THE PERKS OF BEING AN EDITOR AT PEOPLE ARE considerable, and some of them—standing on a red carpet during awards season, meeting celebrities you grew up worshipping, producing a magazine that is beloved by millions—are so great that to even mention them, as I just did, is tantamount to insufferable bragging.
So there’s really no good way for me to bring up one of the very best parts about working at the very best magazine without inducing massive envy in others. I apologize in advance, because I’m about to tell you this: every year, People puts together a beautiful, exclusive photo portfolio taken during the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France. The photos showcase the biggest and brightest stars who travel down to the French Riviera to promote their latest films—Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, to name just a few—and producing that portfolio requires a roughly five-night stay in Cannes. In 2013, I was one of the People editors sent to oversee the portfolio. Five nights, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Yeah, I’d hate me, too.
If it makes you feel any better, I will quickly add the following. While celebrities and their entourages stay at some of the most beautiful hotels in Cannes, such as the Intercontinental Carlton and the Grand Hyatt Hôtel Martinez and others that line the Croisette—the crescent-shaped boulevard that runs along the seaside—most journalists wind up someplace altogether less glamorous. In my case, it was a budget hotel a mile uphill from the sea-level opulence and designed primarily for business travelers. Upon checking in, I realized my room featured a bed, a desk… and no chair. A microscopic balcony, accessed by a sliding glass door that seemed to have permanently leapt its tracks, had one of those standard plastic patio chairs sitting forlornly by itself, but otherwise, there was no place to sit in my room. Calling down to the front desk, I inquired about getting a chair, and the woman at reception said she would send someone. Sure enough, thirty minutes later, there was a knock at my door, and in walked a woman from housekeeping—carrying only a rag. She proceeded to walk out to the small balcony, wipe down the plastic chair, carry it into my room, and place it in front of my desk. Then she exited without saying a word.
I went down to the front desk in person and asked if perhaps there was some sort of better chair that might be placed in my room. Given my spotty recollection of high school French, what I probably said was something that would literally translate to: “Please can I have a chair which is real and true?” Passing by several rooms being serviced by housekeeping on my way to the elevator, I had noticed armchairs next to some of the beds. Maybe I could have a chair like one of those?
“Oh no,” the woman at reception informed me, mercifully in English, after looking up my room number. “Is not possible for what you are paying. For zee rate we have you in zee room, you cannot have a soft chair. I am sorry, but no soft chair for you.”
This quickly became a recurring punchline between me and my People colleague Mary Green for the rest of the trip. Whenever something would inevitably go wrong—cabs that would zip past us as we struggled to get back uphill to the hotel, a waiter who would blatantly ignore us in favor of wealthier patrons at the table next to ours, a party’s velvet rope being manned by someone who claimed not to see us on his list—one of us would turn to the other and say, “No soft chair for you.” Then we’d just laugh it off. Because, let’s face it: even a crappy hotel room with no soft chair in the South of France is better than pretty much any hotel room anywhere else. Especially when you’re there to meet your favorite movie star in the entire world.
In 2013 the HBO film about Liberace, Behind the Candelabra, was premiering to much acclaim, and the film’s stars, Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, had agreed to be photographed at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc (known more commonly as just the Hôtel du Cap) just outside of Cannes in the picturesque village of Antibes. This was notable for three reasons: First, shooting at the Hôtel du Cap introduced me to the world’s most beautiful hotel, where I will someday celebrate my one hundredth birthday, as it will take me roughly that long to save up enough money to be able to afford a stay there. Second, it was my chance to once again cross paths with Michael Douglas since he’d nearly made me cry while warning me about the fate of my blackened soul. Third, Matt Damon is number one on a laminated list of men to whom I would most like to do unspeakable things. (Before anyone grows concerned, my husband has a similar list of fantasy names. I believe high on his list is Jennifer Garner, which could have worked out so nicely if only I had lusted after Ben Affleck instead of Matt Damon. Alas.) As far as I can tell, Matt’s only real flaw was that he didn’t know I existed. But Cannes was my opportunity to change all that.
Just to be present at the photo shoot—albeit one that would be roughly fifteen minutes in duration—with Matt Damon, in the flesh, was worth a nine-hour transatlantic flight. I even practiced what I would say to him: some easy, breezy joke about the location where we were shooting—I was circling around a variation of “Shame we couldn’t get something with a better view,” which I would say while gesturing to the Côte d’Azur stretching out behind the cliffside terrace where we’d be perched.
