Chapter 12
From left, Richard Gregson, Natalie Wood, Robert Evans, and Ali MacGraw at the Moss Hart tribute, April 1970.
“Oh, Natasha, you are so dramatic, you are going to be an actress when you grow up!”
My mom said these words to me so often during my childhood that I think some part of me always assumed that when I did finally grow up, of course I would become an actor. Both of my parents were actors. All my parents’ friends were actors, directors, filmmakers, or in the business. My mom and I were so alike in every way that if she was an actress it made perfect sense that I would explore that path as well.
My mom’s only stipulation was that I had to wait until I was eighteen. She didn’t want me to work in the business before then.
I was in my junior year at high school when I brought up the subject of acting with Daddy Wagner. On some level, I think I was hoping it might even bring me closer to my mother. After all, acting had been foundational to her life since early childhood.
My dad set up meetings with various friends within the industry so that I could get some perspective on the business. I understood how lucky I was. When my dad and I were on the East Coast looking at colleges, we went to see Elia Kazan at his brownstone in New York on the Upper East Side. Gadge was just as I remembered him. A friendly Elmer Fudd, sitting at his long wooden desk in a cozy flannel shirt. I felt an immediate familiarity; he had spent so much time at our house on Canon Drive when I was a child. I remember mostly listening as Gadge and my dad spoke about my mom, about making Splendor and Method acting. Gadge took an interest in me and felt that I might have some talent. I told him about my desire to study. He was someone who looked at you deeply as you spoke. That afternoon, he told me to listen to my most inner voice.
Back in Los Angeles, I met with the director, producer, and actor Sydney Pollack. Sydney had directed my mom in This Property Is Condemned, his 1966 movie based on the Tennessee Williams play and set in the South during the Great Depression. In the movie, my mother played Alva Starr, a young woman stuck and frustrated in her small-town life who meets a handsome stranger, Owen Legate, played by Robert Redford, whom she sees as her way out. My mom was superb in the film—her emotional range visible in all its glory. In one scene she barges into Owen’s room wet from skinny-dipping in the lake, furious at him for misunderstanding her. She rages and then she seduces him. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the role.
I went to meet Sydney at his office at one of the studios in the valley. He came to greet me, giving me a hug, before sitting down at his large wooden desk, his eyes kind behind thick glasses.
He was very matter-of-fact.
“Do you think you have any talent?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
“Can you think of anything else you could do besides acting?”
“No,” I answered.
“Well, give it a shot.”
Unlike me, my mom never had a chance to choose acting as her vocation. As a child, she simply played whichever part came next. No one had to teach her. She had a natural gift for make-believe. It was only as she got older that she decided to become a student of acting. After she won the part of Judy, the girlfriend character in Rebel Without a Cause, her costars Sal Mineo, Nick Adams, and James Dean and director, Nicholas Ray, introduced her to Method acting. This movie set my mom on a lifelong quest to become a great actress. To know herself deeply, to be able to use herself as a vessel to communicate her emotions to the world. She was much less interested in being a star than in her craft and the chance to learn from directors like Kazan and costars like Redford and McQueen.
Thanks to my mother’s example, I knew that if I wanted to become an actor I had to become a serious student. During my senior year of high school, I took a scene study class, memorizing lines from playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard. Sitting with a script in my lap going over the words felt so familiar—familial, in fact. I remembered this about my mom: her focus when she memorized her lines, her discipline when she worked with her dialect coach learning Russian for her part in Meteor. I remember how strict she was with her diet and her exercise when she was preparing for a role.
Onstage, I loved the emotional and physical vibration I felt in my body as I connected to a character or the dramatic arc of a story. So much of my grief and suffering suddenly had a place to live. Yet I was creaky with my emotions. I had spent so many years denying my feelings around others, expressing them only in the darkest of nights or in the safety of the warm water streaming on my face in the shower, that I did not know how to bring them into the light of day. I didn’t know how to be emotional without getting overwhelmed.
I decided to go to college, and when it came time to pick a school, I chose Emerson College in Boston, a college with a strong performing arts curriculum, where I would be located halfway-ish between Wales and California. My parents had been considering relocating us to upstate New York, away from the bright lights of Hollywood, right before my mom died. I knew my mother had adored the East Coast. To me it felt like where the smart people went.
