You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (35 page)

“Just try jumping jacks.”

“What?”

“Jumping jacks. Seriously. It’ll work.”

My skit partner did some dubious jumping jacks, which woke up the random sleeping guy on the couch. He looked around, rubbed his eyes, put on his pants and left. When we tried again, we got through the whole thing with no giggling and finally finished the damn skit.

“Wow.” The girl looked at me. “That totally worked. Have you done a lot of skits before?”

Apparently I was wrong. Some of my acting skills did transfer over into my real life.

College offered many experiences that I decided not to take advantage of. There was no keg stand at a frat party. There was no early morning Walk of Shame from some guy’s dorm while still wearing a party dress and smeared mascara from the night before. I mostly avoided the greasy cafeteria and never got brave enough to “streak the lawn,” running naked throughout the school grounds while my friends stole my clothes and threw them in the bushes. I was okay with skipping those things and loved watching my twenty-one-year-old classmates participate with unbridled enthusiasm. But there was one college experience that I couldn’t pass up.

UVA offered study abroad opportunities. Students could take a class in a foreign locale and get college credit for it. It seemed like the perfect meeting of my two worlds. I could do my favorite part of a movie shoot—the traveling to a location for an extended period of time—but instead of being an actor, I could be a student.

Some people say that travel allows you to escape from your life. They say it’s a form of avoidance that shelters you from intimacy and reality. I think travel brings life into exquisitely sharp focus. You realize that you can’t escape yourself. All the good and all the not-so-good that makes up your soul is highlighted when you no longer have the safe confines
of your routines. Travel leaves behind all the extraneous bits and pieces that never had any legitimate place in one’s life to start with. There is simply no room for all that other garbage. Fear, anxiety, insecurity, self-doubt—they can’t withstand the air that sweeps in off the Yucatán Peninsula or the sight of all those vibrant foods, piled up at the Boqueria in Barcelona. They can’t climb to the top of the Siena bell tower or sit at the bar of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Those issues that you’ve been carrying just because you forgot to put them down get all brittle, dusty, and frail. When there is so much exotic energy swirling around, that junk simply gets carried off by the wind.

On a chilly spring morning, I attended a study abroad fair and wandered the booths full of colorful posters and eager students wearing berets or lederhosen while pitching the trips from which they had just returned. The options seemed endless; I could study engineering in Panama or learn Mandarin in Shanghai. My travel lust went into overdrive as I flipped through brochures depicting happy and self-assured students in racially diverse groups, holding pens thoughtfully while absorbing cultural experiences. All the options looked very nice but I knew which trip was mine the second that I saw it: Southern Africa.

I had always auditioned most enthusiastically for projects filming on the African continent and it had never worked in my favor. When the producers had passed on me for a part in
The Power of One
it had left me disappointed for weeks. My infatuation with the place began when I was about eight years old, fueled by my love for animals. I poured over musty stacks of National Geographics that confirmed that Sub-Saharan Africa was a magical wonderland, full of roaming troops of baboons and giraffes eating off the tops of acacia trees.

As I got older, I read about apartheid in South Africa and reconciliation after the black majority won their battle for independence from oppressive white rule. I fell for Nelson Mandela, who went from being a child in rural South Africa to lawyer to freedom fighter to prisoner to democratically elected president. South Africa seemed to be a place that
steadfastly refused to be defined by its past.

I packed a small duffle bag and took my anti-malaria pills. Choking back tears, I hugged Jeremy and the dogs goodbye and got on a nineteen hour flight. My student group traveled throughout South Africa and Mozambique for a month, studying the interaction between culture and environment for a class that was a co-listing with anthropology and environmental sciences. I trekked through wildlife parks, goat farms and villages. The first time I saw an elephant cross the path right in front of me, I lost my breath. I drank beer in sheebeens with members of the Black Consciousness Movement and talked to a traditional healer about how she cured her daughter’s ovarian cancer. I yelled some very nasty things at a baboon who broke into my cabin, ate all my food, and ripped apart my bag, shitting on all my clothes.

