When I was sixteen, I got legally emancipated from my parents. This meant they weren’t managing me anymore, and though I knew I needed some kind of representation because my contract with TGND was in the middle of being renegotiated, and even sixteen-year-old me wasn’t arrogant enough to conduct my own contract negotiations, I wasn’t in any hurry to find a replacement.
When the news of the split with my parents came out, I’d been swamped with calls from breathless assistants trying to set up lunch meetings, and then from senior assistants, and finally from a host of brash agents who tried all kinds of approaches to get me to be their next meal ticket. But none of their various versions of “I have your best interests at heart” ever rang true, and eventually they stopped calling. Of course, that also meant I wasn’t getting sent many scripts anymore. Or at least nothing that wasn’t some remake of a 1980s Disney movie.
Connor kept telling me, “Just use my agent, baby. He’ll hook you up,” but for some reason I resisted until Connor passed me the phone one morning and his agent was on the line, telling me about the “perfect part.” He sent over the script and I read it and it was perfect. The movie was called When You’re Gone, and the role was a young woman whose father had disappeared ten years before, leaving her, her mother, and her little brother behind. She’d always chosen to believe he was dead, but it turns out he was just an asshole, because he comes back and tries to repair their relationship and . . . oh, I’m not doing it justice, but the whole heart of the story was this father-daughter thing, and the dialogue was perfect, you know, like real conversations, and I read the script three times in two days. I studied and studied for the audition, even dialed down the partying for a week, and I went into the room and I nailed it.
Or I thought I had until I read in Variety a week later that the part had gone to Kimberley Austen, my . . . what’s that word for people who kind of get everything you’ve always wanted? . . . nemesis. And Connor was going to be her love interest and . . . anyway, it sucked to want something that badly and not get it, and I kind of knew that part of the reason I didn’t get it was because I didn’t have anyone advocating for me.
A few weeks later, Bernard turned up on the set of TGND. He repped one of our directors, and he’d somehow got ahold of my audition tape for When You’re Gone. He sat me down and played it, explaining what had worked in my audition and what hadn’t. Then he froze the frame on this one moment, this sort of shy, angry look I was giving, and he said, “You and I are going to make a lot of money together.”
And that’s what we did.
I spend the next week of my life hiding. Hiding from the press. Hiding from my cravings. Hiding from life. But I also spend a lot of time investigating.
Or maybe that’s not the right way to describe it. Is reading everything that’s been written about you over the last several years “investigating”? Maybe the right word is “ruminating.”
Whatever it is, that’s what I do. Because given everything, I can’t help but wonder. How would I see myself from the outside, looking in? What does my life really look like? How far from reality has it flown?
So I read the articles about me and watch the videos and scroll through years of back posts on TMZ and PerezHilton and Us Weekly, and ignore all texts and calls and emails from Olivia. By the end of it, through my scratchy eyes and fogged brain, I feel like I can finally see it. My life, for what it really is.
And it isn’t pretty.
“I want to do something about it,” I say to Bernard when I’ve read it all, seen it all, relived it all.
“What do you want to do?”
We’re in the boardroom in his office, which he keeps at a temperature slightly above that of a meat locker, and I’m shivering like I’m two days into detox. Which maybe I am, if you can detox from yourself.
“I want to fix it. I want . . . myself back.”
Bernard paces around the room, ignoring the breathtaking view of the city. I’ve often wondered why he pays for what must be extremely expensive real estate. He doesn’t care about it, and nobody books his clients because he has a great office view.
It’s more of a fear-factor kind of thing.
“Well, I can probably translate all this into some sympathy auditions. There’s that biopic they’re casting for . . . What’s her fucking name? The shower girl.”
“Shower girl?”
“You know. The knife, the music. Eueueue.” He makes as if to stab me as he brays the theme from Psycho.
“You mean Janet Leigh?”
“Right. Her. You can pull off bleached blonde, right?”
I shudder at the thought of it, my scalp already tingling.
“Or a wig. Whatever.”
“I’m not talking about auditions. I’m talking about my life. I want it back.”
He rounds on me. “You want to fucking quit on me? Now?”
“No, I just . . . I want to be able to leave my condo without caring if I’m having a good hair day, without having to wear sunglasses because otherwise they might get a shot of me with my eyes half closed because I’m blinking and so I look drunk. I want to have a real relationship with a real person—”
“—You want to be a citizen.”
“Citizen” is his contemptuous term for anyone outside the business.
“No, I want to be . . . Jennifer Garner. Doesn’t she have a pretty normal life? Or Harrison Ford?”
“Harrison Ford owns half of Wyoming. You want to do that? You want to buy half of the fucking Dakota Territory? Build a little house on the prairie?”
“Didn’t the Dakota Territory become Idaho mostly?”
“Don’t be a show-off.”
“Okay, okay, but will you work with me here, Bernard?”
“So you’re saying you’re going to work like Jennifer Garner now? Professional. No drama. Letting her husband take the spotlight. Three kids?”
“Come on, Bernard. It’s not like I haven’t been trying.”
“Yeah, it kind of is like that, though.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, kid, but it’s true.”
“So what do I have to do, then? For real?”
Bernard gets this gleam in his eye. “I’ve been waiting a lifetime to hear you ask that.”
It turns out Bernard’s plan is very simple and—I can attest to this because it’s been in action for a week—very, very boring.
“Do nothing,” he says.
“Like nothing nothing?”
“Nothing interesting. You’ve heard about Madonna, right?”
“I’ve heard a lot of things about Madonna.”
“Well, no, actually, you haven’t. You only hear about Madonna when she wants you to. And she does that by doing nothing.”
I wasn’t completely sure about this. I mean, that whole cheating on her cute British director husband with A-Rod, did she want that to come out? That was definitely doing something.