As excited as I was about college, I was deeply conflicted about leaving Courtney. We had grown so close, and I knew she depended on me. Our age difference was less important now. We had long discussions about my impending departure. I made her promise me that she would stay in touch by phone. I think we even scheduled regular check-in calls, just like our mother used to do when she was away.
My dad came along to get me settled into my dorm in Boston. I was so anxious that, instead of moving into my dorm room right away with my new roommate, Tory, I stayed in my dad’s hotel every night. My dad put a letter on my pillow the day he left. Whenever I tried to read it, tears would blur my eyes and drip-drop onto the paper. It took me over a month before I could actually read his supportive words. The mature part of me knew that coming to college was the right thing to do. The childlike, insecure part of me wanted to get back on the plane with him and return to my life at Old Oak Road.
I took my first real acting class at Emerson. I was intimidated by the new surroundings, lonely for my loved ones in Los Angeles, daunted by the task of acting. Many of the students in my class had taken musical theater and drama starting in elementary school. They were so far ahead of me. Mostly what I learned in those acting classes was how much I still needed to learn.
I started immersing myself in different characters. I discovered how powerful that can be. I also discovered so many of my limitations. My high voice, my small size, my insecurities, my fear of failure, my perfectionism, even my vulnerability worked against me. Sometimes I felt that losing my mother at eleven had wiped away my developing self so completely that all I had left was an outline, a rough sketch of who I could have been. The idea of acting professionally felt further away than ever.
I had a hard time in those early days justifying my right to even try to be an actress. Compared to my mother, a woman whose beauty seemed made for the camera, a natural-born star who was acting professionally from the age of five, how could I possibly measure up?
I ended up staying in Boston for only one year. While I was away, Courtney began having panic attacks, suffering from such acute anxiety that she literally refused to go to school. Most mornings, her sense of dread was so intense that she could not face first period at Crossroads. I decided to leave Boston and return to LA. I wanted to be closer to Courtney. I also realized I wanted to commit myself to acting full-time.
I called Daddy Gregson in Wales to let him know. I knew he was not going to be pleased. He had been so proud of me, so supportive of my East Coast excursion. He would come to Boston every couple of months and take me and Tory, with whom I’d become close, out for dinner. He and I would go to museums and walk and walk. Boston also held a special place in his heart, as he had produced the play Cyrano there in 1973 with Christopher Plummer in the title role, and he had fond memories of that time.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, darling.”
“I want to talk to you about next year.”
“Yes,” he said tentatively. I could hear the worry in his voice.
“Well, you know how I have been studying acting here. Um… I think that is what I really want to pursue. So I’m going to go back to LA and study acting there and apply to USC and try to get an agent.…”
Click. The phone went dead. I knew what that click meant. Sure enough, a couple of days later, he called Daddy Wagner and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not on board with my plan. I’m not sure how Daddy Wagner responded, but Daddy Gregson didn’t speak to me for six months.
For my sophomore year, I transferred to USC and moved back to Old Oak Road. By now Courtney was fifteen years old. She had matured from a young girl to a gorgeous teenager. She hadn’t gone through an awkward phase like me, but transitioned smoothly from childhood to young womanhood, looking a bit older than her years, her complexion remaining flawless—just like my mom’s. Bright blond hair, long tan legs. A real stunner. After I moved back, we would meet in her room, talking or reminiscing, or we would raid the fridge in the kitchen late at night, sitting on the kitchen counters and laughing our asses off. We nurtured each other and we liked and loved each other.
I knew she had an older boyfriend. I knew she was drinking and going out with an older crowd. Beautiful, funny, and game, my little sister was a rebel and a magnet for men. They loved her and she loved their love. Everyone was partying at this time. I was doing my share, but I did it in moderation, to have fun and to fit in with my friends. With Courtney, I could tell it was different. Alcohol emboldened her, and she could take three shots of vodka in a row without skipping a beat. In a flash she would cease to be my little sister and fly out of reach, becoming unknowable.
One night we were at a club. I was waiting in line for the bathroom, the smell of spilled, warm beer and cigarette smoke making me feel sick. A tall blond girl told me I had cut in line.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. We started to argue.
