Shirley MacLaine and Peter Sellers played together once before in Woman Time Seven, where Sellers ostensibly made an appearance in "a Shirley MacLaine film". In Being There, she returned the favour, albeit 13 years later. While it may have seemed strange at the time for her to play such a small role, today the brief star turn seems more and more the norm, whether it be Robert De Niro in Jackie Brown, Bill Murray in Ed Wood or John Travolta in The Thin Red Line.

MacLaine has been quoted as saying that Being There was Sellers' greatest role and also one of her own favourite pictures. And if it doesn't immediately come to mind in a discussion of her career, it is nonetheless a part she wanted to call attention to here in Berlin, perhaps for that very reason. Or maybe she simply wanted to use the chance to stage her own little "homage within a homage" and thus remember a great actor and good friend. Andrew Horn