Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run) Logan's Run
Jenny Agutter was twenty-three when she played Jessica 6, the underground contact who leads Logan out of the domed city. She had been acting since childhood -- The Railway Children (1970) and Walkabout (1971) had established her as a serious young actress in Britain -- and Logan's Run was part of her move to Hollywood in the mid-1970s. The following year she won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in Equus (1977). (wikipedia)
Agutter spent months on enormous sets and recalled the production as the end of old Hollywood glamour
The shoot was long. Agutter moved between the nine MGM soundstages in Culver City and the Dallas Market Center location shoots, surrounded by the kind of large-scale physical production that was about to become obsolete.
"What I loved about making this film was being at the end of this era of MGM... a world where the glamour was most important." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
"When we weren't in MGM on the huge sets, we were in Dallas in a huge modern mall there. It was quite a long shoot." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
The scale of the production carried its own frustrations:
"The one bugbear about working on a big film... is the amount of time it takes to set things up." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
The revealing costume was unremarkable to her in the context of 1970s filmmaking
Jessica's costume -- a short green dress split up the side -- became iconic, but Agutter was matter-of-fact about it:
"It's sort of indicated that I was naked. I had a little green dress, I remember, that split right up the side." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
"In the '70s, nobody was particularly concerned. The nature of the film was in showing a society that also was meant to be fairly open-minded." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
The water escape stunt had no safety briefing
The sequence where Logan and Jessica swim through the dome's waterfall intake (beat 33 of 40 Beats (Logan's Run)) was physically dangerous. Agutter asked the stunt coordinator what to expect and received no useful information:
"I remember saying to the stunt person, 'What does one expect as the water goes through?' And they just said, 'No idea.'" -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
Agutter recognized that Jessica would be written differently today
Looking back at the character from a modern vantage, Agutter acknowledged the role's limitations while noting its period context:
"Jessica would probably be made to be much more a strong young woman coming out of that world." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
Agutter described the film as episodic storytelling with a sense of discovery
Her retrospective assessment balanced affection with candor:
"It has a slightly old-fashioned feeling about it" with "episodic storytelling" and a "sense of discovery." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)
Peter Ustinov's presence on set was a highlight:
"He was very, very funny and enchanting." -- Jenny Agutter, It Came From Blog (2021)