Watch Me: A Memoir (40 page)

The crew was located in sound stages in the remodeled interior of a redbrick warehouse in Long Island City, and in a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, above a plastics factory with a chicken farm on the roof. The top floor was being reconfigured as writers’ rooms, conference rooms, and production offices, which often doubled as locations for the show; sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what was
Smash.

Initially, there was a great energy to the series, and it was always a pleasure to be among the performers—the actors, dancers, and singers who threw themselves into the work
with total commitment. The show ultimately lasted only two years, during which time my dogs and I endured two hurricanes, Irene and the daunting Sandy, and enjoyed the vast resources of the city, including sun-filled days aboard a beautiful pleasure boat in Sag Harbor in the summertime with my friends the Buffetts. But as much as I love the East Coast and seeing my friends in New York, I always look forward to coming home to the open skies of Southern California.

*  *  *

I have worked on more than seventy movies and television shows, but I always feel that going back to work is like the first time. It’s new and scary, and I wonder if I can do it. I find that the older I get, often the last thing I’m in the mood for is learning lines, but that’s really what acting is all about—knowing my lines so I don’t have to think about them. This is sometimes harder than it looks, and it’s almost impossible for me to memorize under stress. I occasionally wonder what I was thinking when I decided I wanted to be an actress.

I have never felt that the camera automatically loved me, but in a way this forced me to develop my career as a character actress, which has enabled me to do the work that gives me the most pleasure. Sometimes it feels almost like alchemy—calling out and channeling spirits; you can inhabit many lives and never get bored. Movie sets are safe but temporary worlds. Dad always used to say, “It never happens in quite the same way twice.”

Television has been very good to me, from my first outings on
Laverne & Shirley
through
Lonesome Dove
and
Buffalo Girls
and
Iron Jawed Angels
to my guest appearances on
Huff
and
Medium
and my regular role on
Smash.
Television has less
patience than film; the work moves fast. Sometimes I have the sensation that I’m running from a big man-eating machine and feel overwhelmed, but I have learned to persevere.

I’ve had some great tributes, among them my selection as the 2000 ShoWest Female Star of the Year; the 2003 Harvard Hasty Pudding award, which involves being paraded down the streets of Boston by a raucous army of cross-dressing students and graduates and subjected to intense ridicule; the Women in Film Crystal Award; and the awarding of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, presented to me by Wes Anderson, Danny, and Stella in torrential rain, surrounded by my friends, as well as Allegra, Cisco, and Rafa, who flew in from Taos.

When I began working on
Smash
, a lot of people asked how it felt to “be back.” Of course, when you are in your own company, you never go away—it’s just a matter of to what extent the public is aware of your existence. Although I guess that visibility for an actor is devoutly to be wished for, I have always treasured the idea that I could, if I wanted, take a break, disappear from view, and go walkabout from time to time.

I can’t say that I have ever been deeply hurt by inaccurate reportage, but many of the stories conjured by the tabloids were invasive and untrue, and the tactics employed by the British press were particularly relentless. I’ve had photographers jump out at me from behind bushes and follow me home in their cars. I’ve heard people say that celebrities deserve it; they get paid too much and make their living in the public eye. But there is hardly anything more barbaric than being hounded by other human beings. Tony Blair called a
halt to fox hunting in England in the eighties, but it’s still open season on famous people.

Some moments when I’ve wanted to move under the radar, I have succeeded quite well. At other times, anonymity is less easy, especially if you are on a television series. But, I am happy to report, it is still possible for me to get lost in plain sight.

Since I came back to L.A., two years have passed. I am grateful for the experience of
Smash
but glad to be home and not under the corporate banner, where actors’ opinions are not necessarily encouraged. When I was studying the art of acting, the objective was to form choices and to make decisions accordingly. Times have changed. Here in California, several years have passed in a winter’s drought—blue skies and a cruel sun, no hint of rain. The Sierras that mark the horizon are without their snowcaps, gray-headed and bare, like old bald men.

The house and studio on Windward went into escrow four times and finally sold. Letting go was painful but necessary, and I moved out in less than two weeks. Now it, too, is consigned to memory.

I never thought I would get this far and have so many years behind me: life’s kaleidoscope of colors, its sounds, emotions, and special effects, its memories receding like rainbows. I have no children of my own, but it is daunting to realize that by now I might be not only a great-aunt but a grandmother. I think of how children tie us to the earth, how hard it must be to parent them and then let them go.

I am reminded of an Irish phrase: When you are faced with an obstacle on the hunting field, it is said that you must first throw your heart over it before jumping.

I saw a medium recently. She said that Dad is happy in the afterlife because he likes alcohol and you can have a drink in heaven. She asked, “Who is the man with the goatee?” I said it was Bob. She said he tells me not to worry, that he is coming with me to the new house.

Anjelica and Manolo Blahnik at a photo shoot for British
Vogue
at the Negresco Hotel, Nice, France, 1973, styled by Grace Coddington. Photographed by David Bailey.

Courtesy of the author

Anjelica and Ara Gallant in Munich, 1973. Ara was “an artist who worked with hair” and later a photographer.

Courtesy of the author

Music producer Lou Adler, Anjelica, Ara Gallant, Jack’s assistant Annie Marshall, and Cher at the airport in Santa Monica, California, on their way to Aspen, 1975.

Everett Collection/REXUSA

John Huston as Noah Cross with Jack Nicholson as J. J. Gittes on the set of
Chinatown
, directed by Roman Polanski in 1973.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Producer Andy Braunsberg, Jack Nicholson, Anjelica, her childhood friend Joan Juliet Buck, and filmmaker Henry Jaglom at the Cannes Film Festival, May 1974.

Photographed by Kenny Solms

Anjelica in the trunk of the Mercedes Jack Nicholson gave her in the mid-seventies.

Photographed by Michael Childers

Anjelica with Big Boy, a Labrador mix, at home on Mulholland Drive, in the late seventies.