Jason Priestley (17 page)

Days on
The Beat
set were long and all-consuming. There's a lot of pressure directing in Manhattan. On Halloween Sunday I was relaxing, sitting in the corporate apartment the show had put me up in, settling in to watch the Marlboro 500 being run at the Fontana Speedway back in California. In a horrible irony, I watched on TV as my friend Greg Moore's Indy car flipped and slammed upside down onto a wall at 200-plus mph and he was instantly killed. All the hours he'd spent watching me act on TV . . . and now I'd watched him die on TV, for real. I was in shock.

I couldn't make sense of it. I sat in stunned silence. Just three days before the race, Greg and I had talked on the phone for thirty minutes while he was driving up to Cultus Lake to go fishing. He'd ended the phone call by saying, “Talk to you Sunday, after the race.”

Even though I had known him only four years, we had been very close. We had spent days and hours and weeks in each other's company and traveled the world together. You name it—we'd been there and done that—together. Racing cars, having fun. I had watched him grow from a twenty-year-old boy to the outstanding twenty-four-year-old man he was when he passed. The very next morning I had to be back on the floor, calling “Action” and “Cut.” Adding insult to grievous injury, I couldn't attend Greg's funeral. The service was held on Thursday, and I was in the middle of directing a TV show. I had known since I was five years old that no matter what, the show went on. Greg would have understood—he loved hearing about my “other” jobs acting and directing. It was heartbreaking for me to miss gathering with his many other friends and colleagues and mourning together. But there was no way around it.

Greg's death affected me deeply. And it forced me to come to the realization that I was wasting my life. Life is short. Oftentimes, too short. I needed to make some changes in my life that I had been putting off and now was the time to do it.

I
returned from directing
The Beat
a rather beaten man. I had just lost one of my best friends and I was coming home to deal with many of things in my life that I had been running away from. These were dark days.

Regardless, none of this excuses me from what happened the night my buddy Chad Cook and I went to the Wiltern Theater to see Chris Cornell. After the show, we went backstage, had a couple of beers, and then headed home. It was a very mellow evening. I was just nearing Chad's house when I wrecked. As was my habit in those days, I was driving too fast and carelessly on winding canyon roads.
Boom!
My Porsche crashed into a telephone pole. The second the spinning stopped, I looked over at my friend.

“Chad. Are you okay?”

“No, no, my arm's busted.” He was grimacing in pain.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911 to get an ambulance there as fast as I could for him. I could not have felt worse. The ambulance arrived to take him off to the hospital while I, of course, had a little discussion with the police. I wasn't even worried about a DUI; I wasn't drunk. Then I failed my roadside sobriety test, and they took me to Rampart Division for a blood test. Result: .10, two-tenths over the limit. Not exactly hammered, but legally drunk. And not only would I be charged with a DUI, but given Chad's injury, it would be a felony DUI. I would eventually get transferred to the Hollywood sheriff's station where I had to stay for a few hours. My friend Cheryl came to bail me out. There was a lone reporter outside the jail as we exited in the very early hours of the morning. The reporter worked for one of those daily evening shows that report on happenings in entertainment, like
Access Hollywood
or
ET.
I stopped and made a brief comment, which was a mistake. I should have learned that it's best to remain silent in a situation like that. There was really nothing I could say anyway; it's not like I was trying to justify anything. I knew quite well it was a stupid mistake and the ending of a very, very bad year. There were quite a lot of legal issues to contend with here. I had to face up to a number of facts, and none of the realizations was easy or fun. My actions were hurting not only myself, but others as well. I lost my license for a year, and at some point, I was going to have to do some sort of jail time, but what worried me the most was my green card status. I wasn't a U.S. citizen, and this very foolish episode could jeopardize my entire future. I had come back here to L.A. to get it together and very foolishly just created an even bigger mess for myself.

And magically, out of nowhere, there came a project that would take me far, far away . . .

S
ide Man
had just won the Tony Award as Best New Play and was heading for the West End in London. They were looking for someone to take over the role of Clifford that had been vacated by Andrew McCarthy. The offer came to me, just after my DUI, with the added bonus of costars Edie Falco, Frank Wood, Angelica Torn, Kevin Geer, and Michael Mastro (the original Broadway cast). I would spend the first three weeks of the year rehearsing in New York before heading to London for a twelve-week run. What a fantastic opportunity to run away from my problems! Giddyup!

Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to flee L.A. and say goodbye to the past millennium.

I arrived in New York just after New Year's and began rehearsals on
Side Man
. I was working with director Michael Mayer and the stage manager every day in a rehearsal hall just off of Times Square. I was staying in midtown, on 56th Street, and would walk to and from rehearsal every morning and night. The more time I spent in the city, the more I wanted to stay. I told you I was getting really good at running away from my problems. And the DUI was a big one. I had lawyers that were handling all the legal aspects of it—it was the practical side of it that I found daunting. Having lost my license for a year made getting around L.A. very difficult.

So in my time off from rehearsals, I started to look around for a place to live. And lo and behold, I found one. I bought a huge loft in Tribeca in a very cool building, where every loft took up an entire floor. Each floor in the elevator was keyed, meaning the elevator opened into individual apartments. Imagine the best New York apartment you can: this place was it. I decided I was going to make the move to New York City. Once again, not a well thought-out decision. But my mind was made up. I was staying and that was that. I called my business manager and told him to sell my house in L.A., my house in Montecito, everything. I was done with L.A.

You know that old saying, “If I only knew then what I know now”?

I
arrived in London at the beginning of February, met the rest of my cast mates, and began rehearsals in earnest.

