walking to set and seeing the people, my cohorts, with whom I had gotten so closeAs I neared my twentieth birthday, an uncomfortable truth was dawning—I felt like my life no longer resembled me. The creeping feeling of self-betrayal was becoming palpable and anxiety attacks frequently left me sobbing on the floor of my closet, curled up on a pile of shoes. So, I made a list.
I loved the work. I loved:
walking to set and seeing the people, my cohorts, with whom I had gotten so close
starting work at four in the morning, getting breakfast at the catering truck and watching the sun come up
understanding the rhythm of a scene set up and learning about light filters and having lunch at long tables with the teamsters, who have had my heart since they taught me how to play craps as a preschooler
the sharp clap of the slate and that brief, breathless moment between that sound and the director’s cue, where you know you are in the zone
making rounds to say good night to my friends before going home, although I knew it was only a few hours before I’d see them again.
There was a lot to love in my job.
There was also much that I hated. I hated:
when the film came out and the reviews, good or bad, sent me on a nauseating emotional rollercoaster
when people recognized me and I had to answer any manner of questions even though I was on a date or watching a movie or late for my pap smear
having my physical appearance harshly criticized in the name of “art” and then losing the job to a “Britney Spears type”
that no one liked my glasses even though I thought they made me look like Lisa Loeb
the press interviews that always felt like a trap
the calls from my agent…and waiting for the calls from my agent
driving all over Los Angeles for an audition that was really just a courtesy because the director already knew that the producer’s daughter would be hired
the politics of knowing the casting director wants to hire you but the director doesn’t because he didn’t like my last film
hearing the subtle suggestion that the character might be a little thinner than me
the fact that I would fall in love with every one of my costars and then be heartbroken when we wrapped and I realized I had done it, yet again
feeling like I wasn’t really being creative, I was just acting out everyone else’s creativity
that I just never, ever, felt good enough.
It’s pretty clear that the cons list is longer. It’s sad to realize that the thing you have based your life around is leading you in a miserable direction. It’s terrifying, actually. Because you have two options: pretend you are not realizing it and hold off the misery with the parts that are still somewhat satisfying, or, get out of the situation and try to figure out what the hell would make you happy. Both of those options are really scary, but the first option sounded more likely to make me an alcoholic.
I was doing a job that many people in the world wanted to do. They longed for it. They became starving artists for it. Here I was, not being grateful for it. In truth, I found the whole thing embarrassing. It felt shameful to have something so socially valuable when I wasn’t sure I really wanted it. It was like a vegetarian trying to eat a ribeye in front a starving kid. I felt awful about it and just wanted to hand my career off to someone who was interested in it. I tried forcing myself to like it. I tried to read acting books and tried to intellectualize my way in. My eyes glazed over the words “method,” “motivation,” and “character development.”
I fantasized about being a social worker. A librarian. A farmer. A dog trainer. One of those people who works for aquariums and dives into the big fish tanks to clean the insides. I thought about working in an office, filing things in alphabetical order and wearing sweater sets and heels that clicked on the linoleum. I fantasized about carrying a briefcase and my lunch in a paper sack. How wonderful, to go to the same place every day, see the same people, and do the same, structured, repetitive work. I envisioned myself learning how to make a casserole, the kind with a can of mushroom soup in it. I dreamed of the suburban nightmare.
But what was “fulfillment” anyways? Wasn’t it a myth? Wasn’t everyone just accepting of the general unsatisfactory nature of life? Was there ever really going to be a job or a life that I liked more than this? Maybe the grass really was greenest in Hollywood, even if it was just all special effects that made it seem that way.
I went to work on a project where the director hated me. He told me that he hated me. He had these long bony fingers that he would poke in my face, and tell me that I was a terrible actor and that the producers forced him to hire me. During read-throughs, when all my castmates sat at a round table going over the script, he made me sit on the floor.
“Like a dog,” he said. “You don’t deserve to sit with this talented group of artists.”
I sat on the floor, saying nothing and suspecting that was where I deserved to be, anyway. My silent tears fell and wrinkled up the pages of my script.
