She played Patrice Kahlam on As the World Turns and worked on the soap-opera Search for Tomorrow. She also appeared in several films including Lovin’ Molly with Blythe Danner and Front Page. In 1975, she got the chance to work beside up-and-coming Hollywood hunk Robert Redford as a small-town girl who joins his daredevil flying team in The Great Waldo Pepper. In 1975, Sarandon made the off-beat decision to appear in a strange, low-budget musical spoof about two newlyweds who lose their virginity to a singing, dancing, leather-clad transsexual in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Urged to do the film by friend and costar Tim Curry, Sarandon played newlywed Janet Weiss for practically no money and had to sing for the first time in her life. She enjoyed the role because Janet’s hidden sexual prowess seemed to subvert all of Sarandon’s previous ingenue roles. Although the film initially flopped in the box office, it eventually attracted a loyal cult following at midnight screenings around the country. Sarandon continued to appear in a string of critically disastrous films including Dragonfly in 1976 and The Other Side of Midnight in 1977, but in 1978 her luck changed when she got the part of Hattie, the mother of a prostitute played by Brooke Shields in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby. She went on to play a clam-bar waitress in Malle’s next film Atlantic City and earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of the sexually vibrant Sally. Sarandon began dating Louis Malle and divorced Chris Sarandon in 1979, although she and he remained good friends. During this time she made a moving stage appearance as a repressed housewife in A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, in which she exhibited her comedic agility. After her break-up with Malle, she briefly dated the young Sean Penn, then became involved with Italian director Franco Amurri, with whom she had her first child, Eva. In 1983, Sarandon played a bisexual vampire’s new lover in The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, but it was her next role beside big shots Cher, Jack Nickolson, and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick that brought her into the true Hollywood playing field. Sarandon was promised the role of Alex, a sculptor, but was slighted by the studio when they decided to give it to Cher, leaving Sarandon the role of Jane, the cellist. She had to learn the cello at the last minute, and was almost electrocuted during a levitating scene over a swimming pool.