Happy Accidents (13 page)

I ran home and called my brother, Bob, at work back in Chicago. “Are you sitting down?” I asked.

“Oh my god,” Bob said. “What’s going on?”

“I just sent Mom and Dad a letter about something they don’t know about me.”

“Okay . . . ,” Bob said, his voice tight.

“. . . I told them I’m gay.”

“Ahh!” Bob said, sounding relieved. “That’s it? I thought you were sick, like you had AIDS or cancer or something. Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell them the letter’s coming, and to call me when it gets there.”

I was so nervous in the two or three days it took for the letter to get there. But when it did, my mom opened it and read it out loud to my dad. When she finished, they looked at each other, and he said, “That’s okay, right?” And she said, “Of course it’s okay!” Then, as she later told me, she took the letter over to my sister Julie’s house and read it to her. Everybody was very sympathetic and understanding and kind of concerned for me—for how I was dealing with it. They all wanted me to know it was okay; everything was all right.

Just like Bob, my mom had been worried I was trying to tell them I had some sort of disease. This was understandable given that the preamble to the letter was something like “I have to share a secret that I’ve been keeping inside, something very important, but if I don’t tell you, you’ll never know a vital part of me. . . .” It took me ages in the letter to get around to saying I was gay. So when we talked on the phone next, my mom said, “We were just glad you weren’t sick.”

As it turned out, my mom and dad had each won
dered whether I was gay, but they had never talked about it with each other. This surprised me because they talked about everything, especially sex. They had always tried to get us to talk about the birds and bees when we were young, and we would have none of it. We were prudish children. But I guess homosexuality was just out of their area of expertise, so they steered clear of talking about it, even with each other. They hadn’t known anyone who was gay (and out). But now they knew me, and they loved me.

They really stepped up after I told them, even in their politics. A Reagan Democrat, my dad did not care for Bill Clinton at all. But in
1992
, he voted for him. I was shocked. I asked my mom what had possessed my dad to vote for Bill Clinton. She said because “he was for the gays.” (You’ll recall that Clinton campaigned on the promise that he would end the ban on homosexuals in the military. Of course, he would go “halfway” and sign Don’t Ask Don’t Tell into law. Not exactly a gay-friendly policy.)

But my mom, bless her, still had one question that was obviously bugging her.

“What about Ronny Howard?”

I
n the autumn of 1992, when
The Real Live Brady Bunch
was about to end its run at the Westwood Playhouse,
Steppenwolf Theatre asked me to audition for their winter show,
Inspecting Carol
by Daniel Sullivan, a farcical comedy about a small-time theater company putting on a production of
A Christmas Carol.
I flew back home to Chicago on my own nickel to read for them, and as soon as I got back to LA to finish the
Brady Bunch
run, I got a call that I’d been cast, meaning I would have to leave
The Brady Bunch
a week shy of its final show to start rehearsals in Chicago. I returned my furniture to the rental place, threw out my smelly Brady clothes, and left my red VW Golf with Andy Richter. (Andy would amass over $
600
in parking tickets. He finally paid up when he got the job as a writer, and eventual cohost, for Conan O’Brien.)

This time, coming home to Chicago was magical. I moved in with Jill and Faith Soloway’s mom, Elaine. She had been divorced from their dad, a Freudian analyst, for a couple of years and was on her own hero’s journey. She had spent twenty-plus years of marriage neglecting her own needs and desires and was embarking on the adventure of “finding herself” as an independent adult, just like I was.

She had a cool town house in a newly developed area near Clybourne and Armitage, on the north side. As soon as I hit town, I moved into the basement. The whole thing felt like a metaphor—I had found refuge in a safe, warm, maternal womb kind of place. I was still reading my goddess books, so the symbolism meant a lot to me. I felt protected.

Elaine and I would have coffee and talk every day, after her morning run. She worked for herself, having started a PR company post-divorce. We really connected. I trusted her enough to talk about what was going on in my life, even things I still felt self-conscious about, like being in AA. She supported me and would tell me what an open heart I had. I felt nurtured and that she
got
me. For me, the feeling that someone understood
me was so important and felt so good.

Soon, her new boyfriend, Don, started to join us. He was recently divorced as well. Perhaps in rebellious response to her ex’s Freudian bent, Elaine loved Don’s fascination with Jungian thought. They both were really small and Jewish, and I was this big Aryan person coming to the breakfast table looking for a hug. We would start every morning with Don saying in his gravelly voice, “Tell me about your dreams last night, Janie.”

