Hazardous act: UVA grad had 'JFK' moment

Sarah Lyman Kravits, UVA class of 1988, was in grad school in Washington when she was picked for a few moments of screen time in Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK. "Oliver Stone wanted everyone smoking," remembers Kravits, a nonsmoker. "I was trying to concentrate on not looking like an idiot smoking."

The nonsmokers were given clove cigarettes. "They were making me feel ill," says Kravits in a phone call from New Jersey, where she now lives. "I didn't want to put it out because I wasn't very good at lighting cigarettes."

Ten takes later, they had the scene in which Donald Sutherland walks through the Pentagon past Kravits, who plays a general's secretary and waves him into a smoke-filled meeting room.

"Oliver Stone kept calling me 'honey,'" says Kravits. Sutherland was quite a character– and shoeless, she reveals, although that wasn't visible to viewers.

Kravits has moved from drama to parenthood and textbook writing, but she fondly remembers her bouffant-haired stint as an extra in JFK, which will have a 20th anniversary screening with Stone at this year's Virginia Film Festival.