“You’re going to have to explain this to me.”
“Take her clothes. She wears the same thing. Every. Fucking. Day. As a result, no photograph of her is worth anything because it looks just like any other photograph. She applies this philosophy to most of her life. And as a result, if you’re hearing about Madonna, it’s because she wants your attention.”
“But hasn’t she been wearing a grill, lately? And those weird gloves to cover her old hands? I mean, I guess she wears those every day, so it’s kind of right, but—”
“—Will you just work with me here?”
“So you’re saying . . . bore them to death and they’ll go away until I have something un-boring to say?”
“Exactly. You’re going to need a routine.”
“Like a schedule?”
“Like you’re in training for the Olympics.”
“Um, okay. What do I have to do?”
“For starters, you’ll get up at eight every day.”
“Eight! In the morning?”
“Of course in the morning. Do you want the plan to work or not?”
“Okay, okay. What else?”
“You will eat breakfast.”
“Bernard.”
“You will eat breakfast so that people hear that you are eating breakfast and they will see you put on a little weight.”
“You want me to get fat.”
“I want you to get healthy. You’re looking skeletal, even for you. So, you’ll eat something boring like muesli and half a grapefruit. And take some vitamins while you’re at it.”
“You’re killing me.”
“I’m saving you. Next. You’ll do your own hair so it looks okay but not glamorous. You’ll dress in ordinary clothes. Jeans. Simple shirts. Gap, Old Navy, that kind of shit. You’ll wear sunglasses only when absolutely necessary.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m just getting started. You’ll work out once a day, preferably the same routine, with a trainer. Running, hiking, Pilates, whatever, your choice.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome. You’re also going to have lunch every day, someplace simple, like a sandwich shop, with a friend.”
“Which friend?” I asked, fearing he was going to say “Olivia.”
“No one you’ve seen in years, that’s which friend. Start with the cast from The Girl Next Door. Reconnect with them. Writers, directors, fucking key grips. All I care about is that you have a normal, alcohol-free lunch every day. Outside, where they can see you.”
“What if those guys won’t have lunch with me? Some of them . . .”
At some point during The Girl Next Door’s five-year run, I may have become a nightmare on set. Maybe.
“They’ll come, if only out of curiosity.”
“What are we going to talk about, me and the key grips?”
“Old times, of course. Exclusively.”
“Awesome.”
“Talk about things normal people talk about. Their families, the projects they’re working on, that kind of shit. Make it about them, not about you.”
“And if—when—they ask about me, what am I supposed to say?”
He cocks his hip and makes as if to flip his hair over his shoulder, a parody of one of TGND’s signature moves. “You’re, like, totally sad about Connor, but you’re just trying to work through things, you know, like, get your life back on track—”
I whack him in the arm. “I don’t talk like that. Do I?”
“Not usually. Anyway, you get the idea.”
“I’m starting to.”
“Good. In the afternoons, you’ll volunteer.”
“Oh, come on. No one’s going to fall for that.”
“You will volunteer. Animal shelter, homeless shelter, library, whatever you want. Every day.”
“Are you trying to make me fall off the wagon?”
“Of course not. Anyway, you’ll be going to meetings every night, so no danger of that happening.”
“A dream come true. Why don’t you just send me back to rehab?”
“I thought about that, but you’ve used up all your rehab credit. We need to go more drastic.”
“More drastic than sending me to rehab when I don’t need to go?”
“I’m talking you-joined-Scientology-and-are-working-your-way-up-the-bridge-to-total-freedom-looking-for-Xenu drastic. Without, you know, the Scientology part.”
“How long do I have to keep this up?”
“Until it works.”
It only works if you work it. Is there an AA slogan for everything?
“Define ‘works.’”
“Until people stop laughing when I call them and tell them you’d be perfect for a part in their movie.”
“Again, ouch.”
“You’ve got to toughen up.”
“So, how long is this going to take?”
“How long between when you met Danny and you got engaged?”
“Three months.”
“That sounds about right.”
I’ve been following Bernard’s plan. I get up every day and work out with my trainer and eat a bland breakfast and take my vitamins. I haven’t had a blow out in a week, though I did have to buy new clothes—purchased for me by Bernard’s assistant—because nothing in my wardrobe was tame enough for him. None of my new clothes fit me properly, and I’ve gained three pounds. I’m starting to look healthy, which had better stop pretty soon if I ever want to get cast in anything again.
I’ve also been volunteering at the local actors’ studio, giving lessons to kids who can’t afford to pay for the program, and I’ve been to seven meetings in seven days. I’ve also had seven remember-that-time-when-blah-blah-blah lunches and have turned out my light at 10 p.m. on the dot seven nights in a row. I’ve read three books and twenty scripts, and I’ve never been so bored in my entire life.
It hasn’t all gone according to plan. The acting classes were met in the press with complete derision—Who does she think she is, teaching other people to act? She shouldn’t be allowed near children! etc., etc.—my Oscar nomination for Northanger Abbey long forgotten. And though I check each morning, counting carefully, the number of people waiting outside my door has not diminished.
The prevailing sentiment seems to be: How long can she keep this up? And: We clearly need to be there when she loses it. And also: She’s obviously pregnant. Why else would she be treating herself so well?
But buried in among all the negativity there’s also this: Is she turning over a new leaf? And this: I’ve always been rooting for her! And also: We’re so proud of her! (This last one might have been written by the head of the Amber Sheppard Fan Club, who’s kind of been semi-stalking me for most of my life. But hey, I’ll take it.)
It all might’ve worked eventually. If I could’ve stood it, if I could’ve kept it up.
But then something happens that brings it all crashing down.
Danny goes on Cathy Keeler.