I ate it up. I was in my great period of self-preoccupation, and so I was utterly captivated by my own inner landscape, including my dreams. I kept a microcassette voice recorder at my bedside to capture them upon waking. Don would then analyze them for me over breakfast, and I was a rapt audience. “Don’t be afraid of the shadow, Janie,” he would say. “It’s where the most fertile material lives.” This piece of advice would actually be the key to my integrating all this navel-gazing into something productive.

What I came to know was that it was the shadow, the great unclaimed areas of the psyche, that my best work would come out of. If I feel proud of anything I’ve done in my acting career, it came from the stuff that is hard to look at; stuff that feels sticky and dark. These parts tend to want to stay far from the light of day, as they conjure fear or shame. At the time I was living with Elaine and Don, I was just getting to know my own vulnerable, tender parts. I hadn’t yet learned how valuable these places are creatively.

Don was always very loving, always asking questions and taking as much interest in me as I did in myself. He reminded me of Ira Glick and Boris Lorwin, the PR team who put up with me in New York. I love the little Jewish guys, and they love me. Jill and Faith, however, did not cotton to him at all. To them, he was the new-agey pervert
schtupping
their mom.

I started going to AA meetings in the neighborhood, on the first floor of an old Chicago-style three-story walk-up on Sheffield Avenue. The noon meeting always had a bunch of guys on their lunch hour—good old Chicago guys, some of them blue collar, some running their own businesses, all of them sober ten-plus years, which sounded like an eternity to me. This group embraced me and I became one of them. Most of them had been meth addicts and had stories like you wouldn’t believe: “Hi, my name is so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic. I destroyed my family, my kids won’t talk to me, and I basically ruined all our lives. I once chained myself to a radiator so I wouldn’t take cocaine, but I found a knife and cut away at it. . . .” But the endings were all happy, because the guys were here and could laugh about it. These guys had repaired their lives and relationships, so when new people came in off the street still ensconced in their own horrendous stories, they found hope in this room. I didn’t realize until much later that many people, including people in that room, went in and out of AA, having periods of sobriety interspersed with periods of addiction. But these guys seemed like they would be okay forever, and this made me feel safe. Between Elaine and Don and my AA guys, I could feel that vise grip around my heart loosening up.

I met a lovely girl named Holly at these meetings. She had been sober for a few years and then stopped going to meetings, only to get her ass kicked again. I met her at her first meeting back in the program, the day after her last walk of shame after having boozed it up good. We saw each other quite a bit at the meetings, and I thought she was so cute. I would stare at her hands—she had kind of a round baby face, but her hands were long and elegant, and I wanted to hold one of them. I didn’t dare, of course, because not only did the thought of intimacy make my insides churn, but I was crushing out on a straight girl.

One day when we were talking rather deeply and intimately, I felt like she was going to ask me to be her sponsor, but she asked me out instead. I guess she wasn’t
that
straight.

Holly joined our little Jungian coffee klatch.
It was Don, Elaine, Holly, and me, all of us pretty much on the same page, journey-wise. Don and Elaine were post-divorce, and Holly and I were freshly sober. We felt like we were all seeing the world with fresh eyes, and that anything was possible. It was heavenly. Caffeine was my new drug, and, overindulgent as usual, I drank way too much of it. I shook all day long and felt very anxious. I had to mete out my intake throughout the day so that I wouldn’t jump out of my skin, which meant I was always wanting a little more. This wasn’t a bad problem to have, overall, since life otherwise was feeling pretty good. I was dating a cutie pie, living in a womblike basement, working as an actor in a good play, and making money doing radio voice-overs for the Spiegel catalogue.

Things got even better when a call came from out of nowhere that I had an offer for a role in the Harrison Ford film coming to town:
The Fugitive
. It would be directed by Andy Davis, a native Chicagoan himself, who had a bunch of successful action films under his belt. It turned out that a friend of Jill Soloway had seen me in
The Real Live Brady Bunch
and told Andy that he should cast me. I still have no idea what the friend saw in my Carol Brady that would make her think I could play a forensic scientist, but I got the part.

This was a huge deal—my first big Hollywood movie. I played Dr. Kathy Wahlund, a researcher and forensic scientist who helps Richard Kimble prove his innocence. As was so often the case with parts I played, it was originally written for a man. It wasn’t a big part, but I would have scenes with Harrison Ford. And I was getting paid eight grand for it, which seemed like a ton of money at the time.

I got a call from a wardrobe person who was coming from San Francisco to do the movie. “This is my idea for your character,” she said. “In the script it says you wear a leather jacket, but I think that says ‘lesbian.’ This part was originally written for a man, and I think they want to make you mannish, and I’m not going to let them. So I’m gonna put you in something else.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I said—being an actor in stage shows, I was used to being listened to when it came to character. “I think it’s important that the leather jacket is in, because in the script, when I’m revealed, the first shot is of my leather jacket. It says something about my character.”

