OCTOBER 2001. I was lying on the hard, cold floor in the bathroom of the famous Chinese bistro Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. It is one of the most upscale and renowned restaurants in the world, yet I was at the lowest point of my life. With my head next to the toilet, I was alone, in debt, with no friends and no hope.
It had been a long, hard trip that led to this fall. It was a wild roller-coaster ride which included some of the hottest names in hip hop and Hollywood. For two years I rode it out. I was in the middle of it all—dining with P. Diddy, partying with Vin Diesel, going one-on-one with Shaquille O’Neal.
I had money, three cars, a condo in a prestigious neighborhood, a nanny for my son. I had starred in some of the hottest music videos with Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Ja Rule, and Ludacris. I had even costarred in the blockbuster film A Man Apart, opposite Vin Diesel. But here I lay on a cold bathroom floor, hugging the toilet’s frigid porcelain, completely hopeless. I was broke, homeless, and probably dying.
The last thing I remembered was my body shaking violently as I sat on the toilet with my head in my hands and my friend Eva hovering over me asking me if I was okay. But now I was on the floor and she was gone. Can I move? was the only thought swirling through my head.
I tried to say something to make sure I was alive. I couldn’t. I tried to move my leg, and it worked. I stood up gingerly and made my way to the sink. I looked around the small, one-stall bathroom. It was dimly lit and tiny, yet elegant. I held on to the sink, looking at myself in the mirror. My pupils were fully dilated, and I could feel my knees wobbling beneath me. I splashed cold water on my face, hoping to snap out of the trouble I was so obviously in.
I looked at my jewelry and clothes. I still wore the diamond-heart pendant and the canary yellow diamond earrings that my ex-husband had given me years before. My ring and bracelet were gifts purchased at Tiffany. My long nails were perfectly French-manicured, and my hair was long and black. My skin had been tanned by the Miami sun and my eyes were gray thanks to my colored contacts. My face was made up to perfection, compliments of MAC and Chanel. My jeans were a two-hundred-dollar pair by fashion icon Marc Jacobs, and the rest of the ensemble followed suit. Everything was designer-made, from my jewelry to my makeup to the clothes I wore—even the drugs I’d consumed.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor again. When I came to from another bout of convulsions, my tongue was swollen and bloody. I crawled up from the floor and made my way back to the sink to splash more water on my face. I desperately wanted someone to walk in and help, but no one came. I began to panic, with thoughts of the late actor River Phoenix racing through my head. Thoughts of him seizing outside of the Viper Room not too far from where I was, on Sunset Boulevard, right before dying.
I thought of how awful it would be if I died in the bathroom at Mr. Chow. I thought of the irony of it all—of the paparazzi waiting outside for Nicolas Cage and LL Cool J, who were both in the dining area eating with friends. I thought of how pretty and rich I looked, yet my life had become ugly and poor. But the most prominent thought was of my son, Naiim. My nanny hadn’t heard from me in months and had no idea how to find me. No one even knew my real name or where I lived or who my family was or where I came from. To them, my name was Yizette, a name that I had made up when I was sixteen, during my years as a stripper.
I thought of Naiim and wanted to live. I thought if I screamed his name as loud as I could, God would hear me and allow me another chance at being a mother. God had to know that despite everything I had done until this point, I loved my son and I wanted to do right by him.
I stumbled to the bathroom door, opened it, and began to scream his name into the stairwell that led downstairs into the main dining area of the restaurant. I screamed his name over and over until my voice was gone. No one heard me. I stumbled back into the restroom to splash more water on my face, hoping the water alone would be enough to reverse what I had done. My heart was racing, and its beat was all I could hear in my head. There were sweat beads on my face. My mouth was dry and my vision blurred. My body went into convulsions three, four more times, each time landing me on the cold hard tile. No one was there for me. I was going to die alone.
One year earlier, no one could have told me that my life would turn out that way. I was invited to a function one Friday night in October 2000 at the Sky Bar, located on Sunset Strip. I reluctantly met an acquaintance there and quickly began to mingle, in order to make the best out of what promised to be a boring evening. The crowd was very stuffy, and I found myself yawning in between conversations with a concert pianist and a score composer. After about an hour of walking around, sampling the vast array of mediocre hors d’oeuvres and oversize apple martinis, I was ready to go. As I searched for the acquaintance who’d brought me to the event, he came up behind me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me toward the pool.
“I want you to meet someone,” he said. “Gary, this is Yizette. Yizette, this is Gary.”
