From the Archives: Anjelica Huston on Modeling, Movie-Making, and a Life in the Spotlight
Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anjelica Huston has lived many lives, all with grace and charisma. As the daughter of John Huston (director of The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, and more) she was movie royalty from birth. But she grew up in rural Ireland and went to high school in Swinging-Sixties London. That meant she developed a set of values far removed from Hollywood high society. Her first career was as a high-end fashion model, a favorite subject of Richard Avedon and later a muse of Halston. But she had always wanted to be a movie actress, and she spent time in the trenches, working on her craft in classes and smaller roles before her Oscar-winning turn in Prizzi's Honor. Right as she was leaving the photo studio for the movie studio, she met Jack Nicholson: "he made me laugh," she tells Alec. The couple defined Hollywood cool for almost two decades. Huston tells Alec the story of all of her transitions -- romantic, professional, and geographic. Her two wonderful memoirs are A Story Lately Told and Watch Me.
Originally aired April 7th, 2020.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.8 | I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. |
| 0:11.7 | Angelica Houston is a remarkable actress who has lived a remarkable life. |
| 0:17.3 | She has an Oscar for her emotionally complex and very funny performance in Prizzi's honor as the black sheep mob daughter, May Rose, Preetzy. |
| 0:28.0 | Come on, Anna Maya. I got a reputation to live up to you. I'm the family scandal. Everybody'd be disappointed if I stop. |
| 0:36.9 | Her pitch-perfect morticia in the Adams family will be loved for generations. |
| 0:43.3 | Oh, I'll be fine. |
| 0:45.3 | I'm just like any modern woman trying to have it all, a loving husband, a family. |
| 0:50.3 | It's just I wish I had more time to seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade. |
| 0:57.7 | But to fully understand the context of our conversation today, you'll also need a line from a movie Houston had nothing to do with. |
| 1:06.4 | Annie Hall. |
| 1:07.6 | We're going to meet Jack and Angelica and have a drink there. |
| 1:10.4 | And if you'd like to come, we'd love to have you. We can going to meet Jack and Angelica and have a drink there. And if you'd like to come, |
| 1:11.9 | we'd love to have you. We can just sit and talk. Nothing. That was Paul Simon ad-libbing to Diane |
| 1:18.3 | Keaton in 1976, trying to conjure the most unpretentious but exclusive party in all the world. |
| 1:26.4 | Jack and Angelica will be there. No last names needed. |
| 1:30.7 | Jack is Jack Nicholson, of course, Houston's boyfriend for almost 20 years starting in the early |
| 1:36.6 | 70s. And for all that time, nobody embodied the nonchalant glamour of the Hollywood New Wave more |
| 1:43.5 | than they did. |
| 1:45.7 | Angelica Houston is the daughter of prima ballerina Enrique Soma and John Houston, |
| 1:52.7 | one of the greatest filmmakers who's ever lived, the director of the Maltese Falcon, |
| 1:57.4 | the treasure of the Sierra Madre, the African Queen, and Preetzzi's honor |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.