Watch: Elizabeth Berkley finally embraces Showgirls at 20th anniversary screening
By Nick Bond
It seems Elizabeth Berkley has finally made peace with the film the made her a star (for all the wrong reasons).
The 42-year-old actress thought she was receiving her ‘big break’ back in 1995 when she was cast as the lead role of Nomi Malone in the big-budget ‘erotic drama’ Showgirls.
The film was a critical and commercial disaster, though, and Berkley’s been reticent to embrace its cultural position as a so-bad-it’s-good guilty pleasure with a voracious fanbase. While it was a box office flop, the film has gone on to become movie studio MGM’s best-selling DVD of all time, as fans have embraced the trashy story of Nomi heading to the bright lights of Las Vegas to pursue her dream as a dancer (but ending up in a seedy world of sex, stripping and Doggy Chow).
But at a 20th anniversary screening of the now-cult-classic in LA over the weekend, Berkley stood in front of 4,000-odd Showgirls fanatics and revealed she’s finally learned to embrace the film that nearly destroyed her:
“Tonight is like this magical full-circle moment where I actually didn’t get to experience the sweetness of the screening with a crowd that embraced it,” she said.
“I wanted to thank you guys for giving me this gift of truly getting a full-circle moment of experiencing the joy with you because you guys and the love you have for this movie have made this the cult film that it is.”
As well as referencing a few of the film’s more unintentionally funny moments (The french fry throwing delivery of the line “DIFFERENT PLACES” will forever remain a cinema landmark), Berkley finished by treating the audience to one of Nomi’s signature over-the-top dance moves – to hysterical cheers from those in attendance, of course:
Showgirls 2, anyone?