Whether this was supposed to be motivational or some sort of creative exercise to toughen me up remains a mystery. In a small, windowless production room filled with script revisions and old coffee cups, I quietly begged the producers to fire me. At least allow me quit. They wouldn’t let me out of my contract. They claimed it would get better, his anger would burn itself out. So, I trudged through work, heaving over the toilet bowl at 6 a.m. as the driver knocked at my hotel room door, ready to take me to set where my boss called me an undeserving hack and pointed those long gray fingers. When we wrapped the show, I got so sick I couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks. The cruelty finally over, my body throbbed with fever, shame, and unresolved anger. I just needed another job to get over it. Hair of the dog.
My friends didn’t notice how broken and disconnected I was becoming. I was an actor, after all, specializing in the facade. A sane-looking person looked back at me from the mirror and I wondered how I could look so normal. It was surprising that my face wasn’t in jagged pieces and that my arms were still connected to my body. They didn’t feel attached. I went on another shoot, slept with the assistant to a Baldwin brother, and felt more broken than ever. I walked like a zombie through my life and didn’t question what came next. More of the same came next, of course. I went to parties and talked about how good the script was for the new Russell Crowe movie. I pretended it wasn’t killing me.
Desperate for a reprieve from my own darkness, I once again fell in love with my costar, so I could walk around in the blinding love glow. We met for rehearsals, and within the first three minutes I would have died for him. I loved him with the type of force generally reserved for planets that are collapsing in on themselves; it was unreasonable to assume any human could survive it. My love for Michael was reciprocated on about a ¾ scale, which proved an acceptable ratio for me at the time. I immediately broke up with my current boyfriend with a quick and unceremonious phone call. I would have texted him had that been a thing back then. My blissed-out love state made me completely numb to the pain that I caused while plummeting joyfully into my new relationship.
Michael was tall and willowy and even though men aren’t supposed to be willowy it looked mighty fine on him. He seemed darkly fragile and just broken enough to be relentlessly attractive. Never one to be thwarted by minor details, I persevered even though my new boyfriend had just separated from his wife, was nine years older than me and was mourning the recent death of his mother. I decided that all could be overcome, even the fact that I was clearly more in love than he was. He just needed time, that was all. Gigantic red flags flapped in my face but I slapped them away and proceeded to coach him, word by tortured word, into professing his love for me.
Michael did some acting, but really he was a writer. He was introspective and emotional, and had wild hair—all important attributes for a writer. He was committed to his writing process, sitting alone in the apartment he rented over someone’s garage, tapping away during his designated writing hours. This was a new concept to me and I was slightly baffled by the idea that anyone had working hours that didn’t involve being away on location. Most of my friends were available to hang out whenever we saw fit, because (being generous) an actor’s schedule is non-traditional or (being less generous and more realistic) pretty much everyone I hung out with was chronically underemployed. The idea that Michael was unavailable at 11am on a Thursday made him even more exotic and desirable. I had such respect for this dedication that I accepted being kicked out of his apartment so that he could write.
Writing had always been an important part of my life but it was something that gushed forth of its own volition. It was an unruly creative geyser that would simply overtake me—often in the middle of the night when an idea would send me scrambling out of bed, searching for a pen like it would save my life. This was not something that could be funneled into the hours between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. My journals and attempts at fiction and screenplays had piled up over the years, lingering under my bed, surrounded by lost socks, and firmly categorized as a silly hobby. This was the first time I had seen someone take it so seriously.
Michael was a member of the Writers Guild of America, and they would hold events around town that would be of interest to their members. He invited me to a screening of the pilot for a new television series and a talk by the creators.
The place was crammed with writers, yet I felt a surprising element of comfort there. No one cared about what you were wearing or who you showed up with. It was an electric creative environment and there was a substance to the air that I normally found sucked out of the events I attended. We found two seats in the audience and the lights dimmed. The music swelled and it sounded like a movie.
“Seriously? This is for TV?” I whispered.
