Love Life (21 page)

Somewhere around the time where Kaffee and the gang go to
Cuba to first meet Colonel Jessup, I noticed something going down in the queen’s box. Literally.

While trying to concentrate on the actor standing in front of me, I noticed that there was now only the man sitting in the box. A moment later a blond female head rose out of his lap, above the gilded wall separating them from the rest of the house. Then she dove back below to continue her performance, which was unquestionably more interesting than anything we were attempting onstage.

At the intermission the couple was told in no uncertain terms that this particular behavior was not tolerated within the confines of the queen’s box at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The randy couple swore they would not do it again. And so they were allowed to stay.

They kept their word. They never did repeat that particular act. Like the play itself, after intermission, they were building to a climax, and the final courtroom showdown featured me bellowing, “I want the
truth
!” while the supposedly chastened couple rode each other like the
Urban Cowboy
mechanical bull. Luckily, by the end of the show they were gone; I wouldn’t have wanted to find out who would’ve gotten a bigger curtain call.

Speaking of curtain calls, my time in the UK showed me some profound differences between American and British theatergoers. In America, audiences are vocal and ready to be pleased. They give out standing ovations like Halloween candy. In fact, I haven’t seen a show in New York in twenty years that didn’t include one. On Broadway, you will also have wrappers ripping, loud food eating and at least four or five ringing cell phones a week. I never heard
one
in over 160 performances in London. But we were also light on standing ovations. Maybe ten the whole run. If you eked one out of those respectful but demanding British crowds, you knew you had really earned it, and it was special. In spite of my four-page fuckup, the first and loudest one we got was on opening night.

Prepping for a role, fashioning a character, is sometimes a give-and-take between actor and director. But not always. Good actors learn early to protect themselves from inexperienced (or bad) directors by taking the care and feeding of their performances into their own hands. We make choices that force editors to cut to us when we want (light a cigarette on an important line or take off or put on your glasses, and they have to show it) or make other choices we know they can’t use, so the focus will be on some other poor slob. Good actors almost always know how to get cut to in a scene. And hack actors, unfortunately, use those tricks mercilessly. One of the things I’ve always admired about the cast of
The West Wing
is that everyone was too proud to stoop to that style of acting. The kind that says, “Cut to me! I’m
listening
! I’m
reacting
!” By this I mean behavior that is not found in nature but only in bad TV shows or movies. It’s nodding your head “sagely” while being told a story. It’s “stealing a glance” at a third party while you listen. It’s checking your watch at the defense table during closing arguments. It’s feeling like you have to
do something
while the camera is on you when you are not talking. In
The West Wing
, we never did. We just listened. Like people do. In real life.

The better your collaborators, the more you want to collaborate. Recently I worked with Steven Soderbergh, who is truly a master of every genre. He’s done quirky, small, indie (in fact he practically invented the modern indie genre with
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
), he’s done mass Hollywood blockbuster. He’s done movies in space stations and male strip clubs. His movies have voice, vision and smarts, and are always slyly funny. This is a director you are happy to follow anywhere.

In
Behind the Candelabra
Michael Douglas plays Liberace, and Matt Damon plays his dimwitted, deer-in-the-headlights young gay
lover. They are genius. I had always been a fan of both, Michael’s
The American President
and Matt’s
The Talented Mr. Ripley
being among my favorite performances by any actors. But nothing could’ve prepared me for the spectacle of seeing Jason Bourne giving a hummer to Gordon Gekko. Like I said, Steven Soderbergh is a master of many genres.

Some characters require more shaping than others. Some come fully formed, whether by the quality and specificity of the writing or from the role being based on a real person. Then it’s more about research and authenticity than invention from whole cloth. When I played wife killer Drew Peterson, a doughy, mustached cop with a distinctive Chicago accent, the character was there for the taking. You couldn’t have made him up. The real challenge was making me look like him. Luckily, there were hundreds of hours of footage of Peterson. Within them were direct quotes that were outrageous, priceless gems, like when he was asked where his missing wife was: “I dunno. I wish she’d pop her head up.” I put these lines into the script or ad-libbed them whenever possible. I spent weeks listening to Peterson’s voice. By the time I got to the set I could channel him.

