"You appreciate your mom so much more when you have kids."
So says actress Elisabeth Shue, and you know what? She should know. Elisabeth is currently starring as her own mother in the family film Gracie, which is based on her life as a teenage girl who wants to play soccer on the boys varsity team.
The Shue family's soccer legacy is well-documented: Dad James, was the captain of his team at Harvard, as was Elisabeth's younger brother, John. Andrew (formerly of Melrose Place) played professionally with the Los Angeles Galaxy, but they all agree that
none of them was as good as their oldest brother, Will, who died in
an accident in 1988, and to whom Gracie is dedicated.
Although it's based on the Elisabeth's real-life quest to break the gender barrier in school sports, Gracie is partially fictionalized for dramatic effect, Though the film takes place in high school, Elisabeth was actually
in junior high at the time he said. Thanks, in part to Elisabeth, by the time she reached high school, a girls team had been started. "I just thought we should be treated equally," Elisabeth says. "I knew that I could play better than some of the boys." (See some of her mad soccer skillz in The Karate Kid!)
Gracie was directed by Elisabeth's husband, Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), and co-stars herself as well as brother Andrew. No word on whether her daughters with Guggenheim - Stella, 6, and Agnes, 1 (they also have a son Miles, 10)- have inherited the Shue family soccer gene, but if they do decide to play, they'll be able to, thanks, in part, to courageous and talented athletes like their Mom.
Pretty cool.
