By Advocate.com Editors
Bette Midler
Bette Midler regrets turning down lead roles in the
films Sister Act and Misery and admits to watching Lindsay Lohan go off the deep
end, in an interview with British newspaper
While promoting her latest film, Cats & Dogs: The
Revenge Of Kitty Galore, for which she provides the voice of Kitty, an Egyptian
Sphynx cat, Midler reflects on career mistakes. She says that she tries to forget
them but her husband won't let her. On declining to star in the 1992 hit Sister
Act, Midler says the film "was written for me, but I said, 'My fans don't
want to see me in a wimple.' I don't know where I got that from. Why would I
say such a thing? So Whoopi [Goldberg] did it instead and, of course she made a
fortune!
"I also didn't do Misery and Kathy Bates won an
Oscar for it," Midler says. "That's not to say I would have. It was
so violent and I had no relation to it. I was afraid."
Midler says she has stopped reading her press, whether
good or bad, and advises young actors to do the same. "It's meant to
injure and hurt and destroy. It's cruel, unsurvivable," Midler says of
negative press. "I've watched some of these young people go off the deep
end. You know, like Lindsay [Lohan] and Britney [Spears]. And now because of
the cameras and the ubiquity of the internet, you can't have your failures or
your meltdowns in private any more."
Lohan, currently in rehab in Los Angeles after serving
13 days in jail for violating probation, was cast as Midler's daughter in the
pilot for the sitcom Bette. She was replaced by actress Marina Malota for the
remaining episodes of the series which ran for one season in 2000.