From behind me my supernova of a little sister pushed herself through the crowd and punched this girl right in the face. They both went down, kicking each other, pulling each other’s hair. I started screaming, “Courtney, stop it!” Katie appeared and was able to extract Courtney from the floor. When she stood up she had a giant egg-shaped bump on her forehead. Soon the bouncers arrived and we were swiftly kicked out.
Though I was grateful for Courtney’s protection, I was shocked at the feral intensity that had come over her. Eyes glazed and fiery, she was ready for more.
Not long after I returned from Boston, a friend who had moved into my bedroom while I was gone told me that one night, Courtney had drunk too much and had driven herself home. I instantly felt the all-too-familiar pang of panic. Courtney was the only other human being on this earth who lost exactly what I lost on that night in 1981. She was my sweet, hilarious sister. Our insecurities and shortcomings made sense to each other. Though we were very different in temperament, we had so much in common: we had the same voice patterns, we moved the same way, we were like two halves of our mother’s whole. Being with Courtney was as close as I would ever get to spending time with my mother. I couldn’t lose my sister, I just couldn’t.
When I wasn’t worrying about Courtney, I was determined to work on my acting skills, so my dad helped me to find a teacher, Chris. He did little to bolster my confidence. I had gained the obligatory “freshman fifteen” pounds during my year at Emerson, and I remember him telling me, “Listen, it’s clear you aren’t going to be a beauty like your mom. You are not a leading lady. Let’s focus on character actress roles for you.” I felt my chubby, acne-spotted self burn with shame. I knew I was not as beautiful as my mom, but why must I be compared to her at all? I had my own brand of beauty. Maybe it wasn’t the head-turning, traffic-stopping kind my mom had, but it was enough that I shouldn’t have to be shamed for not looking exactly like her. I swallowed Chris’s words and pretended I agreed with him, nodding matter-of-factly. Of course he’s right, I said to myself. He’s just stating the facts. So now let’s move on to some monologues that would be good for a character actress.
Later, I told my dad what Chris had said to me. “I’m so sorry, darling. You know that isn’t true.” It felt good to tell him, and good to be reassured. We never talked about it again, and Chris soon moved to New York, so our lessons came to an end. But no matter what my dad said, part of me still believed what Chris had told me, and I carried it around for many years.
Luckily, my confidence was bolstered in other ways. Not long after I returned to LA, I started seeing a new boyfriend, Josh Evans. My friend Robyn had gone on a date with him first. “Josh is not right for me,” Robyn told me, “but I think you and he would hit it off.” She was right. It turned out that Josh and I already knew each other tangentially, and not only because he had been a junior at Crossroads when I was a senior. As Robyn predicted, we did indeed hit it off.
Josh was an actor who had already played the younger brother of Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and was working on his second Stone film, The Doors. He was gorgeous, with the dark refined looks of his father, the legendary movie producer Robert Evans, and the sensual, soft features of his beautiful mother, the actress Ali MacGraw. Ali explained to me that she had met my mother through Bob and that she and my mom were both pregnant—with Josh and me—around the same time. She had brought Josh to my first birthday party and I had attended his first birthday in return. It seemed like we were meant to be together.
Josh was different from anyone I had come across in my life so far. He was confident and mature. I was older than him by six months, but he was years older in terms of wisdom and experience. We shared a passion for movies and for acting, and similar backgrounds as the children of famous parents. Josh felt familiar to me from the beginning. I recognized his love, his ways, his breath when he was sleeping. He adored me in that intimate, all-encompassing, larger-than-life way that my mom had. This love strengthened me, enabling me to put one firm foot in front of the other as if I were heading toward some kind of destination. We would see one another off and on for the next six years.
Once again I was interested in my boyfriend’s mother as much as I was interested in my boyfriend. Ali lived by the ocean and had all kinds of animals, like my parents. She drove a little Mercedes just like my mother had. My mom had dated Steve McQueen for a short time after she divorced my Daddy Gregson, and Ali was later married to Steve. Although my mom and Ali were not close friends, they liked each other. After I started seeing Josh, Ali took me under her wing, taught me about clothes and furniture and design—areas my mom and I hadn’t gotten to. She introduced me to yoga and spirituality. Separate from my relationship with Josh, Ali and I formed our own friendship, one that thrives to this day.