As I said before, Yizette was a name and persona I made up when I was sixteen, after I ran away from my father and wanted a new identity and, hopefully, a new life. I landed in Los Angeles.
Gary was handsome, dressed all in black, and of medium build and height. He was soft-spoken and reserved. As we began to talk, we realized that we shared the same sentiments about the function we were attending. We laughed at each other’s silly anecdotes and soon found ourselves exchanging phone numbers. After the function, we all headed over to a local club called Nora’s Café. There we continued to sip martinis, and at one point I am sure I climbed on top of a table and started dancing. It was a night to remember. But by the following morning, I had forgotten most of it.
The next afternoon, when I had finally recovered from the night before, I checked my messages to find one from Gary. Initially, I couldn’t remember who Gary was among the sea of people I had met at the Sky Bar and at Nora’s Café. After a brief moment of recollection, I began to connect the voice with the face. I failed, however, to return the call. That Sunday, while I was driving around in West Los Angeles, my cell phone rang. The number was unfamiliar to me, so I answered with caution.
“Hey, Yizette…. This is Gary, from the other night,” the voice said.
I rolled my eyes in silent response. I was used to men hitting on me and thought that Gary was just another example. But I was wrong. What Gary said next would not only surprise me, it would change my life.
He began to explain to me that he was a film director, and he was in the beginning stages of production on his new film. He wanted me to pick up a copy of the script and read for him. He said there was a part he thought would be perfect for me. I was unsure what to think and actually doubted that he was a director of any substance. After you’ve lived in Los Angeles for a while, you begin to take what people say they do with a grain of salt, particularly in Hollywood. Still, that Monday, I went to the address he gave me on Beverly Boulevard. I arrived at the production office and picked up the script. Once in my car, I began to read it and was baffled because the character I was to be reading for, Candice Hicks, appeared nowhere in the script.
The very next day I was called to read on-camera for Gary and the producers. I read lines for another character while trying to conceal my nervous stomach and dry mouth. Just as with many other things, I performed without thought. I read the lines through a few times and that was it. I was done.
Gary walked me out to the hallway and thanked me for coming by. I was still unsure of what I had just done, what it was really for, and who I was dealing with. But I began to get a clue once he mentioned that I was up for the role of the wife of Larenz Tate’s character. Larenz Tate was a name I knew from his previous movies, so the project became a bit more legitimate and real. Had I known how big this opportunity really was, I might not have gotten through the audition.
On the Thursday after we met, I received a call from Gary’s production office telling me I had been cast as Candice Hicks, the wife of Demetrius Hicks, played by Larenz Tate. They said the part would have to be written for me. I was thrilled. Although I had acted all throughout my school years, and being in films was something I had always dreamed of, it was never something that I felt was an achievable goal. But here it was.
After I’d digested everything Gary’s crew told me, it finally hit me—Gary was famed director F. Gary Gray—who had done Set It Off, Friday, and The Negotiator, and would go on to direct The Italian Job and Be Cool. I was going to be part of a big-budget New Line Cinema production. When I left my sad life and ran to Los Angeles, I had no idea what I would be doing. I had no idea how I was going to survive. For me, being part of a film was much more than surviving, it was a move toward succeeding.
On the following Monday, just a week and a half after meeting Gary, I showed up for my first table reading with the entire cast. Gary sat at the head of the table, and Larenz sat directly across from me. I didn’t recognize many of the actors there but was secretly drawn to a tall, muscular man sitting directly to my right. His voice was overwhelmingly powerful, yet his demeanor was gentle. From time to time, his shoulder brushed against mine, and I would get a rush. My attraction to this man was strong. His name was Vin Diesel.
Coincidentally, my first film shoot would take place just a few blocks away from the house where I’d shot my first music video. We began shooting A Man Apart at Zuma Beach in Malibu. I awakened at three in the morning and got in my car to drive to the set. I glided into Malibu by way of the well-known, picturesque calm of the Pacific Coast Highway, with the windows in my car down so I could feel the air, brisk and moist with dew. I was blasting my radio and sang along, loudly, with every song during the one-hour drive from my condo. I arrived on the set and headed directly to the catering truck for a breakfast burrito then sat in the hair and makeup trailer. I was officially an actress. I felt that everything I had done up until that point, everything that had happened to me—from my abusive childhood, the rape, being a teen runaway, the stripping—had not stopped me or beaten me. I had reinvented myself. I was moving on and, hopefully, moving up.
Perhaps when one has a difficult start in life, the universe has a way of balancing everything out. I do believe that every cloud has a rainbow and a silver lining. I have had many, many clouds—more than most.