That wall of fog that I always felt between me and everyone else seemed to disappear in South Africa. It slowly dissipated and allowed me to sit in a corrugated metal shack and enjoy a warm, sandy “Orange Drink” with the residents of a township and feel a blissful sense of comfort in my own skin. I asked questions that I could never manage to utter at a Hollywood premiere. It turned out that people were very interesting. They were not just crazed fans that might kind of kidnap me. When I found enough voice to ask questions I got to hear personal stories that were much more varied and fascinating than mine. I learned how to talk to people without answering, “Yes, filming
Mrs. Doubtfire
was really fun.” I laughed with perfect strangers and missed their company when we parted ways.

It was one of these strangers who told me about the philosophy of Ubuntu. It comes from the Bantu language and it means;
I am, because we are
. It’s a worldview that focuses on community and the interconnectedness of us all. Ubuntu says that we cannot live in isolation, that generosity and compassion are what make us fundamentally human. When others thrive, you thrive. We’re all in this together.

It was a far cry from the
every actor for themselves
mantra that I
had adopted in Los Angeles. It was the opposite of the endless focus on individual achievement and personal success. In L.A., life had been so me-centered. Of course I had tried to be a good friend and a responsible member of the planet, but it was all about me and my stuff. My career, my unfortunate love life, my depression, my fear, my anxiety, my loneliness, my self-imposed isolation.

This sense of collectiveness suddenly felt tangible. Even when the details look notably different, we can all relate to the joy and suffering of the human experience. Our hearts all swell with happiness, and we all buckle with the pain of loss. The world opens up when you realize that you are not alone and not a freak—that everyone has to walk a different path, but that doesn’t mean that any of us walk alone. We are all connected. Community can be created out of anything, and it is always available, if you are brave enough to put yourself out there. For the first time, I felt a deep desire to truly participate in my life and stop running away. I was never alone. I never would be. I just wasn’t that special.

As I wandered through markets, freely chatting with the woman at the stall selling protein-packed Mopani worms and cheap Chinese flip-flops, that weight was completely gone. It was the weight of being burdened only with myself and my path in the world. I felt lighter when caring for others and when I felt that I could do something to contribute. This was not a White Man’s Burden sort of thing; no one here needed me to save them. What I could do was ask someone how they were doing and really listen to the answer. I could help by having a meaningful conversation about the important things of life and sharing stories and laughing. I could connect.

At the end of each day, I scrolled through my photos, and saw shot after shot of me grinning. It became abundantly clear that I had forgotten how to smile pretty. I was showing more than the regulated bottom half of my top teeth. Good lord, I was smiling so big that my gums where showing. I would push up my already too-plump cheeks until crows-feet marched across my temples. I made that un-Hollywood smiley face that
could hardly contain the joy of my life. I was no longer film-ready when I smiled, certainly not appropriate for the big (or even small HD) screen. But that smile was mine and it was overflowing with authenticity and happiness.

My best friend on the trip was named Abdel. He was a twenty-one-year-old college student from the politically ravaged country of Zimbabwe, who was studying to be an accountant. He had joined our group and was traveling around with us, seeing countries that were foreign to him, too. He was smart and knew it; he teased me with a kind of swagger that was equal parts endearing and infuriating. Abdel laughed at my addiction to sunscreen and said that judging by the way I spoke about my dogs, I had mistaken them for people. He quickly began to feel like a little brother to me.

Several weeks into our travels, while we sat in a restaurant in Mozambique, he asked me about being an older student. Why had I waited so long to go to college? I fumbled with my fork. Could I avoid the question? How was he going to react? I didn’t want there to be another tectonic relationship shift. Not here. Not with him. I felt so much shame about the possibility of being rejected, of being thought of as profoundly different. My heart raced and the heat rushed to my face. I folded and unfolded my paper napkin while I found a way to explain myself.

“Well, um, I haven’t mentioned this before because it’s just sort of weird I guess, but I used to be an actor. Like, in movies.”