Immediately after I arrived, John Hurt and his girlfriend, Sarah Owens, invited me to Dublin to attend the Irish Fashion Awards, which I had never heard of. They were taking place on a random Sunday night and I thought,
Why not?
What really tipped the balance was the chance to see Andrea Corr again, from the Corrs. Not only had the Corrs performed at the Peach Pit After Dark, but we'd had a very friendly encounter the previous year at the World Music Awards and I knew she'd be at these awards. I wanted to see her again, so I grabbed an overnight bag and flew to Dublin, checked into U2's hotel, the Clarence, and headed to the awards ceremony. The place was simply raging.

Everybody was there. It was nuts. Everywhere I turned there were more famous faces than you'd ever see at the biggest event in the States. All the guys from U2 were there. Mick Jagger was there. Naomi Campbell was there. Every single hot model in the world, apparently, was there. Then the whole British contingent was there: Jonathan Rhys Meyers and every other hot young English and Irish actor. The turnout was absolutely amazing. These were fashion awards, so all kinds of designers were winning various honors that night. I hadn't realized fashion was quite so big there . . . maybe everyone just wanted to go to Dublin for a party!

During the awards intermission, most of the audience left their seats and milled around in the lobby. I spotted Andrea standing at the bar and made a beeline for her, saying, “Hey, how are you?” She looked me up and down and then said in a chilly tone, “I didn't know you were going to be here,” and then looked back down into her drink. I was taken aback. “Hmm . . . well . . . okay then. See you later.” Suffice it to say, she wasn't thrilled to see me in the least. Wonder what I did to illicit that kind of response? Oh well . . .

When the awards were over, everybody headed back to the Clarence. Sarah, who was Irish, apparently knew every single person from her home country and introduced me to the guys from U2 . . . our hosts, as it were, as we were all staying in their hotel. They were very low-key, cool guys. We were all drinking in somebody's room when Sarah grabbed my arm and we raced to the elevator, headed upstairs to a very high floor, and followed some people into a huge suite. And there, right in front of me, were Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall lounging on a bed, passing a joint back and forth. Mick's jewelry designer daughter, Jade, was wandering in and out along with a couple of other creative/design-type people. Sarah flopped into a chair in their bedroom and said, “Hey, Mick, pass it around.”

“So sorry, luv,” he said. Then he got up and handed the joint to me; I took a drag and passed it back to Mick . . . And there I was, smoking up with Mick and Jerry. I certainly wasn't in Lynn Valley anymore.

It was a fun weekend in Ireland, but I had an opening night to prepare for.

S
ide Man
covers thirty years in the life of a New York jazz musician as seen through the eyes of his son. It's a beautiful, haunting piece written by Warren Light. We moved into the Apollo Theater at the end of February and started technical rehearsals. Theater could not be a more different sort of undertaking than working on a television show. They're night and day—hard to even compare. There's no second take on stage, which forces an actor to be absolutely present, in the moment and engaged with the other actors during every show. There is nothing more gratifying than to live those moments for an audience every night. Theater is the purest form of what actors do. I was excited to get back to the stage, something I hadn't done in a decade.

The show opened and the reviews came in and were better than we expected. The British critics can be a tough crowd, and for the most part they liked
Side Man
. Our houses were good and we, as a company, were all working well together and I was becoming friends with my fellow cast members.

Outside the theater was another matter. I had now run 5,400 miles away from my troubles in Los Angeles and yet they were still troubling me. I was wound way too tightly and was acting erratic.

The Apollo Theater is in a part of the West End that is surrounded by pubs, and our play would finish around 10:40. Meaning I would be outside the stage door signing autographs around 11:00. Just when all the pubs in the area kicked out all their patrons. And said patrons, feeling no pain, have fun hurling insults at the actors signing autographs outside the theaters. Especially one from television. Especially one from
Beverly Hills 90210
.

Now, a normal thirty-year-old wouldn't let things like this bother him. Nor should he. But all of a sudden I found myself excusing myself from my fans to chase after drunken hooligans looking to get into fights. Something was very wrong with me. I needed to start taking responsibility for my actions, clean up the messes I'd made, and start growing up.

A
fter the show ended one night, I exited the theater with the rest of the cast onto Shaftesbury Avenue. We were headed to Joe Allen's in the heart of the West End for a drink and dinner, which was a tradition in the London theater world. At just after eleven
P.M
., all the pubs were closing, and the streets were crowded with people streaming out. Two exceptionally pretty girls, both wearing pin-striped blue business suits, crossed directly in front of me; they were obviously a bit tipsy. I caught a whiff of perfume as they walked past. I smiled; I loved British girls!

We continued on our way to the restaurant, and a few blocks up the avenue I suddenly saw the two girls again, standing across the street. The beautiful blonde was holding her head in her hands, clearly a bit worse for the wear, as her friend looked on. “I'll see you there!” I told my friends and darted across the street. I walked over to the girl and asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

“Do you know if there's a toilet round here?” she wanted to know.

“I'm sorry, no, I'm from out of town.” We talked for a bit and I learned that her name was Naomi Lowde. She had recently graduated from university and shared a flat with a friend in London. She'd been out with her friend from work all evening, and they were returning to their office to pick up a computer that night. As for me, I told her my name was Jason and that I was a housepainter. After a few minutes, I said, “I need to catch up with my friends for dinner . . .”

“Okay,” the girl said, “see ya later.” I hesitated for a moment—Naomi was one of the most stunning girls I had ever seen—then said good-bye. I walked around the corner and proceeded up the street. A minute later I heard, “Wait, wait!,” and there was Naomi's friend running up behind me. I waited till she caught up with me. “Naomi wants you to have her phone number,” she said, out of breath, as she thrust a scrap of paper with a London number into my hand. I was charmed; it was all very playful and high schoolish.