Jason Priestley (21 page)

I'd always been able to set a goal, work hard, attain it. Set another goal, work even harder, attain it. That was how I'd lived my entire life and it had worked out well so far, including the decision to cool it on my brief indolent party lifestyle. But I had returned right away to my old habits of constantly striving to achieve. Apart from that one brief period, I was again a hamster on a wheel, running as fast as I could, never taking any time to stop and look around and actually enjoy the amazing experiences I was having, appreciating the fruits of my labor, or anything else. I didn't spend any real quality time with the people I loved. I was always so focused on attaining the next goal that life was passing me by.

Looking in the mirror, I realized that I was no longer the boy I had been. At thirty-three years old, I needed to become the man I wanted to be. It was an incredibly powerful wake-up call and growing experience. This was my biggest challenge ever: to put myself back together physically and mentally and come out better and stronger on the other end. I had to relearn how to talk and think and move. My memory was shot. The recovery process would be grueling and painful, and I had to push myself like never before.

During the couple of years leading up to the accident, I'd been searching for something that I couldn't find. Professionally, I was somewhat adrift, feeling a little disenfranchised from the industry. Personally, I had one piece of the puzzle: a beautiful woman and true partner at my side. She was both my equal in many ways and my better half. We shared the same diverse interests, and she was a rock during my recovery.

The accident reset me immediately on my career goals and how to get the life I wanted and needed. There was an immediate change in my attitude and the way that I conducted myself. I became far more protective of my time, my relationship with Naomi, plans made with family and friends. I began to consider the future and what kind of legacy I wanted to leave—and I wanted it to be more than “starring in a classic American television show.” I had been granted another chance at life, and I wasn't about to waste it.

T
welve weeks after the date of my accident, I was finally allowed to return to Los Angeles. Naomi, Swifty, and I arrived at our empty new house in the hills, vastly relieved to be home. I was battered, but alive, and all in one piece. Time to face the steep hillside and the fifty-two steps that led to the front door. I hadn't given them a thought when I bought the house, thinking they were beautiful and quaint. Naomi and I were both young and in great shape then. Now . . . not so much. In and out, every time I left the house . . . fifty-two steps down and fifty-two back up on my poor battered feet. I cursed those steps every day, under my breath, as I stopped to rest halfway.

I was well enough to live at home, but my body was still very messed up. All the determination in the world couldn't make me better faster. It was going to take time to heal; I was still quite broken and damaged. Still, I had my task set and was feeling completely undaunted now that I was free. My goal was to be 100 percent exactly as I had been before, both physically and mentally, within one year of the accident. I absolutely refused to allow one racing incident, from the sport I loved so much, keep me from getting on with my life. That accident would not impede my future in any way. I simply wouldn't allow it.

I woke up every morning, ate breakfast, and then headed to the gym for what had once been my regular routine. I had to slowly ease back into it, because I had absolutely no muscle mass. It had vanished over the weeks of lying in bed. I was thin and weak, and I knew it would take time and patience to rebuild my body. My gym routine took a couple of hours every day.

When I came home, I would leaf through one of the many cookbooks in the house and settle on one of the most complicated, involved recipes I could find. I only chose dishes that before the accident I simply had not had the time to tackle. I now had nothing but time on my hands. I was free to spend all day preparing coq au vin or cassoulet. My entire challenge for every afternoon was to make dinner. Trust me: at the time, creating these dinners was always a four- or five-hour ordeal.

I mixed and measured, sliced, chopped, and pureed. The math involved in measuring ingredients or adapting recipes gave my brain a good workout. Cooking is all about timing and multitasking. It was not easy, and there were some major mishaps along the way, but my reward was usually a delicious dinner. Meal preparation became a huge part of my rehabilitation and something that carried on well after my recovery. To this very day, when I'm home, I'm the cook.

