she and Robbins had been banned from the Academy Awards stage after they had made an impromptu plea for the release of HIV-infected Haitian refugees at Guantánamo during an awards telecast.)

Still, Sarandon immersed herself in being a mom, the role she says she most loves. "I was very hands-on," she says. With three kids under age 7, she determinedly hauled them with her to work. "I might have been smarter to get more help," she says. "I was cleaning out the office the other day and found a list — Pampers, apple juice, Cheerios — all these things I had to have ready ahead of time when I went on location. I look back now and go, 'How did I do it?' But it was worth it."

Sarandon's daughter, Eva, an actress now living in Los Angeles, stands in awe at her mother's ability back then to balance work and parenting. "She made our Halloween costumes and was at our basketball and soccer games," Eva says. "And she exposed us to a lot of people and the idea of giving back."

That was a choice Sarandon and Robbins made together. "Raising them in the city, being around so many different kinds of families, languages and religions — the whole thing has paid off, because my kids are very grounded, adaptable and not judgmental, which gives them a huge advantage," Sarandon says. "And they're funny, so funny."

Perhaps that is why as her nest empties (only Miles still lives at home), Sarandon is struggling with the change. "It's been hard for me to let go of thinking of dinner at 6 o'clock," she says. She's going through her household items to give what she can to her kids to help them live better on their own. "I want to see them in places where they can pay the rent, and then I'll feel that's done." Meantime, she's trying to be comfortable with having unstructured quiet time for herself, something she's never been good at. She long ago gave up on organized religion, but she nurtures her spiritual self. "I can't say I meditate twice a day," she says, " but I definitely use meditation, because my mind is fast and full, and I fight that all the time."

It's approaching 12:30 a.m. at SPiN. The Dirty Dozen tournament, in which Ping-Pong pros compete, has wrapped up, and a dance-off is about to begin. "We invite the audience to get up," Sarandon says. "It's fun, like a wedding or something."

She walks over to the bar, where her friend Jonathan Bricklin, wearing khakis and boat shoes, stands nursing a drink, looking collegiate. Sarandon puts her arm around his waist and whispers in his ear. She is coy when asked about the status of their relationship. "Jonathan and I collaborate on different things," she says. "That means a lot of things." When asked if that might mean romance, she says, "Yeah, I think so."

Sarandon and Geena Davis teamed up as the titular heroines in 1991's "Thelma and Louise."

Everett Collection

Though she doesn't address their age difference, Sarandon admits she does worry "now and then" about getting older. "I'm getting that sagging thing," she says, pointing to the skin under her eyes, which, she confesses, she had suctioned 10 years ago to remove the fat. She says she's personally opposed to fillers — "they make everyone start to look alike" — and hasn't had Botox. She's maintained her good Italian (on her mother's side) skin tone by avoiding the sun — "not because I was thinking of my skin, but it bored me to lie there baking" — and eschews smoking, except for marijuana. "I would much rather my kids smoke weed than drink, except that it's illegal," she begins, launching into a discourse about cartels, victimless crimes and mandatory minimum drug laws that crowd our prisons.

Catching herself, she steers back to the topic of wellness. Yes, she's more forgetful than she used to be, she concedes, but she tries to counter that with a healthy diet and exercise. She boxes to stay in shape. "And I laugh a lot." Often at herself.

"No, I'm really funny," she insists, sensing disbelief. "I know people would like to believe that I'm just someone walking around making everybody feel guilty. But I'd like to do a myth-busters thing and tell you that people who are serious about social change are very joyful."

Actress Melissa McCarthy, 43, who stars with Sarandon in the coming summer film Tammy, says her new friend's upbeat spirit and stamina are virtually unmatchable. "I do not have the energy to keep up with her," she says. "I was in New York, and we made plans. Susan's like, 'Dinner at 10:30! Then we're going to the club to play Ping-Pong, and then probably we'll go to another club afterwards.' I'm like, 'Are you serious? I can't even go to dinner with you. I'm too tired.' "

As the night grows longer, Sarandon becomes reflective. For all the romantic heartaches she's suffered — and backlash she's endured for her political activism — she says she has no regrets: "It's better to have made decisions that turned out badly and learn from them than to feel as if you had no choice and are resentful of the turns that your life takes." She believes the quest of her lifetime is still to be authentic and kind, and though Sarandon says that's never easy, she's better at both now " because I'm not as distracted."

She's excited about the future. Thanks to some new management hires, Sarandon will soon dial back on her work duties at SPiN. "I've learned so much about business," she says, "but I don't like being the one who's policing the bathrooms."

She and Bricklin just announced the formation of a cause-related film production company. And her daughter, Eva, recently created a sitcom called Growing Ivy, which would star her and Sarandon. It will go to pilot in March, and if NBC picks it up, Sarandon may be temporarily moving out west. "I wasn't anxious to be on TV for a potentially long commitment," she says, " but I can't imagine anything more interesting than getting to work with your grown child." Further down the road, Sarandon envisions being part of a film project that would involve not just Eva but film-school grad Jack Henry and Miles Guthrie, who works as a DJ and plays guitar in a rock band.

Through the years, Sarandon has become braver. "The only thing I'm really afraid of is death," she says. "I still haven't gotten to the point where I think that's cool." She begins to laugh. "My life has been filled with happy accidents. The thing that's served me well is being able to change onto a different track when it's presented itself."

With that, she makes her way toward the crowd gathering around SPiN's center court and cheerfully kicks off the dance contest.

Meg Grant is West Coast Editor of AARP The Magazine.