Face the Music: A Life Exposed (45 page)

Toward the end of the theater rehearsals, a couple of women from the theater company came to watch. When I finished the final act, they were in tears.

That’s a good sign . . .

Well, either that or I’m horrible
.

I’d been told that the role of the Phantom was the loneliest role in the show, because most of the time when the Phantom was onstage, the rest of the cast was off; when the Phantom was offstage, the rest of the cast was on. You rarely met anyone else. And then it was opening night, and I was waiting in the wings ready to do my first scene, standing behind a mirror.

The only way out of this now is to do the show
.
When I leave, it’s going to be after the curtain comes down
.

There was no editing, no second takes, no cutting to a different camera. This was it. I used the techniques and visualizations that Jeffrey had helped me with, and even though I wasn’t as good as I would get as the show went on, I didn’t fall on my face. As I settled in, I loved it. I loved giving something this level of concentration and trying to immerse myself in the character—despite a few devil horn salutes I saw in the audience that first night.

Then came the moment in the production that had caused me to gasp the first time I saw it—when Christine rips off the Phantom’s mask. I cringed as she took my mask off to reveal the horrid makeup beneath. I
knew
this scene. It was the scene I had feared my entire life: scrutinizing eyes staring at Stanley the one-eared monster. Betrayed and exposed.

But then . . .

Christine tells the Phantom his face “holds no horror” for her. It’s in his
soul
that the true distortion lies.

When she finally makes herself available to him, it is the Phantom who recoils and is unable to hold her.

When I performed in KISS, I was constantly interacting with the audience, bringing them to a certain level of excitement, leading them, cajoling them. Now I ignored the audience. People in the theater had to buy into what I was doing, and I couldn’t get them to do so by winking at them. For me it came down to abandoning the audience and abandoning any sense of performance and just being that character and finding the truth in that moment. That was why the show that night—and almost every night thereafter—ended with me completely sweat-soaked. And in tears.

After that first night, the cast was great to me. I know they appreciated my dedication. Suddenly I was captain of the team, and everybody wound up hanging out in my dressing room. This may have been stunt casting, but as the shows sold out—eight of them per week—I was helping to keep hundreds of people in work.

My parents came to see the show early on, and I felt as if doing theater validated me in their eyes. No matter how ambivalent I felt about my parents, I realized in that moment that ultimately their approval was something I wanted. And when they saw me getting a standing ovation from a sold-out house, it felt terrific.

Gene came to see me as well. It wasn’t his cup of tea, but he seemed astonished. When he came to my dressing room after the show he said, “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

Peter came, too. He showed a side of himself I rarely saw anymore. We went out for sushi after the show, and Peter was joyous and beaming, saying how proud he was of me. Every once in a while he would show flashes of warmth—whether it was at the beginning of the band or at the beginning of the reunion tour—but his insecurity usually kept him too defensive and isolated to be warm and open. On that night, in a context away from the band, a context that didn’t threaten him, I guess, it was truly enjoyable to be around Peter. He felt like an old friend for a change.

My son Evan came, too. I was worried that he might be scared—he wasn’t yet five years old, and the face I revealed when the mask was torn off was grisly. So I had him come to my dressing room at the Pantages Theatre and watch them put my makeup on when the show was in previews. I wanted him to know it was still me underneath. I think it unnerved him a little.

Revisiting the stage of the Pantages Theater in Toronto, where I starred in
Phantom of the Opera
from 1998–99.

At one point he looked at me and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

“It’s still me,” I said. “It’s just makeup. And I love you, too.”

I had done something similar before the
Psycho Circus
tour. I figured at age four Evan was finally old enough to see a show, but I worried about him seeing me in makeup without warning. I took my makeup box home before the tour, and we played with it together. I showed him how I put on the star and showed him photos of me in full regalia. I wanted him to connect the dots before he saw me like that at the show.

After Evan saw me in
Phantom,
he started to sing the songs. I got him his own mini-me outfit, with mask and cape, and he strutted around and sang.

Every night when I occupied that character, I tapped into things buried deep inside me.

The mask. The hidden facial disfigurement.

It haunted me.

The Phantom had it wrong. Christine recoiled in horror not at his face, but at his soul.

Was it possible that the Phantom was . . . in a way . . .
me
?

The mask. The hidden facial disfigurement. Why had I never confronted the birth defect I had covered for my entire life? Why had I cowered in fear of it? Why had I let it keep me from sharing myself with people, from embracing people—from embracing the fullness of life?

The mask. The hidden facial disfigurement.

Was the problem really in my soul, too? And if so, could I exorcise it?

I
was supposed to have been the second-to-last Phantom before the show closed after its ten-year run in Toronto. But things went so well that the theater bought out the contract of the actor poised to replace me and had me take the show to the finish line in October 1999.

I enjoyed the pressure of knowing some people wanted me to fail, and of changing the minds of others who thought I was some bozo ruining their favorite show. Of course, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. One night during a scene where I was hooded and singing “Point of No Return”—a hushed moment, with just the Phantom and Christine onstage—I went absolutely blank. I was walking toward her, singing solo, and I forgot the words. I knew from rock concerts that people notice your reaction to mistakes more than they notice the actual mistakes, so I just kept singing—in gibberish. Eventually my mind cleared.

