Phoebe Cates’ experience on the set of Paradise (1982) was highly stressful, and it ultimately left her with deep regrets about the project. Paradise was her feature film debut,shot when she was just 17 years old, and it heavily modeled itself after the massive success of Brooke Shields’ The Blue Lagoon (1980). However, the reality of the shoot in Israel’s Negev Desert was far from ideal.
Cates was originally a successful teenage model but wanted to transition into acting. After passing a screen test in New York, she was offered the lead role of Sarah. She was highly apprehensive about the extensive nudity required by the script, but she ultimately took the job after her father encouraged her to accept it.
Filming in the harsh Negev Desert from March to May of 1981 proved to be a difficult learning curve. Cates noted in a 1982 interview that she struggled with the self-consciousness of her new career: “As a model, you have to be conscious of the camera; but as an actress, you cannot.”
The primary source of Cates’ distress and subsequent anger toward the film was how the production handled her nude scenes. While she did film several revealing scenes herself, she later discovered that the producers had used a body double to shoot much more explicit, close-up nude shots of her character without her knowledge or consent. The experience completely soured her view of the movie. Upon its release, she made her stance very clear. She later stated, “What I learned was never to do a movie like that again.”
Her co-star, Willie Aames, revealed that Cates was so upset about how she was treated that she completely distanced herself from the film and refused to do any promotional press alongside him. Interestingly, despite hating the film, she did record the movie’s main vocal theme, “Paradise,” which actually became a major pop hit in parts of Europe and Asia.
Fortunately, her very next project, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (released just six months later in late 1982), catapulted her to genuine stardom on her own terms.
