You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (2 page)

Some people really want to be actors. They take classes and discuss the Stella Adler method with their friends. They can feel the longing deep in their marrow and cannot imagine themselves being anything but an actor. I enjoyed acting for a while, but eventually I realized that I was doing my job with the same level of passion as someone who grew up working in the family’s pizza parlor.

I was acting because it was there and I had always done it. It was fun being on set, and the camaraderie and community that comes from working on a film was extremely comforting to an only child. Everyone working on a show has a common creative goal and it was wonderful to instantly belong to something like that. However, I wasn’t invested in the
craft
of acting. When I wandered out of that world at the end of my eighteen-year career, I didn’t miss becoming a character; I missed being part of an on-set family that was creating something artistic together.

My other actor friends loved their trade and I was totally jealous
of that. They wished that they had my resume and I wished that I had their passion. It would have been easier if I could at least muster the energy and emotion to despise the film industry, but I didn’t hate it either. I simply became apathetic. Ambivalent. I had been branded “actor” at age four. Work turned into more work, and at a certain point, it’s easy to forget that there are other life options available. Suddenly, I was living in Los Angeles and was “successful” at a prestigious job in that one-industry town. I knew that I was supposed to feel successful, but I didn’t. It was like faking a career orgasm. I got so good at pretending that I even fooled myself for a while.

At some point, all that faking gets exhausting. Beyond the apparent glamour, actors are subjected to long hours, mountains of rejection, and a shocking amount of critical focus on your appearance. That stings. I once got turned down for a job because I wasn’t pretty enough. They really said that. There was no sugarcoated option offered, no consideration about what that type of “honesty” might do to a seventeen-year-old.

The producers were interested in hiring me for a film role and gave me a full make-over in which I spent hours getting my hair cut and colored, a face full of professionally applied makeup and a new wardrobe from Fred Siegel’s. It all felt very Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
. The “beauty team” was flitting around, offering glasses of freshly-squeezed lemonade while they decided what color top might be best for my complexion. They strategically placed blond highlights to frame my face and contoured my cheekbones with peach blush.

When the Hollywood wizards were done with me, I stood in front of the producers like a freshly groomed poodle and awaited their inspection. I smoothed out my perfectly colored hair, posed with one hand on the hip of my pricy designer jeans and batted my plumped and extended eyelashes. I flashed my newly whitened teeth. I tried to act like a pretty girl.

The producers gave my new look an up-down and then convened in the corner. There was a brief, hushed conversation. Quick glances back my direction. Nodding and sighing. They adjusted their glasses and
scratched their goatees.

“Thanks a lot, Lisa, we think you are a great actor, but you are still just not pretty enough.”

“Well, thanks anyway!” I chirped, probably in too high a tone. I removed my designer jeans, handed back the jewelry and thanked them for their time. I accepted the fact that my skill was not what mattered. My movie had a different ending than
Pretty Woman
. Instead of Richard Gere offering me a diamond necklace in a sassy box, I just felt like an ugly, unemployed whore.

There is no such thing as “successful enough” in L.A. Even for those people who are can’t-leave-the-house-famous, the striving is grueling and there is no point where you can take a deep breath and say,
This is all I need. This is enough.
It’s never enough: it’s always on to the next audition, the next job, the next hit. It’s addictive, and it started to get dangerous for me. Not like drug abuse/eating disorder dangerous; it was just soul-crushing dangerous. That’s all. Just the crushing of my soul.

Maybe there are actors who are confident enough to handle it. People who are poised and self-assured who can take the constant hammering of celebrity. No one has ever accused me of being poised and self-assured. I was an approval junkie always searching for the next fix, the next fleeting moment where I felt accepted and worthy before being plunged back into unemployment and obscurity.

