Brangelina (11 page)

I actually remembered an incident in the early 1980s when Chevy Chase was being interviewed by Tom Snyder and he said of Grant, “I understand he’s a homo.” Grant sued him for slander and won, although details of his affairs came out after his death. It raised the question, how does anybody prove anybody’s actually gay, short of catching them in bed with a man?

Karl mentioned one of the world’s most famous sitcom stars who is gay and married. “They live in this huge mansion, but according to people who have been there, he and his wife occupy half the mansion each, and they never have anything to do with each other. Very convenient, but again, why did she marry him? I hear that the way these things work is the woman agrees to put in a certain amount of time before filing a divorce. In exchange, she is guaranteed a platinum credit card for the whole marriage and a generous settlement after the divorce. Hell, I’d marry some rich dyke looking for a beard. She wouldn’t have to ask me twice.”

“Then there’s [a recently married superstar actor], who was a little too close to being outted publicly for his own comfort. The story goes that he actually interviewed a series of women and offered them a huge sum of money, not to mention prime roles, in exchange for staying married to him for a certain number of years.”

He continued, “The saddest part of the Hollywood closet for the gay stars who aren’t bisexual is that they live a life of perpetual sadness. They can never really have an open relationship, so they end up having sex with high-priced Hollywood call boys for $2,000 a night.”

“Unless Scientology gets its hands on them,” Lenny says.

The mention of Scientology piqued my interest.

“What do they have to do with anything?” I asked.

“Well, if you pay them enough money and you’re gay, they promise to convert you,” Lenny explained. “Or so I hear.”

Lenny was not exaggerating. Scientology has many followers in Hollywood, among them stars such as John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and Priscilla Presley. But while the majority of the church’s adherents may not be gay, part of the appeal of Scientology for some celebrities may be its alleged promise that it can turn a gay person straight through an elaborate and expensive, science-fiction-inspired regimen called “auditing.” In its May 6, 1991, issue,
Time
magazine published a controversial cover story about the sect, which alleged that some of Hollywood’s most famous actors had come under the sway of the Church because they were afraid their secrets would be revealed. The most shocking passage concerned John Travolta:

Sometimes even the church’s biggest zealots can use a little protection. Screen star Travolta, 37, has long served as an unofficial Scientology spokesman, even though he told a magazine in 1983 that he was opposed to the church’s management. High-level defectors claim that Travolta has long feared that if he defected, details of his sexual life would be made public. “He felt pretty intimidated about this getting out and told me so,” recalls William Franks, the church’s former chairman of the board. “There were no outright threats made, but it was implicit. If you leave, they immediately start digging up everything.” Franks was driven out in 1981 after attempting to reform the church. The church’s former head of security, Richard Aznaran, recalls Scientology ringleader [David] Miscavige repeatedly joking to staffers about Travolta’s allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior. At this point any threat to expose Travolta seems superfluous: last May a male porn star collected $100,000 from a tabloid for an account of his alleged two-year liaison with the celebrity. Travolta refuses to comment, and in December his lawyer dismissed questions about the subject as “bizarre.” Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow Scientologist.

The controversy over Travolta was re-ignited years later, in 2006, when the
National Enquirer
published a photo of the
Pulp Fiction
star standing on the steps of his private plane, kissing a man on the lips. The man turned out to be his son’s nanny.

Since my encounter with the Queers of the Round Table, I came across a University of Maryland study that indicates my poker-playing companions were less informed about gay women in Hollywood than they thought. The study found that lesbians and bisexual women are actually eight times more likely to enter theater and film than their straight counterparts.

* * * *

In view of the incredible lengths Hollywood stars have always gone to in order to hide their homosexuality, it was all the more amazing that Jolie publicly acknowledged her affair with Jenny Shimizu. What is just as extraordinary is that her career has not suffered since then but instead has catapulted her to superstardom.

Jess Search, deputy commissioning editor for independent film and video at Britain’s Channel 4 television network, told the
Guardian
in 2000 that she believed there was a “mystique” about lesbians that may make them more acceptable than gay men. “It’s nothing new that a male audience will find a good-looking girl more interesting if they know she’s a lesbian,” she said. “In general, gay women used to be seen as subcultural, something that went on behind closed doors. Now we’re no longer in the ghetto, we’re more socially acceptable. Men find lesbians sexy; it creates a buzz around you.”

Actress Sophie Ward, who starred in Barry Levinson’s 1985 film
Young Sherlock Holmes
, came out as a lesbian in 1996, and she has had a relatively successful career since then, but she admits that it has had an effect on her career. “After I came out, I certainly noticed that people were a bit wary of casting me, particularly for television parts. I think there was a feeling that I wasn’t safe. Even now, I get the impression with some of the more commercial roles I’m up for that they still think I’m a bit risky. But it’s very hard to tell if you don’t get a job just because of your sexuality. Luckily, most people in the business are strong-minded and don’t get swayed by it, but I think it will take time for people to relax about me.”