The opening credits of The West Wing came on. It was like nothing I had ever seen. It was fast-paced and funny and smart. I was far from being a political junkie, but the show still captivated me. I was interested in those characters and longed to know more about them. This was what great writing could do. Mere words, just some letters strung together with some negative space in between, could create something truly thrilling. Beauty and compassion and agony and life—it could all be created with nothing more than a pen and a healthy dose of commitment. There was great writing in the world; you just needed to work for it. It startled me that my first thought was not, I want to be on that show, it was, I want to write like that.
After we watched a few scenes from The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin took the stage accompanied by heartfelt applause. I had clapped a lot in my life. I had clapped for actors in small, dark, poorly attended theaters and I had clapped while sitting on the floor in someone’s living room after a Pepsi commercial during the Super Bowl. I had clapped out of respect for their effort and enthusiasm. I had clapped out of obligation because other people were watching and needing me to clap. I had clapped to clear the air of neediness. I had clapped so that others could relax and breathe again.
This clapping was different. I had to physically remind myself to stay in my seat and not run to the stage and embrace the man who had just cracked open my world. Sorkin talked about his writing process and inspiration. He talked about the characters like they were friends of his. And I thought, yes, I get this. When actors sat around to talk process, I picked at my cuticles for a while and then went to get a Jamba Juice. This gave me goose bumps and I scribbled notes on the back of a flier because Aaron Sorkin was speaking to my soul.
Suddenly, a light was shone on everything that I had suspected was missing. I had no enthusiasm for acting. I had just assumed I was a passionless person. But, creating a whole universe, pouring your heart out on the page, finding the exact right word and putting it in the exact right order with the breaks in the right place; that was electrifying. Not being a puppet to someone else’s vision, someone else’s shot, someone else’s editing whims. Words burrowed into my guts and made a home there. Words lightened my heart and jolted my soul.
But there was a problem. I was not a writer. I was an actor. It was too late for me to be anything else. So, I shelved the thought and buried that fire and distracted myself with my all-encompassing relationship.
My love proved to be somewhat contagious; Michael caught it and we became the kind of intense couple who sicken the world at large. He spent hours stroking my hair, outlining my birthmarks, calling them, “the places where the artist signed his masterpiece.” We had our own secret language and fourteen nicknames for each other and never included anyone else in our plans. We’d spend long summer afternoons with the curtains drawn to shut out the world, sitting on the floor listening to Bob Dylan, and he’d tell me which songs were important and I’d believe him. We lay draped across each other at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday like we might have been victims of a carbon monoxide leak.
When Michael went to the gym, my eyes wandered to the top shelf of his closet, wondering if any of the bound books he kept stashed away were his wedding album. Was there any sign of apprehension in his face? Were there candid photos of him nervously fidgeting with cufflinks and a tie that felt too tight? Were there people in the pews thinking that he would be better off marrying a petite Canadian? And what about her? The faceless woman whose voice I tried to ignore on his answering machine when she called about lawyers and paperwork, was she apprehensive? Even more horribly, maybe they were both just thrilled to be together. Maybe they were as thrilled as I was, as I found myself in his bed with his old t-shirt pressed to my cheek. When I left for a location shoot in Canada, I took that shirt with me, and for the first time, I didn’t search for an on-set playmate.
When the shoot wrapped and I went back to L.A., Michael was waiting at my house. The second I saw his face I knew. He threw words at me, and I only caught some of them.
“…not even divorced yet…”
“…too much…too fast…”
“…I love you, but…”
My eyes glazed over. All those movie scenes of women being left flashed in my head. All the wailing and falling to the knees. All the false claims of pregnancy or threats to fling herself into a rushing river. I remember very little of my actual reaction, but I remember wishing that I drank. Michael gave me a hug and looked deeply into my eyes.
“Call me if you need anything.”
If I needed anything other than him, I suppose. The next day, with a puffy, tear-stained face and a credit card, I stumbled into an electronics store and bought a gigantic TV to console myself. I named the television Michael, in honor of my lost love. I dared the flickering screen to distract me from my agony and immersed myself in a world of Sex and the City reruns.
