Anna Daniels
We meant it when we claimed Sean Young had been a major Hollywood player in the ’80s. In fact, the actor spent much of the decade sharing the screen with, and stealing scenes from, bona fide Hollywood icons like Kevin Costner (No Way Out), Michael Douglas (Wall Street), Gene Hackman (No Way Out), and Bill Murray (Stripes). One of her highest-profile roles came in 1982, when Ridley Scott cast the fresh-faced Young opposite Harrison Ford in a little sci-fi confection called Blade Runner.
Blade Runner was just Young’s third big-screen credit. As the other two parts came via minor roles in James Ivory’s Jane Austen in Manhattan and opposite Murray in Stripes, it’s safe to say she’d never seen or experienced anything of quite the scope that Scott and Co. were conjuring with Blade Runner. Likewise, she’d certainly never been through a production quite as tumultuous — not that anything could’ve prepared the young star for the legendary production woes that beset Blade Runner.
Still, if you know anything about Blade Runner‘s history, you know it’s sort of a miracle the film ever got finished, and that it actually turned out pretty well. Though it didn’t break any box office records on release, it’s become, in the years since, one of the most beloved science-fiction films ever produced. That’s in no small part thanks to Scott’s wildly stylistic vision, of course, but we also like to think Sean Young’s compelling, and utterly heartbreaking, work as the replicant Rachael, which was digitally reprised for Denis Villeneuve’s egregiously undervalued 2017 sequel Blade Runner: 2049, helped the film land on a more human level.
Written by: Looper