After the show I went to see Melissa Dye, the great-looking woman with an incredible voice who played Christine. Melissa was a joy to work with, and her support and friendship made the whole experience that much more fun. Plus there was something between us that under different circumstances, I definitely would have pursued. “Wasn’t that unbelievable?” I said to her.

“What?” she said.

“I was just singing nonsense during ‘Point of No Return.’ ”

Melissa looked confused. She hadn’t noticed.

Other people in the cast told me that they’d had similar experiences and sung about chickens or ducks—whatever came into their heads.

Before shows, the staff often dropped off letters that had been mailed to me at the theater company’s office address. I liked to read them. One woman wrote that she had seen the show many times—it was her favorite musical—and that her sister had recently bought her tickets for her birthday. When she found out I was playing the lead, she had been disappointed. She was expecting the worst but was completely won over when she saw the show. And she wanted me to know that.

Another letter—the one from the woman who worked with AboutFace—changed my life. The woman, Anna Pileggi, wrote that when she watched me play the Phantom she had the impression that I identified with the character in a way she hadn’t seen in other actors.

Wow
.

It was true, of course, that I identified with the character—the mask, the hidden facial disfigurement—but how did she figure it out? I rarely mentioned my birth defect to anyone, and these days I had the surgically created ear where earlier there had been the stump. It felt as if Anna had pulled aside a veil and seen the real me. She knew my secret.

The woman’s letter went on to describe AboutFace, the organization that helped children with facial differences. Would I have any interest in learning more about the organization or perhaps even working with them?

I called her.

Her connection to young people struggling with facial abnormalities struck me immediately.

She didn’t know my secret, of course, though I quickly told her about my microtia and the surgeries I’d had. She had just seen something based on her work—perhaps she had recognized the pain of reality in the way I played the role.

She described some of the programs her organization undertook. Eventually she asked if I might be willing to talk to kids and their parents about my experiences.

Here, perhaps, was a way to help heal my soul.

I took a deep breath.

“Yes,” I said.

Speaking about my birth defect would have been impossible when I had been in the midst of pain and turmoil. My life had evolved, however, and I was now in a better position to be open. I suppose I could have gone to speak to the kids and just offered a cheering up from a so-called celebrity. But I knew I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to just speak to the kids; I was going to reveal something about myself. This was an opportunity for me to gain something by sharing with them what I had been through.

I agreed to go to the AboutFace office and meet with a group of children and their parents. I had some anxiety leading up to that first meeting and talk, but my overwhelming and yet unanalyzed compulsion to do it eclipsed any fear I had. I didn’t know what I would get out of the initial talks, but I knew I was compelled to do it.

As monumental as my own condition seemed to me, I knew from speaking to Anna that many of these children dealt with far more severe facial differences. I didn’t want them to think that I placed myself on the same plane as them, but I wanted to let them know what I had been through emotionally and where I had ended up. One thing I had noticed as a child was how much more difficult it was when nobody acknowledged the reality of the situation. There was nothing more isolating than having everyone act as if my missing ear and my deafness were no big deal. It didn’t help me tackle the reality that I faced every day. So I wanted to explain that my life had been tough, lonely, and painful; I also wanted to acknowledge that it wouldn’t be easy for them. Maybe nobody had ever told them that. Perhaps it would be a breath of fresh air for them to hear, “Yes, success is more difficult to achieve for someone with a facial difference. Happiness is more difficult to find. The odds are worse.”

I also hoped to encourage the parents of the children to acknowledge these things, too. I wanted to impress upon them that it wasn’t about tough love. It wasn’t about sticking their heads in the ground.

As soon as I started publicly talking about my ear, I felt a huge weight lift off of me. I realized that you couldn’t appreciate others when you were immersed in your own misery. Perhaps that was what Christine meant about the distortion of the Phantom’s soul.

Suddenly the world looked different to me. Helping others helped me heal myself. I felt freed from something that had been so painful and all-encompassing my whole life. Simply putting the truth out there in front of these kids and their parents had set me free.

The more work I did with AboutFace, the better I felt.

Eventually we came up with an education program to try to help kids who didn’t have facial differences change their attitudes toward those who did. In a video presentation, I told kids to imagine wearing what they thought was a special shirt and then realizing everyone was snickering and laughing at their shirt. “You can go home and change your shirt,” I explained. “But kids with facial differences can’t change their faces.”

I had never been so calm and centered as I was during those months in Toronto. A big part of it was finally coming to grips with my birth defect. Another part of it was doing something that demanded a lot of thought, effort, and discipline. Whatever the cause, the effect was to take me completely out of myself and allow me to think about my life and my relationships with some critical distance—with the kind of objectivity that’s impossible when you are caught up in things.

It felt like a time for self-evaluation and, perhaps, renewal.

I had always thought my marriage was about breaking through a wall. Pam and I were going to resolve everything and finally push through to a great place on the other side. Then, sitting in my hotel after a
Phantom
show one night, it suddenly occurred to me: the nature of our marriage was banging our heads against the wall, not pushing through it.

There is no other side
.

It was a heartbreaking realization.

Another thing that occurred to me was that I had failed to break the pattern I had seen at home growing up. In some ways, Pam was very much like my mom—distant, cold, unsupportive, and not one to give a compliment. It was a shock to realize that the dynamics in my own marriage mirrored something I had sought to avoid.