I Like You Just the Way I Am (28 page)

3. Avoid Taking Your Kid to See
Phantom of the Opera

Even if your kid doesn’t become an actor, he can still turn into one of those weird theater techie geeks who wears a
Phantom
shirt every day of high school and never gets laid. You don’t want this for your child. You also don’t want your kid to learn all the lyrics to
Phantom
. Once this occurs, he’s crossed the Rubicon. Knowing all the lyrics to
Phantom
leads to knowing all the lyrics to
Les Mis,
and knowing all the lyrics to
Les Mis
means your kid is officially on his way to becoming
a thespian
.

I had to take three years of high school drama before I was offered the right to join the International Thespian Society. The ITS was essentially the high school drama club, except that it was recognized around the world and they gave you a button. I was finally part of an international community of artists, and I couldn’t have been happier. Once in, I was invited to miming seminars, fringe festivals, and the weird goth guy from the yogurt shop’s drunk driving arraignment. I’d fallen into a world of overly loud, overly dramatic outcasts who all got their septums pierced at Hot Topic. All of us planned to audition for college theater programs. For some, the dream was to eventually be the Phantom on Broadway. For those who knew the limitations of their vocal abilities, it was to become Meryl Streep.

4. Do Not Let Your Kid Major in Theater

If your kid majors in theater in college, he or she will believe that they are going to be famous. And they’re not. You are also further validating their self-importance and feeding into the fantasy that their degree will actually translate into a real-world job. The only real-world job I can think of where what I learned in college might come in handy is “birthday party princess” or “Elvis impersonator.” When you break it down, theater school is really just drama history, vocal exercises, and girls having abortions.

My parents let me major in theater because I told them that feast or famine, acting was what I wanted to do with my life.

“I didn’t choose this, it chose me.” I tried to explain to my mere mortal family members that my path was preordained and that I had no choice but to embrace my destiny.

I prepared two contrasting monologues and sixteen bars of a song for my series of school auditions. I flew to NYC, Boston, and finally Los Angeles, eager to win the hearts of drama professors everywhere with my epic interpretation of Abigail Williams from
The Crucible
. For my second monologue, I chose
Butterflies Are Free
. I also had a
Twelfth Night
up my sleeve, in the event that they wanted something period. I waited in line at each audition, knowing I was the find of the season. What the other hopefuls surrounding me didn’t realize (because I was an actor and hid it so well) was that I’d just come off a successful two-weekend run as Adelaide in
Guys and Dolls
at my high school. That’s right, the best role in the whole goddamn show! I was a leading lady standing in a sea of singing trees and I was ready for my close up.

I got into all but one of the programs I applied to and kept my one rejection letter to frame and one day display next to my Oscar. I chose UCLA because I felt being in Los Angeles strengthened my odds of being discovered while still in school. After announcing to my graduating class that I was off to follow my dreams, I bought a copy of Uta Hagen’s
Respect for Acting
and focused only on respecting acting while I waited for my big break.

Guess what, kids? My big break never came. I got out of school, and reality smacked me across the face. Now, instead of just a handful of playful peers, I was competing against professionals who’d been working in film and TV since before I’d even heard of theater camp. I wasn’t the gifted actress that years of conditioning and coddling led me to believe. I was pretty much a total amateur hack who had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to audition without looking directly into the camera. I was broad and over the top with an inability to stand still. I was afraid to be funny because I didn’t want to seem like a bimbo, and I was always too loud because I still thought I needed to project. In my mind, I thought I was doing great work. I considered myself a dramatic tour de force and turned even Taco Bell auditions into crying scenes where I’d have an entire nervous breakdown. I’d walk into a room and immediately start mentioning all the places I’d studied, then say things like, “This episode of
Law and Order
truly feels like it follows all the rules of a great Aristotilean tragedy.” When I’d get a callback, I assumed I basically had the job. Then when I didn’t get the job, I’d beat myself up and fall into a deep depression. I hung Goethe quotes on my walls (
“I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tightrope dancer, so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.”
) and wrote in my journal about how one day I would emerge like a phoenix from the ashes. I tried to build myself back up by thinking about how I’d answer James Lipton’s Proust Questionaire and taking new headshots where I wore a simple turtleneck and stared at the camera expressionless. I was serious and needed Hollywood to know it.

*   *   *

My dad continued to
pay my rent while I insisted fame and fortune were just around the corner. If I were I boy, I feel like he would have forced me to get a job, but since I was a girl, I don’t think he expected my contribution to society to be great anyway. Eventually, I learned how to audition, but it took years to learn how to actually work and even longer to make any money at it. With perseverance and the right boyfriends, I finally found my footing.

By my mid-twenties, I’d lost my entitled drama-school-cunt attitude, stopped referring to myself as “Baby Judi Dench,” and started doing television guest stars. I played the girlfriend, the grieving witness, the hard-hitting FBI investigator, the zombie-fighting teenager, the privileged trophy wife, the desperate chick at the office, and the girl who got raped by Tom Sizemore. Sometimes I’d recur for a whole season; other times I’d get Tasered to death by Patricia Arquette within the first thirty minutes of an episode. I shot a handful of independent films and even the occasional commercial, but nothing seemed to pop. I was always the random girl from that random thing you caught showing her jugs on Starz at 3
A.M
.

So why did I keep going? The same reason all actors do—because there is always the promise of that dream job just around the corner. Actors are like gamblers. We can’t help but think that if we cash in our chips and walk away, some other bitch is going to be buying Chanel boots with our jackpot. We are addicts and we want our Chanel boots!

