"I think I'm plain," laughs Cathy Moriarty. "I'm normal. I'm plain. I try not to stand out. I don't wear colors."
The woman saying this has platinum blond hair and a husky voice as lethal as a smoking gun. She's 5-foot-10 and couldn't stand out more if lights were flashing over her head.Moriarty, the teen-age sensation of "Raging Bull," is a dead ringer for Faye Dunaway circa "Bonnie and Clyde." When she tips her head and smiles, you think her purse is stuffed with banknotes and that Warren Beatty's outside in the getaway car.
"Faye Dunaway should really get busy and write a book so I can do it," joked Moriarty during a recent interview.
"Everyone tells me I look so much like her. When they made `Mommie Dearest,' they had a part for her daughter and I thought, `Well, hey . . . ' But it turns out it was her adopted daughter."
The actress is laughing again, running her hands through her hair and shifting her feet, but the subject now is no joke: the long dry spell of the past decade that made you think her real name was "Whatever happened to Cathy Moriarty?"
"Raging Bull" came out in 1980, and is regarded by many as the finest film of the decade. It won an Academy Award for Robert De Niro and brought Moriarty, a high school senior the year before, an Oscar nomination.
But that was a long time ago. After co-starring with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in "Neighbors," Moriarty disappeared. A car crash in 1982 required back surgery. In 1985, she was all set to star opposite Jack Nicholson in "The Two Jakes" but filming was canceled at the last minute.
There was also a stormy marriage to manager Carmine D'Anna and a stubborn, destructive pattern: wanting roles she couldn't get and disliking the ones she could.
"I learned a lot of things," she said, ticking off reminders to herself as if they were ribbons to tie around her fingers.
"Don't take anything for granted. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody else well. Have a little more confidence. Don't be so hard on yourself. Be a little harder on yourself. Learn from your experiences. Don't dwell on things. Get on with your life."
Moriarty can talk about it now because she's finally become what she always wanted to be: a working actress. Three years ago, she re-emerged in "White of the Eye." She was seen last Christmas in "Kindergarten Cop" and will be featured in the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," now in production.
She currently can be seen in "Soapdish," a parody of daytime soap operas, a cross between "Network" and "All About Eve." Sally Field stars as the aging Celeste Talbert, the much-honored "America's Sweetheart" who's all too aware her stardom could disappear at any time.
Among those looking forward to her downfall is Moriarty's character, the aptly named Montana Moorehead, Celeste's scheming co-star on "The Sun Also Sets."
"I had to audition on tape and I had to be wicked, yeah. I remember I wasn't supposed to do it until 6:30. I walked in the door at like 10 after 4, and they said, `Can you start at 5:00 because people have to leave?'
"I was so cranky and so mad, maybe that helped. I was more nervous and more wound up. But basically," she said, quick to make the point, "I'm a nice person."
Moriarty is certainly determined. She first wanted to act at age 14 after seeing the Judy Holliday film "Born Yesterday" and soon began trying out disguises and fake accents.
She was attending high school in Yonkers when she got to know Joe Pesci, who played De Niro's brother in "Raging Bull." He suggested she try out.
Too young to be intimidated, Moriarty pushed hard, auditioning again and again and eventually getting the job five months later. The reward was being on a film set with De Niro playing her husband and Martin Scorsese behind the camera.
"Where do you go from there?" she asked. "Couldn't I do every movie with these people? I didn't want to work with anyone else. It took a long time to come back. I had nothing else to show. I did things in high school, but nobody ever showed up to see me in a play."
These days, Moriarty insists she can't stop smiling. She's 30 and thinks her time has arrived. Past troubles are dismissed as self-inflicted. Rejections are accepted as part of the business.