Prodigal Daughter Bonet Back

After a long hiatus, Enemy of the State reintroduces a Cosby kid to films

by Bill Thompson

� Toronto Sun, 1998

HOLLYWOOD -- Lisa Bonet says she didn't disappear from the showbiz world, she just stopped returning calls.

Bonet also maintains that she didn't stop working either.

"I was taking care of my daughter and taking care of myself," says the former Cosby kid at a Marina Del Rey hotel.

Lately, she's been taking care of business, too. Bonet is back after a five-year break.

She co-stars in Tony Scott's thriller, Enemy Of The State, which stars Will Smith.

In the film opening Friday, Bonet plays a go-between for Smith's lawyer. Pundits say it's like she never went away.

Director Scott -- who claims "I have lusted after her since Angel Heart" -- confirms that Bonet was incredibly difficult to track down for the part.

"That was true," says Bonet, who lives just outside of L.A. "I don't have an agent."

She might need one. That is if she wants to get back into the game that more or less rejected her despite what she claims about the phone calls.

Bonet's star flamed out quickly.

At 15, she was a TV star as Denise Huxtable on the number one rated Cosby Show.

Two years later she risked it and bared it all, starring in the 1985 X-rated voodoo thriller, Angel Heart. The rumours of drug use didn't help her cause either.

"I liked to stir the pot," she says now. "I was 17, living in New Orleans, and working with people like Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke."

In the Angel Heart aftermath -- the film was a critical and box-office bomb -- Bonet had moved on from Cosby. She had a TV hit with her Cosby spinoff, A Different World.

She was in a few more movies, starred in a handful of telefilms and made guest appearances on sitcoms.

But she mostly faded from view by 1988 after hooking up with rocker Lenny Kravitz, the father of her daughter, Zoe -- Kravitz and Bonet have since split.

When she's asked whether the trashy tabloid gossip led to the breakup, she shakes her head no, but won't talk about it. Same for the drug abuse rumours, although she generalizes in a telling way.

"I'll turn 31 this month, and it feels good," says Bonet.

"Okay, I had my days of troubled youth," she adds carefully, "I made mistakes, but I stand behind everything I did."

Then she admits: "Glamour does put a spell on you.

"I see young actresses, like Christina Ricci, give up part of the joy of living to keep this dark image.

"There seems to be something about cool and unhappy that go together.

"I wasn't happy when I was a teenager. I didn't know how to live for myself."

She does now. And she's more at peace.

And, she's probably thankful that director Tony Scott finally tracked her down for Enemy Of The State.

Bonet smiles wickedly.

"They were," she says sounding like the younger, over-confident Bonet, "lucky to have me."