Just to make the grief even more excruciating, after a few weeks Michael and I would pick at the scab and start talking again. We’d get back together, try to make it work, and only succeed at destroying each other a few more times over the next year or so. I’d leave, not trusting him; the next time he’d leave, feeling trapped. Then we’d both apologize and recommit to figuring out how to be together. The love and misery seemed inexorably entwined. For a while, that felt tolerable. Maybe that was just another concession of life, another thing that should be endured, because it looked so lovely on the outside.
We ended up walking away, both of us with claw marks on our hearts, since being together was slightly more painful than being apart. I will always be so grateful to him for many things. Everyone should fall so recklessly in love and have their heart shattered into bloody splinters. Everyone should sit sobbing in the driveway, watching their beloved drive away for the last time, just to know what that essential human experience is like. Because until you are truly broken, you’ll never fully understand your ability to put yourself back together again. Most of all I’m grateful because he taught me what it was to be a real writer. He showed me how to use authentic passion and discipline to bring out the best in myself.
Michael broke my heart and those cracks let in the light and set me free. He freed me to find all the beauty that came next. He freed me to embrace the writing that was my true purpose all along. Could I have written in L.A.? Sure, but I wouldn’t have. In Los Angeles, I was an actor. It had been stamped on my forehead at age four and I didn’t have the strength to do the amount of reinventing that would be required of me. I had almost eighteen years of career precedent behind me. There was no starting over there.
“It’s a spoof. A mash-up of Star Wars and Shakespeare in Love.”
“Well, that sounds…odd.”
But Joey was a friend and he was asking a favor. With this group of friends, weekends would often be full of student films, amateur productions, and guerilla filmmaking. Generally, I found reasons to be “busy,” choosing to stay home instead of running from the cops because we were filming in a restaurant where we didn’t have a permit. But the script for this short film was actually really good, and I’d get to wear Princess Leia hair buns. I wasn’t currently employed and had no plans for the week and so I agreed.
George Lucas in Love ended up going viral, at a time when going viral meant that everyone handed everyone else a VHS tape of the movie. When something like that happens to an actor, you get calls. You get calls from people who want to tell you that you are fabulous. It’s important not to believe them, because if you do, your life gets considerably more complicated.
Filming George Lucas in Love. With Martin Hynes.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSEPH LEVY.
I got a call from the William Morris Agency. Everyone said I should listen to those kinds of calls. William Morris is one of the oldest and largest talent agencies and is incredibly well respected. They have represented everyone from Katherine Hepburn to Matt Damon and they wanted me. It was beyond flattering.
I had been changing agencies more often than I changed boyfriends, always thinking there was someone out there who was better. I tended towards the boutique agencies. (Remember how if you talk about a role being small you have to say how pivotal it is? It’s the same deal with agencies; you call the small ones “boutique” so that they seem exclusive.) I was wooed away from my boutique agent and signed with William Morris. My resume was reprinted on fancy paper stock with their striking letterhead. I had my headshots retaken, with my slightly smug smiling face beaming at the fact that the WM logo would be printed along the bottom.
William Morris thought that the popularity of the short film earned me the right to be “offer only.” I should skip the auditions because filmmakers should already know who I was and should just give me work. They were sure that Hollywood would be clamoring for the girl in the the hair buns, so my agent’s responsibility would shift from getting me auditions to “fielding offers.”
However, my field was proving to be a pretty lonely place. I had been in some popular films but this offer-only move was not warranted. It was a classic little-fish-in-big-pond situation. When the offers were not pouring in, I got that awkward call from my big-time agent. The call where they say that it’s just not working out. That I was not the right fit for them. That I might be better suited at a different agency. It’s the call where I got off the phone and cried, hating myself a little more and feeling like a failure, feeling like that elusive “success” had been there just within my grasp and had slipped away.
Like a flickering flame that I was inexplicably drawn to, I began again, crawling back to the boutique agencies, telling them I made a mistake and petitioning for representation. They had a need in their roster of actors for an “ethnic type,” so I was back in. Right back where I was. Begging to do a job I wasn’t sure I wanted anymore, but feeling too scared to know what other options existed. I just waited for the inevitable burn.