Irene Miracle

Just to set the record straight: this stunning, versatile, and award-winning actress goes by her real name! "Miracle" is a French-Acadian line that went west with the covered wagons. Klara Irene Miracle, to be complete, was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but since then she's made the world her home. San Francisco, Nairobi, Rome, Paris, Madrid, Los Angeles, Helsinki and Barcelona are all places she has made her life. Her film career began with the smash-hit "Midnight Express", for which she won the 1980 Golden Globe. She subsequently worked in numerous films, television and theater productions in the US and in Europe. "I've always felt very lucky," she says. "I've never planned my career in the usual sense. For me, relationships are the most important part of being alive, and whatever work or success I've enjoyed has always flowed forth from the people I've been blessed to know, and in what we create together." When she was a student living in Kenya, Irene found herself caught, by pure chance, in the middle of a local political intrigue that could have cost her life. "It was something so arbitrary that I won't even go into the details. I'd need to write a book about it. Let's just say, I ended up boarding an airplane without so much as a toothbrush and escaped to Rome with just the clothes on my back. Within hours of landing in Rome, I met Michelangelo Antonioni, screen-tested for his AD, Aldo Lado, (which landed me my first lead role in a feature) and was soon running with a fast crowd of great directors including Fellini, Bertolucci and Pasolini to mention a few." Living in Europe brought her a great deal of work, most notably in Dario Argento's cult hit "Inferno", and in the noirish, surrealistic puzzler "The Last of Philip Banter". "Europe is a whole different ballgame. It's more about who you are than what you've done there. And yet, the Americans are catching up with Europe. Look at the independent film scene we have going here now." What about future efforts? "I've turned producer. If you're over 30, a woman, and you want to make interesting films, you have to make your own work." After helping to develop a slated-for-1999 version of "The Bacchae", by Euripides, Ms. Miracle has launched into other projects, some designed to showcase her own acting talents. Stay tuned to this space.

F.X. Feeney, January 1999