After two days of rain when I had first arrived in Cannes, the day of the Damon-Douglas shoot dawned crystal clear with blue skies. Mary and I arrived at the hotel an hour ahead of the shoot time, which gave us a moment to gawk at Jessica Chastain in the lobby and stroll the rose-scented pathways through the hotel’s gardens. Then we set up on the patio of one of the private cabanas overlooking the property’s pool and the sea beyond, and waited. Every time I heard footsteps approaching I leapt up, alert, certain it was Matt—only to find it was yet another bellman or other hotel staffer bringing ice or towels or some other unneeded item. Bored, I began checking e-mail, and soon found myself sucked into a lengthy chain of correspondence about a story developing back in New York involving a reality TV star. After several minutes, I glanced up just in time to see Matt Damon sauntering past me toward the patio.
“Eeep,” I managed to say/squeak, just loudly enough for him to turn and notice me.
“Hey, how are you?” he said, moving quickly enough to make it clear he didn’t really want an answer but was merely being polite.
Michael Douglas was just seconds behind him, and within a minute they were both seated on the patio. I went and stood close enough to the photographer not to be obtrusive but still to be within earshot of both men. I got ready to say something about the view, and then noticed the two of them had turned and begun talking to each other, joking and laughing. The photographer, thrilled with their natural rapport and chemistry, was delighted. “Don’t stop!” he shouted, and began shooting them as they continued catching up. After a few minutes, they changed positions and stood against a railing, but continued to be in rapt conversation, joking about the lengthy press tour they had endured. Five minutes after that, a publicist for Damon appeared on the edge of the frame and tapped her watch. Time was up.
The photographer announced he’d gotten lots of great stuff and thanked everyone for their time. Suddenly, Matt was gliding past me again with a quick nod and a smile. Then he was gone.
I sat there, stunned for a moment as I realized my biggest celebrity crush had just slipped entirely through my grasp. Within five minutes, though, I realized I wasn’t exactly devastated. Even if the timing, the scenario, and my hair had been perfect, the most that could ever have occurred, in both best- and worst-case scenarios, would have been an awkward attempt at flirting, which, had it been minorly successful, would have ultimately made me question the state of his marriage or mine. In all honesty, one of the hottest things about Matt Damon is that he’s a devoted spouse and father. Best to leave that image completely unmarred.
More importantly, going to Cannes is an incredible adventure, certainly, but being there was also a part of my job, and swooning was not on my agenda. The images we got of Matt and Michael were great, and that was most important. Mary was interviewing Michael later that day, and I wanted to confirm with Michael’s publicist that she would be getting enough time with him and, if not, make it clear we would need follow-up time on the phone. Then I noticed that even though the shoot was done, Michael hadn’t left, and was also enjoying the view of the Riviera that stretched out from the hotel’s terrace.
It was only two years since Michael’s battle with throat cancer had nearly killed him. During the worst of it, the radiation treatment had withered him to a shell of his former self, and there had been fears that even if he survived, he might never speak again. Instead, he had rallied with remarkable strength and determination, taking the stage at the Oscars the year before and earning a standing ovation. Now he had turned in what many were calling the performance of his career in Behind the Candelabra and would go on to win an Emmy and a Golden Globe, as well as lavish praise in Cannes, for it. He was chatting pleasantly with the photographer about the film when I began to debate going up to him. I thought about maybe reminding him of when we had met all those years ago, during my Page Six days, and the effect his words had had on me.
“You may not remember this, Mr. Douglas, but you told me to quit my old job before my soul turned black, and even though I almost started crying in a public place because of you, I’m really grateful you said what you did, because ultimately leaving Page Six led to my dream job, which is the one I have now,” I thought about rambling on to him. But I knew there was no point. I was certain he wouldn’t remember the incident, and there would be nothing gained by reminding him that I once worked at a tabloid he despised.
The truth is, there was something else that held me back, too. I realized I did very much want to talk to Michael Douglas, but in that seaside location, it was another memory entirely that suddenly came to mind.