It felt like the world stopped when a casting director once told me that Steven Spielberg knew my work and thought I was “very talented.” She referred to him as “Steve” when she said it. I ran around like a fiend for a week, not able to eat, sleep, or concentrate. Then came the inevitable crash, which left me deflated on the couch, staring at the ceiling and chewing on the ends of my hair. Who the hell cares if “Steve” liked my work? He didn’t hire me for the job anyway. I fell deeply into the depression
that comes post-Christmas when you realize that after you tore into all those beautifully wrapped gifts, they still didn’t make you feel whole.

Maybe an escape into high-functioning alcoholism could have been the thing that kept me in Hollywood. Perhaps if I had just been able to pour my discontent into an addiction, I could have managed it, but the only thing I was addicted to was the momentary rush that came from a new gig, new agent, or new boyfriend. Substances were certainly a well-worn route for many of my colleagues. If I could have funneled all my insecurities and self-loathing into a vodka bottle and chugged it back over the bathroom sink at three in the morning, maybe I could have lasted as an actor longer than I did. But two glasses of wine left me nauseated and taking drugs seemed appallingly stereotypical. Since I wasn’t innately equipped and recreational substances were out, the rigors of the film industry seemed beyond my abilities.

But no one wants to hear actors whine about how hard their lives are. There are real problems in the world. People with cancer are going bankrupt over medical bills. Children are being kidnapped and forced to fight grown-up wars in the jungle. Polar bears are drowning. Regardless of how unhappy my job was making me, this was destined to be a poorly attended pity-party.

Pity was never the goal, anyway. I just wanted to clear up this notion that an actor’s life was all about limousines and exotic locations. Even if it was entirely those things, it didn’t matter: it just wasn’t my scene anymore. I didn’t want to be an actor, much in the same way that I didn’t want to be a paleontologist or a professional ice dancer. It was time to make a change. People all around me were dying to be in my shoes, but I needed to go barefoot.

It might have appeared that I left Los Angeles for a boy. Being in love with someone who was leaving L.A. to get his master’s degree gave me
the perfect excuse to tiptoe out of my life. LOVE! Who could argue with love? Especially when I had such a disastrous past in that arena. It made me seem righteous and romantic. I really
was
in love but I was also kind of using him. I could break free from the strong, sparkly grip of Hollywood and point the finger at love.

To this day, online commenters blame my husband for the fact that I left acting. They say he was uncomfortable with my career so he made me quit and leave L.A. That’s total bullshit, but it’s fine with me. Blame him. That way, I don’t have to deal with the real reason I stopped acting: I didn’t like it anymore. This opinion is about as popular as saying you loathe rainbows. What kind of person wants to leave an acting career? What kind of deranged monster must they be? My kind of monster. Because I left and I’m glad.

People around me only saw the good job, the house that I purchased when I was fifteen years old and the fact that I was part of the elite percentage of actors who never had to take a drink order. I had what I was supposed to want. I had what people thought they longed for in checkout lines as they looked at glossy magazine covers filled with veneered teeth and silky extensions. There were premiers lined with paparazzi yelling for me to look “over here.” There were exclusive parties where I sat in hot tubs with hot producers. There was the kissing of famous people on both cheeks and my photo was printed in the party section of
Variety
. There was autograph-signing at dinner.
Star Magazine
reported on whom I was dating. There was a caricature of me in
Mad Magazine
and
TeenBeat
revealed my favorite foods. Why wasn’t all that making me happy? Why was it, in fact, making me feel depressed and hopeless? Why was I hollow and desperately longing for something that I couldn’t even identify? What was wrong with me?

With the hazy half-consciousness of someone walking into rehab, I went cold turkey, prepared to suffer the Hollywood withdrawals and search for something more satisfying. My friends were horrified that I was walking away from this group of chosen ones. People kept telling me
that I had the golden ticket and I was about to rip it up. They said that Jodie Foster left acting, too, but she came back. You’ll be back, you’ll see. They sounded like a passive-aggressive spouse, demanding my affection for a life I no longer wanted.