Still, according to the same University of Maryland study, the actresses who have come out as lesbians or bisexuals actually earn more on average than straight women in Hollywood, though that statistic may be skewed because there are so few of them and because their number includes such big-name stars as Jolie and Drew Barrymore.

* * * *

Jolie’s immediate reaction to her discovery of her bisexuality may have been typical of the traditional Hollywood pattern, however. It is certain that she was having an affair with Shimizu around the time of her elopement with Jonny Lee Miller, and probably before. “We were already sleeping together when I met Jonny while on
Foxfire
,” Shimizu later revealed. “She told both of us how she felt, and we all went out to dinner one night. She was honest—that’s how she’s been her whole life.”

If it’s true that Jonny Lee Miller was well aware of his wife’s affair with Shimizu at the time he married her, is it possible Jolie married him with an ulterior motive? Is it possible that she was treading along a well-worn Hollywood path, disguising her true nature with a sudden marriage to Miller in March 1996?

Whatever the timing, the three young actors dealt with the situation the best they could. Despite Jolie’s wild reputation, it is notable that Shimizu denied that the three had ever jumped into bed together. “We didn’t have a threesome,” she said. “I’m not really into that—it was a friendship the three of us had. But there wasn’t much conversation with Jonny; I think he was very threatened by me.” Indeed, Miller later confessed to being a “horribly jealous person.”

It was soon clear to everybody that the marriage was not destined to last, and few were surprised when the two separated after a year. Jolie blamed the breakup on the couple’s separate work schedules: “I’m not present enough, physically or emotionally, in relationships to get serious. It’s not fair to the other person that I’m so busy with my career and that I’m often distant even when I’m with someone. We were living side by side, but we had separate lives. I wanted more for him than I could give. He deserves more than I am prepared to give at this time in my life.”

“It’s just that I wasn’t being a wife,” she added. “I think we really needed to grow, and we always talked about getting remarried. Certainly, my career is first. I seem to meet a lot of men who say they are like that, but for some reason it just doesn’t turn out that way.”

Somewhat disingenuously, she also said the relationship broke down because she wanted to move to New York, while Miller wanted to return to Britain. He seemed to go along with this explanation when he told the
Mail on Sunday
newspaper, “I know this sounds mad, but I was missing little things like the nine o’clock news, red buses, country smells, the sound of our rock music, and Match of the Day.”

However, the most accurate explanation for the crumbling marriage was probably best summed up in something Jolie told a reporter about Miller: “He really had to put up with a lot.” It wasn’t her career that was getting in the way of her marriage, it was her girlfriend. Judging by their later public statements, it was obvious that Jolie’s relationship with Shimizu was paramount. “I would have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my [first] husband,” she later acknowledged.

Although Miller had occasionally gone along with Jolie’s fetishes and penchant for S & M, Shimizu implied that it was she who was better suited to meet those needs. “It’s not so much that we were dressed in leather capes and masks and there were chains,” she later recalled to the
Sun
about their unconventional sex life. “It was emotional. I would restrain her with my arms, but we didn’t get into buying stuff. We just used whatever props were available if we wanted to. She was a collector of knives and taught me about them.” Shimizu added, “She’s a very dominant personality. Once she displays love for you, she wants to know how much you care about her.”

Of this first, ill-fated marriage, Jolie later also implied that she and Miller had been realistic about their prospects. “The first time I got married, I was young,” she recalled. “I knew I wanted to be married and wanted to be his wife. And it was a great experience. But we knew it wouldn’t last forever.”

And, although they didn’t officially divorce until 1999, by late 1997, Miller was out of Jolie’s life. Jenny Shimizu, however, was not.

By the time
Gia
was released, in January 1998, Angelina Jolie should have been riding high. Her tour-de-force performance was almost universally acclaimed, she had a Golden Globe on her mantel, and she was being hailed as a rising star. But months earlier Jolie had tipped into an emotional abyss which she attributed to her sudden success.

“You think beauty and fame and money should make a person happy?” she challenged one reporter, who had asked her whether she was enjoying her new-found celebrity after
George Wallace
. “I don’t think so, if you don’t have love and you don’t have people to share it with. I think a lot of people have that feeling inside, that people don’t care about who we are inside or understand us.”

