Friends: A Love Story (20 page)

One day I read an article in one of the trade papers that said something like, “Well, the word is out. It's not going very well. We don't know what's worst—the script or the dailies” (the scenes that have been filmed that day). Shortly thereafter, I gathered enough strength and nerve to ask to take a peek at the dailies. I waited several weeks—until I thought I had proven myself. The director didn't have to let me see them at all. After all, who was I but a newcomer on the block? But Doug, the movie producer, was very accommodating and kind (at the time I had no way of knowing that directors usually try to accommodate leading performers). I asked for dailies of the “Proud Mary” sequence, since it's quintessential, trademark Tina. I went back to my trailer to watch them alone. I knew that if I bought my performance, everything would be okay. If I
could make that scene work, then I wouldn't have to look at any more dailies. I inserted the tape and watched. I was pleased. I was relieved.

“Oh, wow! The work is paying off. They can say whatever they want to say. I won't say anything. I'll just keep doing it.”

I didn't have the time to indulge myself anyhow. I had work to do. At least now I knew I was on the right track. For the next six weeks, I continued singing, dancing, crying, running, getting a cake smashed in my face, my butt beat and raped. Every day it was physically and emotionally something. And it wasn't boop, boop—day's over and I can go do whatever. No, I gotta go home and lie down and think about what I have to do tomorrow. I had to get the song together for the next day. I had to hit my marks, make sure I was lip-synching right, inhaling and exhaling at the right place. I had to look like I was performing and delivering each song. I would just lie in the bed and try to get the rhythm in my body and the breathing so I'd be right in synch with her—not lagging behind the sound track and not coming before it. Then I had to sleep 'cause I had to get up tomorrow and do the same thing all over again.

I gave
What's Love
everything I had. At the end of the three months, I was whipped. I was a wet rag of noodles, a brain-dead body hurting from the throat on down. I had sciatica up both thighs and into my butt. My rotator cuff was sprained and torn. My hand had been fractured. I was broke down—to' up from the flo' up. I couldn't even get out of bed to go the best spa in the world, where the producer wanted to send me to be rubbed and scrubbed. Eventually, I rolled myself into my Jeep and drove myself out to the spa in Palm Desert. They pampered me, but it wasn't enough. I needed about four months to decompress and come down—a month to sleep and just not have to do anything. And after all that screaming and fighting and crying, I felt old emotionally.

In the meantime, Joe was probably feeling more than a little
neglected. He was dedicated to the relationship and had put up with the way it was falling. Because I didn't want to have to come up with excuses at the end of the day, for basically four months I had totally immersed myself in
What's Love.
Another kind of woman might have said, “He's feeling bad, he's feeling neglected. Maybe I don't have to learn all these steps.” Not me. I followed the advice my mama gave me when I was a child: “Get your work done first then play.”

While I was filming, it was hard to keep up and massage the relationship. We still communicated and saw each other, but much less than usual. I didn't have a cell phone back then. One time he came to visit me on the set. “Okay…” when he brought the idea up (I admit that sometimes I expect people to read my mind), but once he arrived I was really thinking, Please don't get in the way, I'm working here. It might not have been the library, the hospital or the fire department, but it might as well have been the operating room as far as I was concerned. When filming ended, Joe called me up and asked if I wanted to get together, where—East Coast, West Coast or in the middle—and what I wanted to do when we got there. But thinking about what I wanted moment to moment—much less the logistics of getting together—was just too draining; it took me too much effort to answer a yes-or-no question. I was just too exhausted. I tried to explain.

“My adrenaline is gone and I'm left with what I'm left with,” I told him. “I can't even feed myself right now.”

“Relationships are very important and you have to nurture them,” he chastised.

“I know, Joe, but I just need to lie in bed and sleep like a bear and hibernate. I don't even need the phone to ring.”

“Well, relationships need to be nurtured.”

“I'm trying to tell you that I'm worn out, Joe. I can't even think. I don't need this conversation.”