Of course, I was terrified they were right. But I still wanted to see what the world looked like outside of my single-minded industry town. I was curious about life in a place that had different priorities and a culture that had nothing to do with box office gross. A place where no one cared what a Key Grip did. I moved to Virginia.

When I arrived, I kind of just stood there in shock and looked around for a while. I had what I wanted. I was free. But it didn’t feel like freedom.

It felt like being untethered.

Unmoored.

Unglued.

I had just left a career and life in California and had no clue what was next. I had a boyfriend in grad school who was too busy with managerial accounting and consumer research classes to help me go on a soul-searching quest to find myself. Laid out before me were long, empty days and zero prospects. I had no friends, no plan, I was trained for nothing and was a high school dropout with a fairly shallow and rapidly dwindling bank account. The money just sort of trickled out in a slow leak. I don’t really know what happened to most of it. I had never been one of those seven-figure actors anyway, and never felt the need to impress anyone. I drove a ten-year-old Toyota RAV 4 and lived in thrift store t-shirts. But apparently, money can go surprisingly fast just paying a mortgage, buying frequent plane tickets back to Canada and helping struggling artist friends. So, when I walked away from the only money-making skill I had, I wasn’t set for life the way people assumed I was.

No one in their twenties knows who they really are, but it is even more jumbled and confusing when you have spent your entire conscious life being praised for your ability to be someone else. When you are considered special because you can leave your own life behind and
completely inhabit another personality, there is very little impetus to examine your own authenticity. Suddenly, I was faced with the frightening proposition of doing a character study of myself.

While the details of my childhood might have been unusual, the general experience was not unique. I had seen kids who seemed to be prodigies at something—sports, music, or dance—and who spent most of their young lives devoted to that. Some kids seem to come into the world with a sense that they have a role to fill, a dream to live out, or a problem to fix. Maybe their parents wanted them to be a doctor or sell insurance just like their dad did. Maybe their coaches were determined to see them in the Olympics. I wondered what happened when they took a different path. Did they feel as lost as I did? Did they feel like they had let everyone down?

I used to enjoy my job, but at some point it all became more important to other people than it was to me. My career plodded along, seemingly of its own volition, propelled only by momentum and a deep, foreboding feeling of obligation. It all happened slowly and without me noticing it, all I knew was that when I looked back, I couldn’t even see where my enthusiasm had once been. When I left L.A., I felt like I was disappointing every casting director that believed in me, every producer who had fought for me and every movie-goer who was shocked that I would walk away. I was twenty-two and had failed an entire industry of people who had given me a rarely offered chance.

But let’s back up. About eighteen years.

The first few years of my life in the suburbs of Toronto were fairly standard. I was a picky eater, I had my tonsils removed, I fell down and required seven stitches in my chin. My Little Pony was awesome, and getting my hair brushed was terrible. When I was three years old I learned to read, and I fell in love with the way that letters fit together. Words and sentences became my closest companions.

I would lose myself inside of words, feeling victorious when I chose exactly the right one. Seeing others using words well could bring me to tears. I obsessively read everything available, even reading billboards aloud. Neon signs were particularly attractive, and sometimes announced the attributes of the ladies at such establishments as the Crazy Horse Gentleman’s Club. Luckily, “Live! Nude! Girls!” are all fairly simple words to get a three-year-old mind around. So, announce them I did, with only a slight grammatical adjustment resulting in an enthusiastic plea for the nude girls to “live.”

I don’t remember the incident that determined my path in life, but as the family legend goes, my parents and I were shopping in a farmer’s market in Toronto. A man approached them saying he worked for an advertising agency and he thought I would be perfect for a commercial they were casting. Apparently, he could see beyond the peanut butter all
over my face and felt there was a thespian simmering below. The only acting I had ever done involved coaxing my cats into doll dresses and pretending I ran an orphanage, so how could I be in a real commercial? My parents, dubious of the random market man, accepted his card in an attempt to get rid of him efficiently and they quickly ushered me away. In all likelihood, there were lengthy discussions between the two of them about the chances of him being a pervert.