She didn’t like this. “The script can be changed and probably will be changed and you don’t tell me how to design costumes,” she said. “I’m trying to build a character here.”

“I think that’s my job,” I snarked. When we hung up, I was terrified they would fire me.

I got a call from my agent the next day. “You’ll wear a burlap sack if they want you to,” she said. I scared easily back then, so I gave in.

I showed up for the first fitting and discovered that Wardrobe had bombarded my white lab coat with buttons sporting political messages: “Hate Is Not a Family Value,” “Mind Your Own Uterus,” etc., slogans that had more to do with the wardrobe person’s agenda than with my character’s. She had a thing about Hollywood being run by men and all the stories being male-centered. But who doesn’t? “You’re one of the only women in this hospital, and damn it, I’m gonna make my statement,” she declared. I didn’t want to fight, but I couldn’t stop myself. I said, “Look, I’m a liberal, I support these causes. But you don’t just impose this stuff onto a char—”

“Listen, Jane,” she interrupted, and proceeded to tell me all the liberal organizations she volunteered for and the ones she gave money to. Then she told me that she had adopted a black child. I could think of no acceptable response but to go along with my character wearing the buttons. Later, a friend said, “You should have told her, ‘Well, I have a black inner child.’”

My first day of shooting, I was at the craft services table and I saw in my periphery that Harrison Ford was walking up behind me. I was trying to play it cool, but I was starstruck. And he was walking up on my deaf side, so I wouldn’t be able to hear it if he was talking to me. But what if he just wanted a sandwich, then would I look like a goofy fan? I gave up and turned to look at him.

“Jane!” he said, a bit exasperated, like I hadn’t heard him the first time. “Are you okay with your wardrobe?” he asked. Obviously, word had gotten to him.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, casually. “Everything worked out, thanks for asking.” He’d asked me actor-to-actor—kind of like “Is everything square?” like we were in cahoots, rather than critically, like “I hear there’s some trouble between you and Wardrobe.” Which made me think he was on my side if I needed him.

And that was how I met Harrison Ford. He was always really nice to me, and I really enjoyed working with him. There was tension on the set between him and the director, Andy Davis. Harrison is an inner-directed guy, so if he didn’t like something, he’d just kind of fume silently. I was a little afraid of him in those moments, as he could do some powerful silent fuming, but overall, we got along well.

He taught me a few things as well. Once, he took me aside and said, “Jane, this scene is shit. Let’s you and me go into my trailer and work it out.” It was raining, and he put his arm around me and pulled me under his umbrella as we walked.

His trailer had that dank man-smell to it. He had a bottle of Scotch, and he poured himself a glass and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” And we figured the scene out—the one where we’re at the microscope looking at liver samples, and I’m supposed to say something like “It shows a lot of periportal inflammation loaded with eosinophils.” As I remember, we simplified it and made it actable, and I couldn’t stop thinking,
I’m holding my own
with
Harrison Ford.

During another scene, he leaned in and gave me one of the best pieces of acting advice I had received in a while: “If you leave your mouth open, no matter how smart you are, you still look stupid.” My mouth closed immediately. (However, for some characters I
choose
to leave my mouth open.)

Of course, my family was thrilled that I was in a movie with a real Hollywood star. During the time we were shooting
The Fugitive
, my uncle Bill died, and when I went to the funeral and walked up to my aunt Betty and said, “I’m so sorry,” she looked up at me and said, “What’s Harrison Ford like?”

Suddenly it seemed that Holly had broken up with
me. She didn’t say so, but all of a sudden she was curiously absent. When I heard from someone at the meeting we both went to that she was seeing a guy, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I remember thinking,
I can’t compete with a guy
. But looking back, I realize that the gender of her new love was irrelevant. It was truly a case of our time being up. We were to be together for a season, as they say. I wasn’t in love and neither was she. But still, I took the opportunity to suffer over this perceived rejection, as I had when I had been fired from the Civic Opera House, or when I left the Shakespeare Company and The Second City. The gig was up and it had to end some way or another, but I always chose the path of
woe is me
. This time, I ran away from my pain by going back to Los Angeles.

Moving also made sense professionally.
The Fugitive
would open that fall of ’
93
, and if I was in LA, I could capitalize on it. I said good-bye to Elaine and Don. Before I left, I had a lunch date with Holly where
I
did the official breaking up. She graciously accepted my need to be the one to call it off, and she wished me well.