“Do you want to break up?”

“Yeah, sure. Bye.” Unlike the times when Charles had asked, this time I said it: “Yes.”

In a way, my response was one of self-preservation. I felt like my back was against the wall. I didn't have the ability to make nice, I didn't have any defenses, I had nothing left. My tank was at zero and I needed to fill it up. In my bed. Alone. I was smart enough to know that. “Don't ask me nothin'!”

Of course, that conversation wasn't the end of it. He had to call back and tell me how selfish I was, how he had invested so much in our relationship, how he had lowered himself to date a gypsy actor. How he had seen our relationship going to the altar but now it would never make it.

Now, I had been fine with the first hang-up; I had been in my power. “Yeah, whatever. It's over.” But when we hung up that second time, he felt better and I felt bad. I cried. But I done cried and broken up from relationships before. I knew it wasn't gonna kill me. I knew you move on.

In spite of my total exhaustion and our breakup, I felt good about myself. I realized that I was much stronger than I had ever known, physically and emotionally. There wasn't an ounce of fat on my body. I had marshaled all my strength, all my reserves and all my nerve to get through it. I learned that I'm not a quitter. From a technical standpoint as an actor, I had taken something terribly difficult and made it look easy. While a fellow actor could look at my performance technically and imagine how difficult the requirements were to perform the role, a regular person in the audience would just get transported. To them the performance looked easy. I felt an incredible sense of personal satisfaction. I felt proud—not an ego pride, but a pride in myself as a human being that I had accomplished something so difficult. I hoped I had done it gracefully and with an open heart. I felt that my character had stood the test. When you answer the call, you feel really good.

Three months passed between the time
What's Love
finished
filming and the date the movie was to be released. I was still anonymous, going to the store, running my errands, doing my thing. I remember thinking, It's quiet now, but I knew that was about to change; I'd be getting a lot of attention soon. As our opening date drew near, I remember sneaking into a screening in Pasadena. I sat in the back so I wouldn't be seen. During the rape scene the guy in front of me said, “Nooo! Oh, God!” When the movie ended, that audience applauded. I could tell people were really affected by the film. I ran out quickly so I wouldn't be seen, but I felt,
“Amazing!”
It had turned out better than I could ever imagine.

For some reason, I don't remember the movie's premiere. What I do remember is receiving an incredible amount of recognition from people in the industry and the public. I got a telegram from Kim Basinger, saying she liked me in the movie, a little card from Norman Jewison, roses from Winona Ryder. Flowers—so many flowers! Flowers, flowers everywhere! “Where should I put these?” “Put them in the bathroom!” I remember wishing I could call the florist and have them deliver one bouquet a week. That way I would enjoy fresh flowers for at least a year! And the phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing.
“Congratulations!”
Eventually, the phone rang so much that I had to turn the ringer off. It drove me to distraction. It has been my quest to find the softest ring possible.

Now when I went to the grocery store or to run errands, people would say, “Hi!” or want to touch me. That's what I remember most: people grabbing my arms and being entranced with my physicality. “All those muscles!” or “You still got those muscles?” Men, especially, would touch and feel on my body without asking. That was strange. I didn't want to snap, “Don't touch me. I don't like that. I don't even know you.
Mister,
you're
feeling
on me!” I didn't want to appear ungracious, but that kind of stuff really unnerved me and made me feel kind of skittish sometimes. And every now and then I'd get ap
proached by someone who looked like they had been lonely in a room with my picture or fifteen hundred index cards containing celebrity autographs. At times I'd get the feeling that I needed to watch myself.

But most of the time people were really nice. The movie touched them. I was told countless tearful stories of, “I was in that situation. When I saw your movie, I got out of it,” or “My mother was in that situation.” Those interactions always touched my heart. They made me know that all the sacrifice and work was worth it; my work had touched, even helped improve, someone's life.

