With a dearth of good women's roles in Hollywood, any actress would kill for the role Nancy Travis plays in "The Vanishing."
The character is a tough, earthy, shoot-from-the-hip waitress who not only serves the bacon but saves the hero's bacon as well. She is so honest, so straightforward and so strong a character that, as much as Travis loved her, she also scared the actress a bit.Travis made her film debut in the 1987 megahit "Three Men and a Baby." "You don't see women this strong in many movies," she said.
Travis plays the new girlfriend of a young man (Kiefer Sutherland) whose last girlfriend vanished during a vacation. The man is obsessed with finding what happened to his former girlfriend to the point of ruining his current relationship.
The movie is based on a 1988 Dutch film that did not include the Travis character and contained a darker ending than the American version.
"I am a very optimistic person by nature, and the original movie was not something I enjoyed," she said. "But when I heard there was a new girl in this version, I was intrigued.
"The rest of the movie is so cerebral; there's so much thinking and talking between the two main characters (Sutherland and Jeff Brid-ges). Then along comes this great character who operates on a gut level. She's all emotions and very moralistic and very committed to the person she loves.
"When that person is in danger, she's all action. She has a strength of character that is unusual in movies. That is a trait usually reserved for the men. I just hope she isn't too strong."
Travis was born in New York City, raised in Maryland and Massachusetts and educated at New York University. She made an interesting acting debut in an American Jewish Theatre production of "It Had to Be a Jew."
Travis, an Italian-American, played a Jewish girl but kept mispronouncing the Hebrew and Yiddish terms and was not invited back. But she did get her next role in the national touring company of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," so how bad could she have been?
She has returned often to the stage, even as her film career has progressed, and recently performed at the La Jolla Playhouse in Athol Fugard's "My Children, My Africa" and Chekhov's "The Three Sisters."
In her next film, she stars opposite "Wayne's World's" Mike Myers in "So I Married an Axe Murderer," a comedy thriller in which she plays the murderer.
"I love jumping back and forth between stage and films, but if I could do only one, I would do theater," she said.
"There is a certain kind of freedom on stage and the audience is right there so you get a tangible reaction to your work. Your performance is not created by an editor's scissors, as it is in film.
"Making movies is like playing Russian roulette," she added. "You never know how it's going to turn out. But I guess that's why they're so appealing."