You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (24 page)

This can be especially challenging for the on-camera dynamic. On one show, I was spending all my free time falling in love with the guy who was playing my brother, which made the on-set energy a little creepy. At one point, the director called cut because he said the glances between us in a scene, which were supposed to be evoking sibling rivalry playfulness, were looking “slightly incestuous.” That’s where you really need to exercise those acting chops.

I fell in love with the sort of reckless abandon that was never possible in the rest of my life. It was the one place I was totally irresponsible. I purchased earthquake insurance and got my teeth cleaned, then, I fantasized about how I could save the alcoholic I’d just started dating. He was a sweet, charming guy who was just a little too fond of bingeing on Sam Adams and watching puppet porn, which is exactly what it sounds like. In hindsight, I might have benefited from partying more and falling in love less.

This kind of love only lasts for a few months, yet has all the attributes of actual love. It is intense, it is compassionate, and it is understanding on a deep level. It’s a way to feel like yourself when you spend every day
becoming someone else. It’s the most basic way to keep a handle on your humanity. To give and receive love reminds you that even though you are doing something that seems so strange and fascinating to the rest of the world, you love just like everyone else. Your heart leaps when they walk in the room, and you cry when they don’t call. It’s simple. It’s normal. And sometimes, normal is the thing you need most.

Then, inevitably, when a show wrap is called and the set is broken down, that love flies into the stage lights like a moth, and dies in a puff of smoke. Quickly and cleanly.

There were many, many roles I didn’t get during my career. Usually I got over the loss pretty quickly, but there are a few that still sting (I’m looking at you,
Scooby-Doo
). I did a screen test for
Boys Don’t Cry
which was being held at a famous hotel in L.A., Chateau Marmont. The place drips with Hollywood. It was the hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack, John Belushi died, and Jim Morrison almost died.

I had a customary outfit for going to auditions. Well, “outfit” makes it sound more put together than it actually was. It consisted of jeans and a dark grey t-shirt with my hair pulled back in a ponytail and only enough makeup to cover any zits that might have erupted that day. This was not because of any filmmaking rationale; it was just that I knew nothing about putting on makeup or managing my own hair. Since I was four years old, it had been someone’s job to take care of those details, so I never learned girl things like how to straighten my hair or use an eyelash curler. So, I went to auditions with curly hair and straight lashes and just hoped that the producers had vision. This didn’t really work when I auditioned for
Clueless
looking like a dull little house finch while everyone else got the secret actor memo to dress in shimmery little pink things. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get that job either.

For the
Boys Don’t Cry
screen test, I once again donned my blank slate clothes; baggy jeans, a t-shirt and black Chuck Taylors. I found my way to the imposing, castle-looking hotel and wrote my name on the sign-in sheet that sat on an ornately decorated side-table in the lobby. I grabbed a chair next to the other girls who were also auditioning and smiled my hellos. The curved windowsills and wood-beam ceiling were a nice change from the florescent-lit hallways of film studios that we normally waited in. Actors are used to sitting on the floors of office buildings and tucking our feet under when the lunch delivery guy comes through, so having a high-backed chair to sit in while we gazed out the huge windows to the glistening pool was quite luxurious.

Film auditions are not like
Toddlers and Tiaras
or something where there is backstabbing and maliciousness, all under the guise of friendly competition. There are many nuances involved in casting, so there’s no point in trying to take down the girl in the next chair. Producers are considering if you look similar enough or different enough from the people who have already been cast. Are you going to make your co-stars look really tall or really short? Did the producer’s niece recently show an interest in becoming an actress? Besides all those casting details, you end up auditioning with the same girls all the time, so you might as well be nice because next time you might need their help navigating the sweltering labyrinth that is the Twentieth Century Fox backlot in August.

Hillary Swank was auditioning, too. We tended to be up for the same types of roles and had auditioned together several times. I didn’t even recognize her when she walked into the hotel, because she had absolutely morphed herself into a boy. She was dressed in her then-husband Chad’s clothes, wearing a plaid shirt and dark jeans into which she had stuffed an assortment of balled-up socks. She had her hair slicked back and tucked into her collar. I complimented her bold and impressive look, and she showed me her “guy walk.” She had a deeper voice that she had been working on for days. We examined the profile of her crotch and chose the most realistic, yet empowering, sock combinations.

Finally, they called my name and when I walked in to the room all I could think was—
please, just give Hillary this role
.
Let’s just get this audition over with so you can get your real actress in here.
I did my job and read my lines and they smiled and said they were glad I came in. I shook their hands and thanked them for their time and wondered if I should grab dinner and wait out the traffic that would be winding its way back to my side of the hill. I had no desire to fight Hillary for this. It was clear that the place where was my passion should have been was empty. I was just going through the motions.

They did give Hillary the role and she perfected her guy voice to the tune of an Oscar win. You always want those people to win. You want to know that those balled-up socks did their job and revealed the hard work and commitment. Because then we get to see actors up there, their souls lit up from within, knowing that they are in the zone, doing the thing they were meant to do. And whenever you see someone living out their soul’s true purpose—it’s magic.

Being overly emotional is an occupational hazard. Actors are required to instantaneously tap into every possible emotion, so it’s necessary to keep those feelings right up top where you can reach them. It’s challenging to turn that off and be a regular functioning adult human who hides her moods when it’s appropriate. Sometimes it’s just more than we can handle.

Often at a casting session, the producers will be seeing people for several different roles at the same time. At one particular call-back, I was waiting with several women in their early forties who were auditioning for the role of the mother, when suddenly, a flustered woman blasted out of the casting room with tears in her eyes. It obviously hadn’t gone well. That feeling of failure was familiar to everyone in the room, and we all lowered our eyes as a respectful acknowledgement of her pain.
She grabbed her bag from a chair, almost dumping the contents on the floor, walked up to the receptionist and slapped down her ticket from the parking structure.