In the meantime there was all this Oscar talk. It started soon after the movie came out—though before big Oscar campaigns were mounted as they are today the process was a lot more subtle. However, there was interest in my performance. It had gone very, very well. And the movie was a hit, it was positive and people loved it.
What's Love
contained memorable performances and mine was one of them. As people began to talk, I would look around and ask myself, Is there anything more memorable? Is there anything that touched me more? I wasn't sure that there was, but I didn't know what other people thought.

Early in the award season I won a Golden Globe from the international film correspondents for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. That was just sweet! In my acceptance speech I got to say, “Tina, I thank you, wherever you are in the world!” Afterward, Dick Clark interviewed me backstage. That was surreal; I'd grown up watching him on
American Bandstand.

“Angela, congratulations! How does it feel?”

“Thank you, Mr. Clark…”—I remember he was so tickled that I referred to him as “Mr. Clark.” I guess it was like a breath of fresh air. But I didn't know how I could just meet someone older than me and say, “Well, Dick…”—maybe after years and years. While he and I were talking, Pierce Brosnan walked up to me, kissed me on the hand, congratulated me and told me
how good my acting was. Shortly thereafter he became the face of James Bond for about the next decade. But that didn't change him; he's still a gentleman—always the same.

After I won the Golden Globe, I started to think, Maybe I can win an Oscar, too. I didn't know how Oscar campaigning went—I have a bit more insight today, years after the fact—but at the time I didn't know what was involved and no one was telling me. I wasn't into all the campaigning. I was just into doing good work. I thought, “My performance ought to speak for itself.” I didn't know that for an Oscar, some people would run an ad in a trade publication. At some point I started receiving
Variety
magazine and the
Hollywood Reporter
and noticed that the studios were placing ads: Nominate so and so; remember such and such a performance. I also didn't realize how significant it is that the Golden Globes has two categories: a category for musicals and comedies and a separate category for drama. The Globes had categorized
What's Love
as a musical. In the Oscars there's only drama.

The night before the Oscar nominations were announced, I hung out with Wren and his wife, Ann, at their home. Wren had grown up in Los Angeles. Acting was his whole thing. His grandfather, Troy Brown, had been in the movies with folks like Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mammy in
Gone With the Wind
). Ann and the children went to sleep, but he and I stayed up all night waiting for the announcements, which are made at 5:00 a.m. Pacific time, 8:00 a.m. out East. I remember they announced Best Supporting Actor first. Wren and I almost woke up the whole house when they called Laurence's name. And when they got to Best Actress and announced my name, “OH, MY GOSH!” Wren was so excited for me—he's such a good friend! I just couldn't believe it. All I could think of was how far I'd come in my life. The recognition was overwhelming and humbling. Then the phone started
ringing—I mean it just rings and rings! This person and that person is calling to congratulate you. They're happy for you and ecstatic and you just can't believe it's happening. I had never even dreamt of winning an Oscar. All the recognition made me feel like I'd climbed Mount Everest or something.

So I jumped onto this train and took the ride all the way to Oscarville! I wanted to experience what this whole Oscar thing was about. I was just overwhelmed with emotion. And there were so many decisions: people want to dress you, you've got to decide what you want to look like, what dress and jewelry you're going to wear, what makeup, you've gotta figure out who in the press you're going to talk to. You have to think about the people you want to thank if you win. It's so much but it's great fun! All the activity goes on for about a month, then you fall over dead! Along the way I got to meet all sorts of people I admired: Rosa Parks, James Brown, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll. I had the opportunity to attend the Oscar luncheon, held shortly before the ceremony, where you are awarded a certificate to commemorate your nomination, and all the nominees take a picture together alongside an oversized fabrication of the Oscar. Of course, I'd never been at the luncheon before. I remember running a little late. The publicist and I got out of the car—and, oh, the paparazzi! Until very recently they had never been interested in me. Now I had to walk through a phalanx of photographers. They all want you to stop and take a picture in front of them.