After all these years, Talia Shire is still supporting Sylvester Stallone.
“I liked the last [‘Rocky’ film, ‘Creed’]. I gotta tell you, I thought Sylvester was brilliant,” Shire, 69, revealed at a Q&A following the premiere of “Dreamland” (directed by her son, Robert Schwartzman) during the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday. “Really, really just brilliant. To make it short and sweet, he was great.”
Shire starred opposite Stallone, 69, in five of his “Rocky” films, including the original in 1976, “Rocky II” (1979), “Rocky III” (1982), “Rocky IV” (1985) and “Rocky V” (1990).
In “Dreamland,” Shire plays Victoria, mother of protagonist Monty (played by Johnny Simmons), a Los Angeles-based pianist enlivened yet morally challenged by a romance with an older woman, Olivia (played by Amy Landecker).
As for being directed by her 33-year-old son, Robert, Shire admitted she “was nervous.”
“I wasn’t sure. My role came at sort of the end … the mother was either going to be a great pain or she was going to be really kind of a sensitive woman, so when we got to my part in the piece, Robert was terrific and wrote a very nurturing piece of dialogue. He was very kind to me. I was very nervous!”
Shire’s older son, Jason Schwartzman, 35, also has a role in the film.