The receptionist glanced up from her
People
magazine.

“We don’t validate.”

“You don’t validate? Are you serious? I came all the way down here and they barely paid attention during my read and now you are telling me you don’t fucking validate?”

I tried not to stare, but it was horrifyingly mesmerizing. This was a glimpse of my future. This was the life of a working actor; we would always have to stand there, emotionally exposed and begging for validation. Rejection and heartbreak were just built in to the job description. Was it worth it? Was I willing to fight for a job on a crappy TV show and feel like an invalidated piece of meat when I was forty-two? That scenario was feeling likely, as I had just been rejected for a role I had gone on three call-backs for. Their feedback claimed that I was great, just too “ethnic,” which is Hollywood code for being brunette and occasionally in need of a good waxing. It was not the first time it had been said, and I was starting to feel sorry for myself. My poor, ugly, ethnic self.

To add insult to injury, I was insanely jealous of my friend who was all floaty and in love with a man who wrote songs about her and massaged her feet in public. Meanwhile, I had recently rolled over in my boyfriend’s bed to get a glass of water from the nightstand and noticed a card signed, “with love from your fiancée.” As I hyperventilated, he attempted to reassure me.

“Sweetie, calm down. It’s fine. Rebecca is very open-minded. She has a girlfriend, too, so she totally won’t mind.”

He flashed his dimple at me, which proved to be deep enough to convince me to be the #2/straight girlfriend for a few weeks. Needless to say, being labeled the ugly chick by the film industry was not a hit I was poised to take at that moment.

But every time life became seriously dissatisfying, something would
always happen to hook me back in.

Like the mail would arrive.

Opening up an invitation to a premiere was always exciting. It meant you were included. Important. Sometimes the invites were elaborate and expensive, ramping up the level of prestige even more. My friend Dean Devlin invited me to the
Godzilla
premiere, and the invitation roared when you opened it. The invite acts as a sly little wink, indicating that you are a member of the club and you can relax for just a moment. There would be a card with a map on it for your limo driver so he would know where the drop off was. Your name would be put on a list at some front door, in the hands of a bulky man whose job it was to decide if you were in or out. Premiere invitations would always have this notable weight to them, because they contained a tangible sliver of affection and approval inside the shimmery envelope.

But this delivery was soon followed by the realization that I now had to go to the damn thing. Sometimes it was a premiere of a film I had been in, other times it was a film that a friend or co-worker had produced. Regardless, I needed to prepare to say glowing things about the project that may or may not be true while inflating egos in a thinly veiled attempt to get my next job. That was just what you did at those things. It was just like any other work dinner in corporate America. No one needed to explain those rules to me, the air would once again be heavy with uneasiness and grasping—and it would just be obvious. It was much more about impressing the big wigs and networking than having a good time.

So, I’d stand in my entryway wearing a fancy dress that I felt awkward in, hand on the front door, and give myself the speech.
This is going to be fun. It’s just a party and parties are fun. Everyone enjoys parties. You’ll be fine. There is no need to freak out.
I’d push the Breathe Button on my palm. I’d will my hand to turn the knob and force my feet in my wobbly heels to walk out the door.
This is going to be fun. Really fucking fun.

The theater was always swarming with energy and camera flashes
and security guards. Some people live for the yelling of the paparazzi, the hands-on-hips pose all ready for publication. Personally, I always assumed the red carpet was red because it was actively flowing lava—it certainly felt like walking on hot coals.

I had a small role in a film called
A Walk on the Moon
. I was surprised to be invited to the premiere and couldn’t come up with a good reason to get out of it. Mom acted as my date again and I wore a plaid skirt with fishnet stockings and a Gap sweater purchased for the occasion.

The film was a 1960s period piece and some of it took part at Woodstock. I was curious to see how our recreated hippie wonderland had translated to the big screen. For the shoot, we had spent hours out in a field, smoking fake joints and grooving to Jimi Hendrix as they blasted
Freedom
through giant speakers. Still not knowing how to hold a cigarette, let alone a marijuana cigarette, I copied those around me and pretended that being completely naive was a character choice. The whole Woodstock sequence was an awesome experience for me, a budding hippie who had the crummy luck of not being born until 1978.

Mom and I drove to the premiere in my Toyota and parked in a lot that was massively overcharging as they cashed in on the event. Large crowds were stuffed behind police barricades all straining to get a look at something. Mom and I started to make our way in to the theater, when a publicist stopped me.

“Lisa, glad you are here! Come on over here and walk the line.”

Mom gave me a quick hug and dashed into the theater, leaving me to deal with the cameras. She always dodged them; even in the few family photographs that exist of my mother she is hiding behind someone’s shoulder or holding a bottle of green olives in front of her face. She hated having her photo taken because she said that the camera would steal her soul. I had asked her once about the state of my soul; it had been overly-documented since I was four years old. She said she was sure that mine could survive it just fine, but honestly, I was beginning to wonder if that was true.

The publicist was pulling my arm and calling out to reporters that I was available. There were legit, big deal actors in this film, it had not occurred to me that the press would even glance in my direction when they could be talking to Diane Lane. I expected to watch the film, wince through my fifteen minutes of screen time, eat some toothpick food, and be in bed with a book by 10 p.m.

“The line” was an actual line of men and women with fat microphones and bug-eyed cameras. They were from
E!, Access Hollywood
,
Entertainment Tonight
and various foreign press. They tend to ask convoluted questions like—“if you were kidnapped by aliens and they wanted to know what this film was about, what would you tell them?” You have to lean really close to these reporters and awkwardly tilt your head down because it’s hard to hear with all the people screaming. Then you have to wonder if your neck veins are visible at this totally unflattering angle.