During spring break the year I was thirteen, Caneel Bay—perhaps seeing a surge in popularity after a notable visit by George Michael—was sold out on the dates we would normally visit, and so my parents selected a different resort for our getaway, this one on the French side of St. Martin. There, I glumly sulked around in a way only a ridiculously jaded and overprivileged Manhattan teen denied her usual group of friends and her usual island resort (oh, how those very words, “usual island resort,” make me want to reach back in time and slap myself repeatedly; I was the worst, I know) could dare to be. My parents, thankfully, ignored my brattiness and instead extolled the virtues of the resort where we were staying. I shot down every one of them. “The restaurant had amazing French food!” they exclaimed. The food was too gloopy and covered in sauce and the place was too fancy and I didn’t want to eat there every night, I whined. The beach was so wide and beautiful! they cooed. The beach was far away from our room and the water was rough and choppy and I was afraid of all of the waves, I moaned. So to recap: I was the worst.
Then they hit upon a feature of the resort with which I could find no fault. “Michael Douglas is staying here,” my mom whispered to me one night at dinner. “He’s here with his wife and that’s their son. I think his name is Cameron.”
While I might have been too young to appreciate that Michael Douglas was already an Academy Award winner, for producing One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and while I certainly had no understanding of who Kirk Douglas was or the Hollywood pedigree Michael therefore boasted, I was very much aware of a film called Romancing the Stone. I had seen it at least half a dozen times. I thought Kathleen Turner, as Joan Wilder, was the coolest woman alive (I wasn’t wrong), and while I was too young to fully appreciate the swaggering type of sex appeal Michael Douglas brought to his portrayal of the film’s hero, Jack T. Colton, I knew major movie star charisma when I saw it. Now it was two tables away from me, eating escargots.
So while I wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest Michael Douglas fan, there was still no denying that his family’s presence had added a frisson of excitement to the trip and curtailed my plans to be a complete and total whiny jerk. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get anything out of the situation: a Michael Douglas autograph didn’t really enthrall me much. Yet I liked knowing he was there. My dad, continuing to prove his nascent stalker abilities, reliably got us a table next to the Douglas family during breakfast and made note of the fact that they didn’t have a nanny with them. This prompted my mom to swing into Bethany Beach mode. “You should go over and introduce yourself to their son,” she offered. “He doesn’t have anyone to play with.” But with only a few days left at the resort, and the newest Sweet Valley High book in my possession, I didn’t feel compelled to find a companion.
Later that afternoon, however, I found myself on the beach, bored by the antics of the Sweet Valley crew and even more tired of listening to my parents debate the merits of various other resorts. (It wasn’t enough to stay at a nice place: it had to be a nicer place than any of the other nice places also on the island.) I wandered down to the surf and there was Cameron, digging in the sand. He seemed to be only a few years younger than I was. He had his father’s eyes and mother’s sloping aquiline nose and bowed lips. Something about seeing him all alone struck a familiar pang with me, a fellow only child, and so I wandered over to him.
“Looking for treasure?” I asked, trying to sound something between casual and cool.
He looked up and seemed to debate for a split second whether I merited a response. Then he smiled.
“Nah,” he said. “I was just looking to see if I can find any cool shells or anything here. I can always find them when we go to Bermuda. But I don’t know if there’s anything good here.”
I was an avid shell collector myself during our trips to Bethany Beach. The best place to look is well upland from the water’s edge, as most of the shells wash in during the high tide. I explained this to Cameron, and we moved up the beach a bit, kicking through the drier sand. Within five minutes, though, it was clear we were going to come up empty.
“This doesn’t seem like the right kind of beach for it,” Cameron said. But the sand was incredibly soft and almost clay-like when wet, which gave me an idea.
“We could probably build a pretty cool castle with this sand, though,” I said.
Five minutes later, we were up to our elbows in an attempt to build an epic sandcastle… which then devolved into being some sort of hill/fort when we realized neither of us really had the first idea of how to build a sandcastle.
Throughout the afternoon, Cameron was gracious and polite, never resorting to the sort of wiseass teasing or sarcastic jabs that were typical of kids, especially boys, our age. There was something effortlessly pleasant about him, as he deferred to whatever I wanted to do (a quality I consistently approve of in people I spend time with) and was quick to laugh or agree to a new game. He never bragged about or even brought up any of the considerable perks that had to be a part of his life—no reference to the fact that those stays in Bermuda actually took place in a beachfront estate so huge and lavish it would later be turned into a high-end resort, no mention of the fact that he and his family had likely flown to St. Martin on a private plane, no indication that he usually had nannies or servants or any sort of entourage generally tending to his every need. Instead, as the sun started to set, after we’d built various sand structures and explored the scrubby bushes along the beach for various creatures, he told me he was sorry to be leaving the next day.