Over the course of my career, I’ve come to consider myself one of the most “almost-hired” actresses in the game. I’ve been inches away from jobs that could have changed the course of my life, and watched them slip through my fingers, sometimes for the most arbitrary reasons. Just like a roulette wheel, Hollywood is random. But the closer you get to almost hearing your number called, the deeper into your pockets you dig. And I’ve dug and dug and basically bet my entire self-worth on winning something substantial. When you are up, there is nothing like it. But when you are down, your life feels meaningless. For the 2 percent of the time you feel like Angelina Jolie, there’s that other 98 percent where you feel like her creepy brother, James Haven.

While in college I wrote a one-woman show, but really only so I could play every part and make the rest of the department hate me for my versatility. I always kept a journal that I’d fill with intensely deep sentiments like this:

Sometimes I’d contemplate writing a movie, then stop and buy something online instead. I never saw myself as a writer. I have horrible grammar and can’t spell to save my life. I never had an English teacher single me out or imply that I showed any promise beyond being a B
+
student. If anything, I was japed for my egregious penmanship and misuse of the word “jape.” But after hearing “no” enough times, even a B
+
student can be pushed to try something new. So I wrote a script.

Unlike acting, I had no expectations. My agents agreed to pass it around, which sounded cool, even though I didn’t actually know what “pass it around” meant.

*   *   *

It was a Tuesday
night, and Jason and I were over at Amanda and Larry’s house for dinner. Larry was busy grilling while Amanda walked around the kitchen, asking if we thought her engagement ring looked small. Just then, my phone rang. I answered the blocked number, assuming it was work related. My manager and agent stopped their conversation and said hello. When both your representatives are on the phone, it’s usually a sign that there’s good news.

“Good news!” Pamela said cheerfully.

I racked my brain, trying to remember the last thing I auditioned for.

“Am I going to play the mother on
How I Met Your Mother
?”

“Did you audition for that?” my lit agent Leanne asked, confused.

“No. The last thing I went in on was something that involved Highlanders. But I just thought I’d ask. Am I going to play a lady Highlander?”

“No. We actually have some even crazier news.” Pamela’s line sounded like she’d just walked into Studio 54.

“I’m going to play a man Highlander?”

“No…,” Pamela said over the music.

“Wait, where are you?” I asked, straining to hear her.

“My house. Why?”

“Sounds like a party.” Leanne shuffled through some papers, half-listening to us.

Pamela had been my manager for over two years, and I always suspected she led a double life. At work, she was a soft-spoken girl with neutral nails and classic style. She rarely cussed, never wore jewelry, and refused to talk about boys. She was almost too appropriate to be real, and because of that I’d convinced myself she was a sex maniac.

Uncomfortable with the attention, Pamela steered the phone call back on track.

“Stan Wylan liked your script and wants to meet you.”

The loud thumping of Pamela’s Tuesday night sex rave faded away as a door shut behind her. I stopped for a second, collecting my thoughts, then let out a shriek of excitement.

Leanne explained that if I liked and felt I could incorporate Wylan’s ideas, we’d work together to develop the script into something he could sell.

“So this meeting is like my final callback?”

“Kind of. Sure.” Leanne was still at the office, and I could tell she wanted to get off our call so she could go home to her non-sex-ravey apartment.

“This is awesome. Thank you, guys.” I hung up and walked back inside.

Both elated and confused, I explained the situation to Jason.

“A really important person likes my script! He wants to meet me and talk about it.”

Saying it out loud felt preposterous. I was never the actress with beginner’s luck. I didn’t get out of college and accidentally land a starring role opposite Anthony Hopkins.

My first job out of school was a part-time gig making six dollars an hour at the Coffee Bean. Then, after realizing that six times five only equaled thirty, I quit. When the manager called several days later, asking if I wanted my final paycheck, I tried to be nice. “Aw, you can keep it.”

My only real goal was to get work as an actress, and that was never easy. Every gig I got felt like a struggle. Then one day, I write a script, mostly just to have something to do with my time instead of feeling sorry for myself, and someone instantly responds. It didn’t compute in my mind.

“Why is it that when you don’t care about something it comes so much easier? But the things you want more than anything, you rarely get?” I interrupted Jason as he was telling Amanda that she didn’t deserve a bigger ring.

“Ew! You aren’t my husband!” Amanda stormed away.

“It’s like dating,” Larry chimed in now, eager to escape the inevitable ring drama. “When someone is too eager to be with you, you assume something is wrong with them. When they kind of don’t give a shit, you have to have them.”

He was right. With acting, I’d become the needy, desperate carny on the side of the street with three dirty kids and a fiddle. As a writer, I was just an unassuming masochist who knew how to use Final Draft.

I told myself that no matter what happened with Stan Wylan, I was not going to beg, I was not going to cry, and I was not going to buy a fiddle.

*   *   *

The first writer’s meeting
of my career happened the following Monday. I prepared for it by reminding myself that this whole thing was a fluke and that the outcome didn’t matter. I then marched directly into my closet and started stressing out about what to wear, because I obviously needed the outcome to be resoundingly positive and amazing. I tore through my drawers, trying to find the most “writer-y” look I owned. I wanted to make certain I conveyed the proper message: hardworking, lighthearted, but damaged enough to have a good time with. The desperate actor in me settled on all black, allowing Stan and Co. the freedom to project whatever bullshit they wanted onto me.