In Under the Cherry Moon (1986), Prince’s second film and his directorial debut, he and Jerome Benton play a couple of grifters in the South of France who plan to scam a beautiful heiress—played by a 25-year-old Kristin Scott Thomas in her first feature film—until Prince’s character falls in love with her. The movie is about movies; it’s a riff on the frothy screwball comedies directed by Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges. And its plot resembles the storylines of any number of 1930s films about rebellious heiresses who get into hot water with their controlling fathers when they fall for men considered to be beneath them. Though an estimated two million people watched its premiere live on MTV, Under the Cherry Moon lost money at the box office, earning just over $10 million. Was Prince upset about the terrible reviews? “Prince never cared what people said,” says Benton. “Prince was confidence. Prince was Prince. And nothing could touch that.” —Nancy Jo Sales