On our one-year anniversary, Josh gave me a three-sided silver frame with three photos in it: the first was of Bob, Ali, my mom, and Daddy Gregson when Ali and my mom were pregnant with Josh and me; the second was of Josh and me at my first birthday party; the third was a quick, casual snapshot that Helmut Newton took of Josh and me after a day at the beach when I was twenty-one. Josh inscribed the bottom of the frame with the word “Destiny.” It felt like it.
He had helped me at a pivotal moment. Not long after Josh and I began dating, my dad and Jill announced they were getting married. I was nineteen and Courtney was sixteen. Daddy and Jill had been together for more than seven years, but still the thought of our dad making that serious commitment filled my sisters and me with sadness and fear. I knew I should have been okay with it. Jill made my dad happy and that was important. But even so, I was terrified. Josh had gone through his own experience of his dad marrying multiple times and he could relate.
“You want him to be happy,” Josh pointed out. “You’re living your own life now. You’re studying. You’ve got me. Let him live his own life.”
Even so, the morning of the wedding, May 1990, I woke up feeling terrible, my throat sore and my head pounding. Josh held me and talked me through it. I left his place feeling fortified by our growing relationship, and miraculously recovered from my flu symptoms.
A couple of hours later, as Courtney, Katie, and I stood in the backyard of our house on Old Oak Road to give Daddy and Jill our blessing, we could not control our tears. I loved my dad so much and wanted him to be happy. I knew that life was for the living, and I knew that my mom would want him to be with Jill, a woman who loved him honestly and completely and still does. My brain knew this, but my body was unable to stop the flow of tears. The grief and fear I felt that day were not rational. My tears were for my mother and all that we had lost when we lost her; they were for my dad, onto whom I had projected all my needs, and who was moving on with a new chapter in his life.
But my boyfriend was right. I was moving on with a new chapter of my life too. Encouraged by Josh and his mom, I worked on my career. Josh had an acting teacher that he loved named Harold Guskin, so I met with Harold and decided to study with him. Harold was warm and dynamic and would hold these renowned five-day intensive Shakespeare and Chekhov workshops. I signed up for as many as I could.
I remember Josh and I went to a workshop at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica. The class sat in a semicircle with Harold at the front. I looked around and noticed a few familiar faces, some strangers, and one man who appeared to be around sixty, with shoulder-length, unkempt hair and a scraggly brown beard peppered with gray. His disheveled ensemble was that of a person obviously down on his luck: faded black jeans, an old worn T-shirt with holes in it, dirty black boots. Santa Monica has always been a haven for hippies and beach bums, and because Harold is so open and accepting, I assumed that our teacher had allowed one of the homeless men who hung around the hotel to sit in on his class. How cool of him, I thought. By lunchtime Josh was acting strangely—anxious and self-conscious—and I wondered why.
“This class is intense,” I prompted.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I wish I had known that Kris was taking the class.”
“Who?” I asked.
He pointed to the disheveled man.
“That homeless guy is upsetting you?” I said in total bewilderment.
“That’s not a homeless guy, Natasha. That’s Kris Kristofferson, and he broke my mom’s heart a few years ago.”
Josh taught me about a new world of actors and directors. My parents had known an older Hollywood generation, but thanks to his producer father, Josh seemed to know pretty much everyone else.
After I had been back in Los Angles for about a year, I decided to get a place of my own. My British dad came to town and helped me find a cozy two-bedroom on Doheny Drive. The building was painted my favorite color, pink, and there was a courtyard surrounded by eight apartments. Josh’s mom, Ali, helped me to set up my new home. She was a minimalist, the complete opposite of my mom. With Ali’s help, I covered my sofas in mattress ticking; we found vintage rugs and rattan baskets to put around my apartment. She bought me a beautiful carved Buddha. Ali taught me how to make a fruit bowl look pretty, how to arrange flowers in a vase, and how to make a still life from a stack of books, a little bowl of nuts, a candle. There were so many missing pieces in my mothering; Ali was helping me to replace them.