I put any thoughts of work on the back burner. I was in no condition to do anything more than I was doing, and even I knew it. Four months after the wreck, Naomi and I spent our first Christmas together at our house in the Hollywood Hills. I was starting to look and feel like my old self again. My strength was returning. The pain was lessening every day. We toasted the New Year with great optimism.

I WAS SPENDING
all my afternoons in our big old kitchen with the original 1928 cabinetry—though it had a modern range and refrigerator. It was such a fantastic room, the best place in the house. Naomi and I both loved cooking or just hanging out in there.

One day we made roasted garlic meatballs, a phenomenal recipe but ridiculously complicated and time-consuming. Somehow, we didn't realize that we would wind up with thirty-six meatballs. We were faced with this ridiculously huge mound of meatballs. “Crap, honey, what are we going to do with all this freaking food?” I asked her.

“I know!” Naomi said. “I'll run over and ask the neighbors if they'd like to have dinner with us.” Jack and Dennis were partners, in work and in life; we'd spoken briefly to them out on the street the day we moved in. I thought inviting them was a great idea so we both put on our shoes, went down the fifty-two steps, and crossed the street to knock on our neighbors' door.

“Hi, guys! We made way too much food. Can you come over and help us eat it?” Our neighbors accepted and showed up a few minutes later. I headed to the wine cellar and started pulling corks, and dinner with our new friends began. It turned into an unbelievable five-hour-long feast, and they literally rolled themselves home. (It wasn't until years later that they told us they had already eaten a big meal that night, but wanted to connect, so they came over for dinner anyway and stuffed down some meatballs.)

After that we saw them frequently—generally starting around happy hour. I'd get a cheese plate and pâté going, and they would drop by after work. Our neighbors were quite successful. They owned a construction company and did renovations on high-end homes. Jack was in charge of the design, and Dennis did the construction. Eventually, they were showing up nearly every day to drink wine and chat. It became the norm . . . no one had any kids, I wasn't working, the company did me good, and I had a very appreciative audience for my meals and wine.

One evening, Dennis fell down the steps in front of the house, which were quite old and narrow. Quite a lot of wine had been drunk, and down those fifty-two steps he tumbled. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt, and because they were real friends, they didn't sue. After that we installed a handrail for our tipsy “gaybors,” as we wanted them to get home safely every night!

We are great friends to this day, though no longer neighbors. It was a bit of a blow to them when we moved; certainly no one else was serving Château Lafite at happy hour!

B
y the time spring arrived in 2003, six or seven months after my accident, I was getting restless. I kept up my gym routine and was doing well. Mentally and physically, I was feeling pretty good. It crossed my mind that I could probably return to work. A couple of days later, as if I had willed it, boom—the phone rang. It was my agent in Canada.

After some preliminaries about how I was feeling, she said, “All right, Jay, if you're feeling up to it I've got an offer for you. CTV is shooting a movie here on Baffin Island. Let me send you the script.”

I was particularly intrigued because I'd always wanted to go to Baffin Island, the island next to Greenland. The setting alone made it a very interesting project for me. I told my agent, “Sure, if we can make a deal with these guys, I'll do it.”

The film was based on a true story about an Inuit boy who had killed his entire family in his sleep, and the lawyer who determined that he had actually been asleep the entire time and got him off. It was a huge, highly controversial case in Canada and I was to play the attorney who represented the boy. It was fascinating to shoot where these grisly events and the trial had really played out, in a tiny town with a population of 11,000.

In May, I headed to Halifax to begin the shoot. I felt very at home in Halifax, where I'd worked before on
Love and Death on Long Island,
and I knew many of the crew members. It was about as nurturing and familiar an environment as I could ask for, which was another reason I had taken the project. My costar, a very talented actress named Kristin Booth, and I became good friends. After a week or two in Halifax, we all headed to Baffin Island for several days. Or maybe it was a week? Or ten days?