Abdel touched my arm lightly, trying to calm my obvious nerves.

“I know.
Independence Day.
‘Welcome to Earth.’ Boom!” He did a decent impression of Will Smith punching an alien in the face.

“Oh, I didn’t know you knew about that. You saw that movie?”

“Everyone saw that movie.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Even in Africa. We see movies, too, you know.”

“Of course you do. I didn’t mean…Sorry.” I wasn’t sure which was more offensive and culturally insensitive, assuming he had seen the movie, or assuming he hadn’t.

He grinned at my attempt to be politically correct about an alien movie. “But movies are all done now, right?”

“Yes. All done.”

“And you are happy to be done?”

“Yes. I am. I’m happy.” I tried not to cry and look stupid.

I looked around this simple restaurant, not much more than a couple of plastic tables set out on a cement slab. I was overwhelmed by the beautiful food that had been provided to us. I was in awe of my new friend, who had offered me such kindness and understanding, despite the fact that our lives could not have seemed more different. I looked at my dirty jeans, which I’d worn every day for three weeks and still had some dust on the ankles, from where I had been sitting on the pressed cow dung floor of a healer’s hut. My soul wanted to burst with the tremendous joy I felt. I was about to collapse under the weight of my gratitude.

“I’m very happy,” I sputtered.

He took my hand. “Very good, my friend. Look forward. And be happy.” I wiped away my tears that I just couldn’t keep inside anymore. He laughed at me and I didn’t mind.

What had I been waiting for? I had spent my entire life waiting. Waiting on the 405 freeway, waiting for auditions. Waiting for agents or managers or boyfriends to call. Waiting to see if I could become somebody. It never occurred to me that I already was somebody. I was me. “
Doubtfire
Girl” or not—it didn’t matter. Happiness was a choice that was available. It was right there in front of me. I could live my life now and stop waiting for other people to give me permission to leave set to go to the bathroom or tell me to cry and think about dead puppies. It was time to focus my energy in better places. The dead puppy days were done.

That bliss was so clearly reflected back at me, standing at the place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. I stood at the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South Africa and looked out into the vastness. At the place where the two oceans meet, they create a small crest before flowing seamlessly into one another.

“Crazy, right? It’s like this is the end of the world,” someone behind me said.

I smiled and laughed because I knew there was no such thing.

This was just the beginning of a different part.

It would never be so simple, really. It would never be just a flip of the switch. I always hated those stories where one revelation changes everything forever. Old habits die hard and I came home and started taking running water for granted and started doubting my capabilities in the real world. But that trip gave me something, and every day since, I’ve fought like hell to hang on to it. It’s the knowledge that I am an integral part of something that is so much bigger and more important than myself. Since the days of playing craps with the teamsters, I had always been searching for my group, my community, and my connection. Ubuntu showed me that it had been there all along had I just opened my heart to it.

Shockingly, when I finally embraced my passion for words and found enough courage to write my story, it turned out that my life was relatable. The issues I had struggled with, that I always felt so alone with, were common. People are always considering changing jobs or going back to school or figuring out how to live authentically within the structure of their lives. People are always trying to wake up and find their way in the world. It’s all the same stuff; taking a leap away from a social norm is always terrifying. It’s just a little more unusual to live your dream by getting out of the film industry, rather than getting into it.

Every day I remind myself that I don’t have to wait for someone else
to give me permission to live. Sometimes you need to stop searching for happiness and just be happy. There is joy to be had, and it doesn’t require a Hollywood career. It takes some courage, some compassion and some love, for yourself and others.

My revelation about all of this is nothing new. Religions are generally based on this idea of compassion and love. Jesus said it. Buddha said it. It’s in the sacred texts of pretty much every faith in existence. Everyone is suffering, so stop thinking you are the only one who is special enough to be miserable and go make someone else’s life a little better. Get over yourself, get over your past, get over your shit, and you will be better for it. (I’m paraphrasing.)