You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (26 page)

the press interviews that always felt like a trap

the calls from my agent…and waiting for the calls from my agent

driving all over Los Angeles for an audition that was really just a courtesy because the director already knew that the producer’s daughter would be hired

the politics of knowing the casting director wants to hire me but the director doesn’t because he didn’t like my last film

hearing the subtle suggestion that the character might be a little thinner than me

the fact that I would fall in love with every one of my costars and then be heartbroken when we wrapped and I realized I had done it, yet again

feeling like I wasn’t really being creative, I was just acting out everyone else’s creativity

that I just never, ever, felt good enough.

It’s pretty clear that the cons list is longer. It’s sad to realize that the thing you have based your life around is leading you in a miserable direction. It’s terrifying, actually. Because you have two options: pretend you are not realizing it and hold off the misery with the parts that are still somewhat satisfying, or, get out of the situation and try to figure out
what the hell would make you happy. Both of those options are really scary, but the first option sounded more likely to make me an alcoholic.

I was doing a job that many people in the world wanted to do. They longed for it. They became starving artists for it. Here I was, not being grateful for it. In truth, I found the whole thing embarrassing. It felt shameful to have something so socially valuable when I wasn’t sure I really wanted it. It was like a vegetarian trying to eat a ribeye in front a starving kid. I felt awful about it and just wanted to hand my career off to someone who was interested in it. I tried forcing myself to like it. I tried to read acting books and tried to intellectualize my way in. My eyes glazed over the words “method,” “motivation,” and “character development.”

I fantasized about being a social worker. A librarian. A farmer. A dog trainer. One of those people who works for aquariums and dives into the big fish tanks to clean the insides. I thought about working in an office, filing things in alphabetical order and wearing sweater sets and heels that clicked on the linoleum. I fantasized about carrying a briefcase and my lunch in a paper sack. How wonderful, to go to the same place every day, see the same people, and do the same, structured, repetitive work. I envisioned myself learning how to make a casserole, the kind with a can of mushroom soup in it. I dreamed of the suburban nightmare.

But what was “fulfillment” anyways? Wasn’t it a myth? Wasn’t everyone just accepting of the general unsatisfactory nature of life? Was there ever really going to be a job or a life that I liked more than this? Maybe the grass really was greenest in Hollywood, even if it was just all special effects that made it seem that way.

I went to work on a project where the director hated me. He told me that he hated me. He had these long bony fingers that he would poke in my face, and tell me that I was a terrible actor and that the producers forced him to hire me. During read-throughs, when all my castmates sat at a round table going over the script, he made me sit on the floor.

“Like a dog,” he said. “You don’t deserve to sit with this talented group of artists.”

I sat on the floor, saying nothing and suspecting that was where I deserved to be, anyway. My silent tears fell and wrinkled up the pages of my script.

Whether this was supposed to be motivational or some sort of creative exercise to toughen me up remains a mystery. In a small, windowless production room filled with script revisions and old coffee cups, I quietly begged the producers to fire me. At least allow me quit. They wouldn’t let me out of my contract. They claimed it would get better, his anger would burn itself out. So, I trudged through work, heaving over the toilet bowl at 6 a.m. as the driver knocked at my hotel room door, ready to take me to set where my boss called me an undeserving hack and pointed those long gray fingers. When we wrapped the show, I got so sick I couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks. The cruelty finally over, my body throbbed with fever, shame, and unresolved anger. I just needed another job to get over it. Hair of the dog.

My friends didn’t notice how broken and disconnected I was becoming. I was an actor, after all, specializing in the facade. A sane-looking person looked back at me from the mirror and I wondered how I could look so normal. It was surprising that my face wasn’t in jagged pieces and that my arms were still connected to my body. They didn’t feel attached. I went on another shoot, slept with the assistant to a Baldwin brother, and felt more broken than ever. I walked like a zombie through my life and didn’t question what came next. More of the same came next, of course. I went to parties and talked about how good the script was for the new Russell Crowe movie. I pretended it wasn’t killing me.

Desperate for a reprieve from my own darkness, I once again fell in love with my costar, so I could walk around in the blinding love glow. We met for rehearsals, and within the first three minutes I would have died for him. I loved him with the type of force generally reserved for planets
that are collapsing in on themselves; it was unreasonable to assume any human could survive it. My love for Michael was reciprocated on about a ¾ scale, which proved an acceptable ratio for me at the time. I immediately broke up with my current boyfriend with a quick and unceremonious phone call. I would have texted him had that been a thing back then. My blissed-out love state made me completely numb to the pain that I caused while plummeting joyfully into my new relationship.

Michael was tall and willowy and even though men aren’t supposed to be willowy it looked mighty fine on him. He seemed darkly fragile and just broken enough to be relentlessly attractive. Never one to be thwarted by minor details, I persevered even though my new boyfriend had just separated from his wife, was nine years older than me and was mourning the recent death of his mother. I decided that all could be overcome, even the fact that I was clearly more in love than he was. He just needed time, that was all. Gigantic red flags flapped in my face but I slapped them away and proceeded to coach him, word by tortured word, into professing his love for me.

Michael did some acting, but really he was a writer. He was introspective and emotional, and had wild hair—all important attributes for a writer. He was committed to his writing process, sitting alone in the apartment he rented over someone’s garage, tapping away during his designated writing hours. This was a new concept to me and I was slightly baffled by the idea that anyone had working hours that didn’t involve being away on location. Most of my friends were available to hang out whenever we saw fit, because (being generous) an actor’s schedule is non-traditional or (being less generous and more realistic) pretty much everyone I hung out with was chronically underemployed. The idea that Michael was unavailable at 11am on a Thursday made him even more exotic and desirable. I had such respect for this dedication that I accepted being kicked out of his apartment so that he could write.