Unfortunately, there were a lot of things about shooting that movie,
Sleep Murder,
that I simply cannot remember. I didn't have any real problems at work—in remembering dialogue, or needing to halt production so I could rest, or anything like that. I got through the shoot without incident, but I had clearly gone back to work too soon. Acting was still a bit too much for my brain to handle. My circuits were overloaded. I truly needed a break.

Fortunately, the movie turned out fine. I looked okay, and my performance was certainly acceptable. At the time I thought I was doing just great, but it was only later, looking back, that I realized I had pushed myself much too hard. I got way ahead of myself in terms of recovery. To this day, I can only remember small flashes of working on that film, and that's not like me.

I came home and took the rest of the summer off, which was a very good idea. I needed the time off. I continued to gain strength and concentration and didn't even consider any more work for the moment. Then as fall approached, I got a call from ABC Family with a project that was too good to resist.

I
Want to Marry Ryan Banks
was an ABC-TV movie, and I was offered the role of the titular character, Ryan Banks. I thought it was a fun project, especially for me, because it was about an actor who couldn't get any movies made because he had fallen off the A-list. I felt uniquely qualified to play this role. It was a wink to my real life—a good way to utilize my career baggage to my advantage.

My costar, who played my best friend and agent, was an actor I'd never met named Bradley Cooper. In the movie, his great idea was to get me a reality show à la
The Bachelor,
so everyone in America would see what a great guy I was, instead of a womanizing rat, and I would immediately catapult back to the top. Hilarity and misunderstandings with the girls ensued, with a true love happy ending. That was the movie, which was pretty forgettable. What made the experience unforgettable was to meet somebody I connected with on so many levels. Coop and I got on like a house on fire.

We had a great time shooting in Victoria for a month. Coop's girlfriend and Naomi both flew into Victoria for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Our director put on a full dinner at the Empress Hotel for the Americans who, of course, insisted on their traditional turkey. Then the four of us retreated to my resort hotel in Ucluelet on the west coast. We wrapped the movie in December and returned home to L.A. for the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

Unbeknownst to either of us, we would soon both be back in Vancouver on two separate projects. Coop got on a crime drama called
Touching Evil,
starring Jeffrey Donovan, who would go on to do
Burn Notice,
and Vera Farmiga (later to star in
Bates Motel
). Meanwhile, I got put in a series called
Tru Calling
with Eliza Dushku and Zach Galifianakis.

Tru Calling
was a supernatural drama starring Eliza as a young woman who worked in a morgue; Zach played her friend and supervisor. The bodies spoke to her, asking for help, and she was able to relive their last days, trying to alter events to save their lives. I was brought on halfway through the first season to play Jack Harper, who was a foil to Eliza's character, Tru. Before, there had been a little piece missing in the show. Tru needed a combatant to go up against week in and week out. The character of Jack was a terrific addition. I certainly thought so, anyway.

Eliza and I were doing a lot of very interesting interacting. There was a great deal of conflict between us early on, then the story lines began to follow both of us as she tried to keep people alive and I tried to keep people dead. It was an interesting dynamic. The ratings numbers each week were going steadily up and up and up. Meanwhile, I was having a fantastic time with Zach and Coop on our off hours. Like me, Coop was a very adventurous eater, his particular favorite being Japanese food. Vancouver is famous for its Japanese food, so the two of us hunted down all the very best places and had plenty of superb meals together.

One night we were sitting around in my hotel room, and we just looked at each other and said at the same time, “We've got to get out of here.” Neither of us could stand to stay one more night in the superbland, corporate boring hotel where we'd been living for months on end. We found a small boutique hotel in Yale Town and checked into it the next day. This new hotel had a happening lounge and bar scene, and the crowd who hung out in that area was young and fun.

It was the right move. The little French bistro in our hotel stayed open late, and Coop and I spent a few late nights there talking about life and love and all the big questions. I had decided to propose to Naomi, whom he had gotten to know quite well, and he listened as I psyched myself up to do the deed. I was planning a very elaborate proposal—my idea was to do it in London, where we met.