Eric Roberts still isn’t sure how he got through Star 80.
Appearing on the latest episode of It Happened in Hollywood, the actor looked back on his experience making the 1983 film with director Bob Fosse — a process that was as methodical as it was, at times, deeply unsettling. One moment in particular has stayed with him.
During production, Fosse insisted that Roberts spend the night in the actual apartment where Dorothy Stratten, the real-life Playboy Playmate of the Year from 1980, was murdered by her husband and manager, Paul Snider, the role Roberts was playing.
“I didn’t want to go,” Roberts says on the podcast. “I told him, ‘I don’t want it.’ And he said, ‘No, you’re going to spend the night with it. Come on.’”
The apartment, located off a busy highway, was noisy and impossible to ignore. Roberts says he didn’t sleep. The next day, he filmed one of the movie’s most difficult scenes.
“That was Bob,” he says. “He wanted you to feel what it was.”
Roberts’ path to Star 80 was far from straightforward. The year before production, he had been in a serious car accident that left him in a coma and caused lasting memory and coordination issues. At the time, he believed his acting career might be over. Then his manager passed him a script for Fosse’s next project, which had not yet widely circulated.
“It didn’t grab me right away,” Roberts admits. “It felt very black and white. But it said ‘Bob Fosse’ on it, and that was enough.”
He went in to audition, repeatedly. Roberts estimates he read for Fosse five or six times before getting a straightforward offer. “He never tipped his hand,” Roberts says. “Then one day he just asked if I wanted to make a movie. “
Once cast, Roberts entered what he describes as an unusually immersive prep process.
For roughly three months, Fosse walked him through key locations connected to the infamous true story, including the Vancouver Dairy Queen where Snider first met Stratten, her childhood home and the Playboy Mansion. Rehearsals were held in a church on Highland Avenue in Los Angeles, where Fosse taped out full set layouts on the floor.
“He knew exactly what he was going to shoot,” Roberts says. “Every move, every piece of furniture, everything.” Fosse’s focus, Roberts adds, was on avoiding a one-dimensional portrayal of Snider.
“He didn’t want a cartoon,” Roberts says. “He wanted someone real. And the truth is, people like that are all around us. “
Later in the podcast, Roberts also shared a story from pre-production that he says he rarely tells.
While staying at a motel with Fosse in West Los Angeles, he received a phone call that Fosse encouraged him to take. On the other end was the late director Peter Bogdanovich, also a former guest on It Happened in Hollywood, who had his own connection to Stratten.
Bogdanovich had cast her in 1981’s They All Laughed, her leap into mainstream filmmaking, which had led to an affair between filmmaker and muse.
The obsessive Snider hired a private investigator to follow Stratten. When he discovered she planned to divorce Snider and marry Bogdanovich, Snider murdered Stratten and killed himself. Bogdanovich is depicted in Star 80, renamed Aram Nicholas and played by Roger Rees.
Adding the strange, sensational surreality of the real-life tragedy, on Dec. 30, 1988, the 49-year-old Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise Stratten, Dorothy’s younger sister, sparking a tabloid frenzy.
“He asked me what I was getting paid, how I got the part,” Roberts recalls. “And then he suggested I leave the movie and that he might consider me for his version.”
Bogdanovich was developing his own version of the murder, which became the memoir The Killing of the Unicorn, detailing the relationship between their love affair, the making of They All Laughed and her murder.
Roberts describes Bodanovich’s tone as “condescending.” Meanwhile, Fosse, sitting nearby, urged him to keep the conversation going.
“I just kept talking, Roberts says. “I told him I’d call him back. “
He never did.
When the call ended, Roberts says Fosse was “rolling on the floor laughing.”
When Star 80 was released in November 1983, Roberts says the response from within the industry was notably muted.
“They didn’t know how to react,” he says. “They were afraid to like it because it might say something negative about Hollywood. And they were afraid to hate it because it was a great film.”
The movie received strong reviews but limited awards recognition. Roberts earned a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a drama but was not nominated for an Oscar — something he acknowledges didn’t fully register until years later.
“I didn’t even think about it at the time,” he says. “Then someone mentioned it, and I thought, ‘Oh. Maybe I should have been.’”
Fosse died in 1987, four years after the film’s release, without directing another feature. Looking back, Roberts places Star 80 alongside All That Jazz as defining works.
“Those are perfect movies,” he says. “Working with him, you realize real geniuses are rare. And they don’t work the way anyone else does.”
You can listen to the full conversation on It Happened in Hollywood.
