5 minute read
FACES
FACES: EUGENIE BONDURANT
ROLE MODEL
BY SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Have you ever asked for something, fully expected not to get it, then been thrilled when the answer was “yes!”
That’s what happened when we asked Eugenie Bondurant if she would be our model for this month’s fashion spread. After all, she isn’t just any model, but one who recently walked the runway in Paris and New York for Balenciaga, one of the world’s legendary houses of haute couture. But her reply was almost instantaneous: “How fun! Of course!”
Eugenie Bondurant, center, works with students on an improv game during an acting class at the Patel Conservatory at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa in 2015. Times (2015)
At 6 feet, 1 inch with cheekbones to die for, the New Orleans native started her career as a runway model and then studied acting. She appeared in three episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” as well as many other TV series and movies. She is perhaps best known for portraying Tigris in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” and The Occultist in the horror thriller “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.” And just in time for Halloween, you can see her in “Werewolf by Night,” a new Marvel horror film streaming on Disney+.
Bondurant also teaches acting and, as a cancer survivor, has given motivational talks.
While attending a publicity party in Los Angeles years ago, Bondurant met Paul Wilborn, a former Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times reporter who was covering the entertainment industry for the Associated Press. Wilborn spotted her across the room and made a beeline in her direction.
“He claims the only way he got my number was that he knew people in New Orleans,” Bondurant recalls. “I claim the only reason he got my number was because I was moving out of L.A. home to New Orleans and I thought he would be a decent, interesting guy with whom to set up my gal pals.”
Instead of going to the Crescent City, the couple went to Tampa, where then-Mayor Pam Iorio had offered Wilborn a position as Creative Industry Manager. He and Bondurant married in 2004 and moved to St. Petersburg, where Wilborn is executive director of the Palladium Theater, a 1920s church turned performing arts venue. When the original site for Bay’s fashion shoot fell through, he graciously offered us use of the Palladium. (Wilborn still writes, and his first novel, “Florida Hustle,” came out in May.)
As Bondurant was entering her 60s, a time when most models are well past their prime, she returned to the world of high fashion. Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia, had seen her in “The Conjuring” — “You scared me for three days,’’ he later told her — and invited her to be in his show. In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times’ Stephanie Hayes, Bondurant described how she lined up an agent, then went to Paris in April for a fitting: “‘They said, ‘You’re OK with latex?’ And I’m thinking, yeah because I’m an actor and I wear all kinds of goofy stuff. We would try on different body suits to see what fit ... in fact, the closer they fit, the better they felt, oddly.”
Bondurant went on to model in a fake snowstorm in Paris and appeared totally covered in black at the New York Stock Exchange in Gvasalia’s first-ever American fashion show. (A corporate finance major in college, Bondurant found that ironic: “Oh, jeezum peas, if I could have told my younger self, ‘You’re going to be on the New York Stock Exchange, but not in the way you think.’”)
Of her day modeling for Bay, Bondurant said it was “so, so, so much fun!” An equally good time was had by the Bay team. As the magazine’s creative director, Nikki Life, put it: “It was a lot of fun to work with a model that is an actress. They are much more theatrical!”
We think you will notice that the minute you see our fashion pages
Bondurant is The Occultist in “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.” Warner Bros. Pictures
Her film credits also include “Fear of Rain.” Lionsgate
Above, Bondurant attends the 2015 premiere of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2.” (Murray Close/Lionsgate) Above right, she is pictured as Tigris in a scene from the film. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
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