“Well, thanks. This was really… lovely,” he said after searching for the word for a minute, and the adjective stuck in my mind. It was as though he’d been taught to use it as some part of etiquette class, or else it was an Anglicanism he’d picked up from somewhere. Still, he said it effortlessly and without any affectation—“lovely”—not “cool” or “nice” or even, as might have been appropriate for someone who spent much of his life on the West Coast, “awesome.” Instead, he used this quaint, old-fashioned, charming word. Leaving the beach that day, he mentioned he wouldn’t be having dinner at the resort that night and so likely wouldn’t see me again.
“See ya,” he said with a shrug, getting up and starting to jog off down the beach. I waved and went back to our fort, and then turned to see him walking back toward me.
“Hey, listen, it was really nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand. To this day, I can’t even say with complete confidence that I’d ever told him my name. I shook his hand, and he smiled then walked away. I couldn’t identify the emotion I felt from that gesture, from him simply offering me his hand—it wasn’t a swoon, certainly, and it wasn’t really sadness to be saying goodbye to a friend I’d only had for six hours. It wasn’t until years later, as I learned what became of Cameron, that I was able to put my finger on it. Cameron Douglas became horribly addicted to drugs, eventually landing in jail where his addiction managed to persist. When I heard the news, I could at last identify the emotion that had occurred when he came back up to me on the beach that day, still just a little boy, and held out his hand.
Heartbroken. That’s how I felt as I watched Cameron Douglas behave with such poise and grace and then walk away: heartbroken that I wouldn’t get to know him better. Heartbroken that he had seemed perhaps a little too grateful and relieved to have spent such an easy afternoon with someone. Heartbroken that there appeared to be an innate loneliness and sadness to him that resonated with me. Today, still, I am heartbroken that the world knows him as some sort of junkie or dealer, when for a brief moment, I had met someone so classy he made a point, at such a young age, of coming back to say goodbye properly.
Now in Antibes, faced with Michael Douglas again on a beach, I knew I wouldn’t tell him about the warning he’d given me early in my career. For one thing, I stood by the work I’d done for Page Six and didn’t regret my time there. More importantly, there was something else I wanted to say to him, something that felt more important. Cameron at that point was still appealing his most recent jail sentence, for possession of narcotics with intent to distribute, and hoping to have it reduced. (Instead, it was later extended when Cameron was caught, repeatedly, having smuggled narcotics into prison. He also suffered a broken leg inflicted by another inmate. He’s not due for release until early 2018.) Michael had expressed relief at his son’s initial incarceration, taking the blame for “being a bad father” and going on to explain that without prison intervention, Cameron was going to “be dead [from drugs] or somebody was gonna kill him. I think he has a chance to start a new life, and he knows that.” But that day, as Michael sat on the Hôtel du Cap’s terrace, the fresh start hadn’t materialized for Cameron.
“Mr. Douglas, I’m the editor here from People,” I said, approaching him as he smiled at me pleasantly.
“You of course couldn’t know this, but years ago, as a child, I stayed in St. Martin at the same time as you and your son Cameron,” I said, naming the resort and noticing that he nodded his head in recognition when I did. “I spent an afternoon playing with him when we were just kids. I wanted to tell you how much I’m really pulling for Cameron to come through this and find a different path. The day I spent with him really stuck with me.”
I went on to tell Michael how much I had enjoyed my time with Cameron, all about the wonderful day we’d had together, and how the memory of his simple farewell had remained in my mind all these years later.
“I don’t know how often people talk to you about Cameron, but just in case they don’t, I just wanted to tell you I thought he was really a great kid,” I said, adding, “I know how much you must love him.”
Michael stared at me for a moment, still nodding his head slightly in agreement with what I’d said about his son. Then he cleared his throat, which either had something caught in it, or was still raspy from the cancer treatments.
“You know, I really thank you for coming over and telling me that,” he said at last. “I write to Cam every week, and in my next letter, I’m going to tell him that you came over and said hello. I’m sure he’ll remember that day. Really, coming here and sharing that with me… that was so kind.”
He was still seated and so he had to look up to speak to me. At that exact moment, the photographer, who had continued shooting Michael alone, snapped a few photos with me in the frame, and captured a glance passing between us in which Michael looks like the most gallant and dashing man in the world, and I am looking back at him, clearly overwhelmed with emotion. If you look closely enough, you might even be able to tell I’m just on the verge of getting choked up. It’s possible I’m not the only one.
The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. But there’s really only one needed to describe the photo of Michael Douglas talking to me about his son.
Lovely.