Looking like him, however, was more difficult. I took the role because I had
no idea
if I could be believable in a character so far from who I am and what I look like. Any time an opportunity scares you that much, you should seriously consider saying yes.

The studio and network behind the movie weren’t rushing to support my notion that to play Drew, I would need to totally transform. I had in mind some very cutting-edge prosthetics and dying my hair completely gray. They would’ve preferred a gentle frosting at the temples, a Selleck-like mustache and nothing else. “Selleck as Peterson” would’ve been the look. I often find, to my disappointment, that when the folks in the executive suites are paying for Rob Lowe they want me to look like Rob Lowe, regardless of who I’m playing. It’s always a
battle (which makes the success of my character in
Candelabra
that much sweeter).

After weeks of discussion and numerous screen tests, we all agreed on my Drew Peterson look. Surprisingly, turning my hair completely gray was the hardest part. Turns out there is no easy way to do it; as you can imagine there is not a huge market for it. The process took six and a half hours. First of all your own color is stripped out and then, in small increments, they work color back into the hair follicles bit by bit.

The day after I had my new hair, I was to meet Kate Middleton and the guy she was marrying from England, at a benefit in Santa Barbara. In the reception line, they were a dashing and charming couple, but he in particular couldn’t take his eyes off of my white hair. I had hoped it would make me look dignified, like George Clooney. Instead I looked like the great-grandfather of George Clooney. “I can see Hollywood is treating you well,” said the future king of England dryly.

Makeup on the set was done by makeup top gun Scott Wheeler. It took over two hours every morning. Special handmade appliances gave me Cowardly Lion–looking bags under my eyes; “plumpers” were attached to my teeth and gums to puff out my cheeks. And unknown to anyone else involved on the movie, I also wore a fake nose. I knew that the studio and network would never approve of me in a phony proboscis, but it was the final, necessary touch in the transformation. So I just did it. No one ever noticed, and it made all the difference. When the first photos of me in character leaked, they went viral. What could have been seen as a bad
Saturday Night Live
character look was instead greeted with stunned attention. Later, the movie itself would break ratings records.

So when
Behind the Candelabra
came my way, I knew the power of transformation. But would Soderbergh be supportive? I knew Michael and Matt were going to utterly change their appearance. Maybe
my doing it as well would be overkill. It would be up to Steven. When you work with a master, you do what they say. Still, I had a pretty clear vision of my character, a seventies-era LA plastic surgeon.

“Steven, what’s your appetite for me to really go for it with this character?” I asked him in our first phone call.

“Hey, do it! I’d love to see what you have in mind.”

And there it is. The greats have no fear. They are open to all good ideas, wherever they may come from. They are secure enough in their experience and vision to give the people they’ve hired room to run.

The script described my role as a man whose face was so pulled and shiny, he looked like a doll. Growing up in LA, the only thing more disturbing than the earthquakes are the bad face-lifts. So I knew
exactly
how I wanted to look.

When finished, I looked like a transgendered Bee Gee. I realized that with my eyebrows yanked up so unnaturally (by a series of painful rubber bands taped to my skin and running around the back and top of my head), if I squinted, it looked especially freaky. Because in nature it is extremely hard to raise your eyebrows and squint at the same time. My “look” was set.

The character’s voice was harder to figure out. In full makeup and wardrobe I looked very feminine. I knew the movie would be chockablock with fey characters, so I went in another direction. I imagined my guy as one of those countless transplanted New York wannabe tough guys who come to LA and end up going completely off the reservation. The kind of guys I see regularly at Lakers games. So I gave him a vaguely Brooklyn, gravelly-sounding rasp. If in
Pirates of the Caribbean
Johnny Depp was doing Keith Richards, in
Candelabra
I was doing the guy who used to do the Men’s Wearhouse commercials.

