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Walk on the Wild Side
By Martha Sherrill, November-December 2003
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Hutton gave up modeling in the early '80s, when she was 41—gravitating to acting classes at the Actors Studio. She had a small but memorable role alongside Richard Gere in American Gigolo and acted in a handful of other movies, but eventually found that starting an acting career in her 40s was frustrating. And then she got a call from Ford, her old modeling agency, asking her to consider appearing in ads for Barney's, a store in downtown Manhattan.
She refused originally. She felt she didn't photograph well anymore—and the makeup used in shoots only made her look older. She was 44, after all, and all the working models were two decades younger. "I hadn't looked at fashion magazines for years," Hutton says, "because they hurt my feelings. I felt like I had disappeared, along with an entire generation. And we had."
In the now-famous ad campaign for Barney's in 1988, photographer Steven Meisel shot Hutton in black and white. Her makeup was minimal. Her hair was barely brushed. Her smile was open—the gap was back. And once again, her unadorned beauty initiated a wind shift in the world of fashion. Overnight, she became an icon for older women and a pioneer. "I remember being in an Indian restaurant and opening The New York Times Magazine and seeing this beautiful old face," she says, "and I realized it was me."
Her loft in Soho is cluttered with souvenirs of her expeditions: spears, shells, beads, meteorites, pearls, tusks, elephant dung (Hutton is always on the lookout for the largest mound to bring home) and desiccated carcasses of turtles, sea horses, beetles, butterflies, and moths.
She walks from object to object, brimming with anecdotes and outrageous tales. Her voice grows loud with excitement. "Here! Take this magnifying glass," she says, holding up an enormous harlequin beetle. "And look at him right in the face. Just look at that face! That's how you can see who he really is."
The beetle is from Mexico, the spears from the Kalahari Bushman tribe, the beads from Bora Bora. And just in case you're feeling desperate for an atlas, one wall of Hutton's loft holds an enormous map of the world. She has pinned yellow and red flags to the map, marking where she's been more than 10 or 20 times. It's hard to imagine all the plane rides, jeeps, cabs, and boats—not to mention all the sharks.
Alas, now that she's started her makeup line, her journeys are shorter and less frequent. "Busy, busy business," she says with a sullen expression. "This is why I never dated a man with a desk. It makes you so borrrrrr-ing."
Hutton's boyfriend of 27 years, Bob Williamson, was never that. An amateur naturalist who lived off a trust fund and modeled his life in the spirit of 19th-century English explorers, Williamson died of cancer four years ago. He introduced Hutton to exotic travel—and influenced her life beyond measure. Remembrances of him are everywhere in the loft, even a ball of his honey blond hair, which Hutton cut over the years and saved. She still speaks lovingly, passionately of "Bob God," as she used to call him, despite the downsides of their relationship—his refusal to have children and the disturbing fact that he lost, or squandered, her fortune of millions, while also carrying on relationships with other women, one of whom he married. It was Williamson who taught Hutton not to waste too much time in Paris or London. "The wild places are going," he always told her.
"Do I miss him?" Hutton asks. "Every day. I'd do it all again in a second. No regrets. Even if it cost me $60 million. Except maybe I'd keep half of it for myself."
Another artifact in Hutton's loft calls out for explanation—and sheds light on Hutton's life of the last few years, since Williamson's death. Above a glass cabinet, there's a gray motorcycle helmet. One side of the helmet is popped open, and the once-clear plastic face guard is smashed, embedded with rocks, and stained with blood.
"I was in a coma for two-and-a-half weeks," she says, standing in front of the helmet. She wasn't expected to live. When it looked like she would, the doctors said she'd never walk again.
Hutton was riding in the desert, just outside Las Vegas, with the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club, a group of thrill-seeking billionaires, entrepreneurs, and celebrities. In the past when she'd ridden with the club, there were only 25 riders or so. But on the morning of her accident, October 22, 2000, Hutton found herself riding at the very back of a giant herd of 80 motorcycle enthusiasts. She was besieged by dust and fumes and deafening sound. After a rest stop—during which actor Jeremy Irons insisted on lending her a proper helmet with a visor (ultimately saving her life)—Hutton took off quickly, too quickly, hoping to speed to the front of the pack. She hit something in the road, and she and her bike flew apart, 20 feet in the air. When the bike landed, it exploded. When Hutton landed, she hit headfirst at 100 miles an hour.
Hutton says she's not sure why she lived or came to walk again. Laid up in a Las Vegas hospital for five weeks, Hutton was visited by scores of family members and friends—actors, writers, artists, and a group of girlfriends who took turns doing a bedside vigil. "I'm a great believer in random accidents," she says. But others might say that her invincible spirit might have had something to do with it. "I believe we have a choice whether to grumble—or be happy about something," Hutton says. "And I remember feeling very glad, to the point of overwhelmed, to have so many friends."
It took four surgeries and two years before she could walk without pain or a limp. She still travels as much as possible and spends part of the year at a house she owns in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she hikes and reads. "And I do my whale-shark diving," she says, "but that's very lightweight stuff, really. And places like St. Bart's, where I did physical therapy—it's a little tame for me. I like to go to places where I need to run. I mean, literally, you need to be able to run. And I've only just started to be able to."
Without Williamson, she now travels with friends and one of her many godchildren. "She's the same—wherever she is," says actor-playwright Anna Deavere Smith, "whether it's a black—tie party or in the desert."
This past summer—to celebrate her near-complete recuperation from the crash—she traveled to Russia and Mongolia for six weeks with goddaughter Stella Schnabel, 19, the daughter of painter Julian Schnabel and his former wife, Jacqueline.
Meanwhile, back in her bare-bones Soho office, she's blotting oil from her face with cigarette papers ("don't knock it until you've tried it") and sounding off on another new theory. Her makeup line isn't just a makeup line. It's a way to empower women as they age. Maybe—"best-case scenario"—it will help women feel less "invisible" and "better about who we are so we can move forward."
"I'm in my third act," Hutton says. "And I've been thinking about that." She's made a few lists, one being called "Men I Missed"—guys she wishes she could have slept with (Herman Melville leads the pack). Then there's her "Before I Die" list.
What's left on it?
"Volcanoes," she says, her voice starting to boom again. "I want to see volcanoes when they are blowing up! I want to see the earth breathe, to feel a gasping earth."
And what else?
"I don't want to feel ashamed that I haven't done enough," she says. "I want to feel I've changed things and made a difference. I hope this isn't just some cheap messianic complex. But I feel a sense of urgency about the planet—not just about the sharks, but about all living things. Don't forget, I've been diving for 40 years in the most remote spots, and I can tell you with certainty that the sea is emptying out. There's less of everything. We don't have much time left to turn things around….
"It feels like the barn's burning down and us cows are still inside."
In the meantime, when she's not shouting "Be militant!" to a Sephora salesperson or begging Oprah Winfrey to run for president ("I'm always yelling from the back row at fundraisers"), she's talking about starting a political party called "Organized Estrogen." She wants to encourage women to do what they do best—"saving the house, taking care of the planet, looking after the mess and cleaning it up—which is what we were put on earth to do."
She's also thinking about modeling again as she heads into her seventh decade. Why not? "It's good money. It's good fun," she says. "And hey, it's good to show what beauty is—all ages, all sizes."
Freelancer Martha Sherrill lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her latest book, a novel, is My Last Movie Star (Random House, 2003).
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