For a while she had seemed to enjoy her burgeoning success, especially when one of her favorite bands came to call shortly after she finished filming
Gia
. “I didn’t know what the Rolling Stones wanted,” recalled Jolie, who had also recently appeared in a video for a Meatloaf song. The Stones recruited her to play a sultry stripper to their song “Anybody Seen My Baby.” “Imagine my surprise when they wanted me to walk down the streets in basically my underwear. The great thing is that it was New York and no one cared. People in restaurants were like, ‘Oh, there goes the girl from
Gia
in her undies. Pass the salt.’”

The sexy video was definitely more memorable than her next movie appearance in 1997, in the awful film
Playing God
. She plays the girlfriend of a crime boss, Timothy Hutton, in a film that features David Duchovny in his first starring role after his success with the
X-Files
television series. The movie was a critical and box-office failure, though most critics blamed the mediocrity of her character on the script rather than on Jolie’s performance. The film might have been spicier: Jolie later revealed that the director had filmed two separate sex scenes, one with her and Duchovny and one with Hutton, but they were left on the cutting-room floor. “With David we were basking in sunlight, and with Tim we were fucking hard in the back of a car,” she revealed. “I think they felt like they couldn’t have one without the other so they cut them both.” About the only good thing for Jolie to come out of
Playing God
was a brief fling with Hutton.

Almost immediately after
Playing God
wrapped, she began shooting another inexplicably mediocre script called
Hell’s Kitchen
, playing a character named Gloria McNeary, a second-generation Hell’s Kitchen lowlife who has been waiting five years to get even with her former lover Johnny—a boxer who took the fall for a friend when a botched robbery cost Liz’s brother his life. The subsequent capers and convoluted plot are embarrassingly outlandish, but, fortunately for Jolie’s career, virtually nobody saw the film when it was released.

In the middle of shooting, in the spring of 1997,
Interview
magazine commissioned Jon Voight to interview his own daughter. The result is a fascinating snapshot of Jolie’s perspective from that point in her still obscure life and career. After an emotional reflection on his daughter’s birth and her earliest acting roles, Voight asks Angelina about the early signs that she wanted to be an actor:

J
OLIE
: God, my earliest memories are of my brother, Jamie—your son—pointing the home video camera at me and saying, “C’mon, Ange, give us a show.” Neither you or mom ever said, “Be quiet! Stop talking!” I remember you looking me in the eye and asking, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling?” That’s what I do in my job now. I say, “OK, how do I feel about this?” And I immediately know, because that’s how I grew up.

V
OIGHT
: You have a very strong, specific presence onscreen. I think it’s a presence that will always make a difference, story-wise. Jolie: I have a certain energy, yeah, and it’s either needed or it’s definitely not needed. I know that I can stick out like a sore thumb, and there are some women I’m not ready to play. I’m curious what you’ll think of some of the things I’ve done recently.

V
OIGHT
: First of all, you have
Playing God
.

J
OLIE
: That was very rock ’n’ roll and fun and loud and say-what- you-want-to-say, dress wild and love wild. You know that fantasy. I really allowed myself to get into that world. Being the age I am, I sometimes feel like a punk kid walking onto certain sets, but I didn’t this time. I felt very much a woman. As a young woman, there are parts I’ll look at that may not be in the best projects, but I’m starting out in this business and trying to figure out how I can make it work. I’m having to do a lot just to keep my clothes on and not be cast in girlfriend roles. Some women will say, “I don’t want to be a man; I want the opportunities I can get as a woman.” Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent, just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

V
OIGHT
: Sometimes, to present the truth, you have to play a vulgar or violent character.

J
OLIE
: Yes, although in the films I’ve done recently, I’ve been learning a little more about the side of myself that enjoys being a light. I remember when I used to dress all in black, and you’d say, “Just be pretty, hold your head up, be proud. Be a pleasant person and don’t cover yourself so much with all your darkness, you need to be a little crazy.” Now, I have nothing against anything I’ve been in before, because I love all sides of me, but I have been experimenting more with that lovely woman side. In this age of feminism, I would hate for the whole gentlemen and ladies thing to be lost.

V
OIGHT
: What do you do when you’re not working?

J
OLIE
: I find it hard, so I usually find a way to put myself back to work. I’ll work with Tom [Bower, Jolie’s partner in her theater company], or on a play. I’ll read or write. And I think it’s important, in between projects, for me to sit down with who I’ve just become and allow her to continue to evolve and find a home inside me before I go and become somebody else. But I think I also need to learn to relax and not prepare too much, just enjoy life. I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

V
OIGHT
: OK, Angelina, we haven’t heard even a portion of the wonderful Angelina Jolie stories we know, but we’ve suggested some of the energy that is uniquely you. I send you much love, my dear.

J
OLIE
: I love you too, Daddy.