The combo was enough that on the set, Matt Damon refused to look at me when the cameras were rolling. He would try not to laugh
beholding this demented man I had conjured up. Sometimes tears would stream down his face. “Stop it,” he would say, “I can’t look at you!” Together, we had more fun than actors should be allowed to have.

I don’t know why I enjoy playing weird-looking, depraved characters as much as I do. Maybe at this point in my life and career it’s a nice palate cleanser from clean-cut optimists like Sam Seaborn on
The West Wing
or Chris Traeger on
Parks and Recreation
. Who knows. Maybe I shouldn’t feel such glee when I show photos of my rogues’ gallery to people and they react with “Eeew!”

In rehearsals for a role, there is inevitably one line that you hate, don’t want to say and lobby to get cut. The late acting teacher Roy London always said of those lines, “The one line you don’t want to say is usually the one you
must
say. It usually is a barrier you need to cross and often a gateway to a deeper understanding of your character.” As much as I hate to relearn this with each project, I have to admit he’s right.

In David Duchovny’s dark and hilarious sex romp
Californication
I sometimes show up as Eddie Nero, a drug-addicted, pansexual loon who happens to be an Academy Award–winning movie star. Happily for me, I know a number of Eddie Neros personally. So playing Nero is one of my favorite treats. I get to send up everything I loathe (and, I suppose, love) about Hollywood stars. But in
Californication
’s extreme world of sex and language, there was one line in my first episode (with apologies to Roy London) that I simply was
not
going to say.

It was something about how, to research playing a gay hit man, Eddie “took a man in his mouth” and swallowed his “ropy jism.”

“David, I love you, I love the show. I am
not
saying that!”

“Too much, ya think?” said Duchovny in his patented laconic monotone.

“Um, yes!”

“Hey, man. Sure. Whatever you want.”

But the line was in my head and just as Roy promised, my obsessing on it led to a breakthrough. In its place I ad-libbed something that was arguably just as gross but that gave me a permanent hook into playing Eddie.

“I engineered that orgasm. I played his skin flute. I played his skin flute like Kenny G! Like Kenny G on ecstasy!” It became a much-quoted scene and can be seen in all its twisted glory all over YouTube.

Eddie Nero, and for that matter
Californication
itself, is not for everybody. I have advisers who are very smart who hate when I play characters who are meant to be divisive and provocative. And there are more than a few iconic careers that are bereft of even a single role that isn’t a likeable hero. I mean, Will Smith turned down
Django Unchained
for God’s sake. Redford (one of my heroes) never played a bad guy, and he certainly would never say he took a man in his mouth! At least not publicly, anyway. Those are two of the biggest and greatest stars who ever lived; they must be doing a lot of things right. But, to each his own; I can’t help myself. When it comes to a great or scene-stealing role, I’m down, regardless of its sensibilities. For me, acting has never been about being popular or worrying about perception. And let’s face it, it’s always fun to be the bad boy.

Probably the first rake I ever played brought me some of my earliest cultural attention. Billy Hicks in
St. Elmo’s Fire
became a role that had immediate and, for some, lasting impact. In the summer of 1985 you could see young dudes dressed as my character all over. In
Full House
, that era’s popular sitcom, John Stamos most blatantly bit my character’s look, but I was flattered. And today, people quote Billy’s lines to me all the time.

The movie’s director wanted me to have hair extensions. But due to my horrific inability to follow directions, I couldn’t find the salon for my appointment and missed my window to get them put in. Or installed. Or whatever you call it. This was a true moment of God doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. One wrong turn saved me from having even
more
bad hair than I had in the movie anyway! Looking back, my do was one step away from a Phyllis Diller fright wig. Film historians attribute
St. Elmo’s Fire
’s success to the burgeoning youth-in-film movement. I attribute the film’s success to the invention of hair mousse.