de PRUME, Cathryn

PERSONAL: Daughter of Julia de Prume. Education: Attended New York High School of the Performing Arts and State University of New York at Purchase.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—de Prume Productions, P.O. Box 6012, North Hollywood, CA 91603. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Actress and screenwriter. Owner, with brother Ivan de Prume, of de Prume Productions. Actress in films, including Five Corners, Cineplex Odeon, 1987; Deadtime Stories, Entertainment in Video, 1987; Bloodhounds of Broadway, 1989; Navy SEALS, Orion, 1990; CrissCross (also known as Alone Together), 1992; Terminal Velocity, Buena Vista, 1994; Mrs. Winterbourne, TriStar, 1996; The Wedding Project, 1999; Random Shooting in L.A., 1999; Sex and Violence, 2002; and Scrambled, 2003. Actress in made-for-television movie Love, Lies, and Murder, 1991. Actress in television series Down the Shore, Fox, 1992-93. Guest star on television shows, including Northern Exposure, Coach, and That's Life.

WRITINGS:

screenplays

(With others; and actress) Random Shooting in L.A., 1999.

(And director) Stinky (short film), de Prume Productions, 2002.

(And director) Garbage, (short film), de Prume Productions, 2002.

Also author of Blended Salad (autobiographical one-woman show); author, with Reagan Leonard, of unproduced screenplays A Fire in Brooklyn and Saturday Nights; author of The Old Man and the Ferris Wheel (children's story).

SIDELIGHTS: Actress Cathryn de Prume has appeared in several films and in the short-lived television series Down the Shore, but she may be best known to film buffs for her role in Random Shooting in L.A. This independent film is shot using a technique mimicking a home video camera which is passed along to several different, unrelated people through the course of the story. The film was directed by Jeffrey Delman, who had previously worked with de Prume on his first directorial project, the film Deadtime Stories. Delman assembled his cast for Random Shooting in L.A. and then encouraged them to write segments of the film themselves within the basic framework that he had established. De Prume wrote the third and final act of the film, in which she plays Silyotka, a Russian prostitute. (De Prume's mother, Julia, is Russian, so de Prume can easily adopt a Russian accent.) Delman recalled to CinemaSpeak.com contributor Warren Curry how de Prume's vignette took shape: "In the early stages I said to her, 'If you could play any part, what would you want to play?' She had been doing a lot of goofy comedies at that time, and she said, 'I would like to do something really dark.' . . . I asked her to come up with something and four days later she brought me her first draft and it was just amazing." Curry agreed with Delman's assessment of de Prume's screenwriting skills; in his review of the film he wrote that "there's not a false note to be found" in de Prume's "utterly captivating" segment.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 33, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

periodicals

People, June 22, 1992, David Hiltbrand, review of Down the Shore, pp. 13-14.

Variety, May 14, 1986, review of Deadtime Stories, p. 42.

online

AMCTV.com,http://www.amctv.com/ (February 3, 2003), "Show Preview: Deadtime Stories."

CinemaSpeak.com,http://www.cinemaspeak.com/ (February 3, 2003), Warren Curry, review of Random Shooting in L.A, "City of Angels: An Interview with Random Shooting in L.A. Director Jeffrey Delman."

De Prume Productions Web site,http://www.deprumeproductions.com (February 3, 2003).

Media-Street,http://media-street.com/ (February 3, 2003), "Key Cast."

Random Shooting in L.A. Web site,http://www.randomshootinginla.com/ (February 3, 2003).

TV Tome,http://www.tvtome.com/ (February 3, 2003), "Cathryn de Prume" and "Down the Shore."*