You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (36 page)

About a year after my graduation from UVA, as we were settling into our new house, I was curled up on the couch, looking for a chick flick to watch while Jeremy was traveling for work.
Mrs. Doubtfire
was on television. I hadn’t seen it for seventeen years. I looked around suspiciously, feeling like I was about to watch something scandalous on Cinemax. I could just watch a little bit, couldn’t I? Was that weird? I closed the curtains.

It was strangely familiar and yet there were so many things I had forgotten about. Then, there was me. I really was that girl. My mannerisms were the same, so was my voice. I now have curvier hips and some gray hair—but it was me. I still remembered all my lines.

It was just a movie. It was sweet and funny and silly. I’m grateful to that film for many things, it was a wonderful experience and it set me on the path to meet my husband and have the beautiful life I have now. It seems so futile that I spent seventeen years running and trying to not be labeled the
Doubtfire
Girl, because the movie was not some monster that was chasing me. A movie is just a movie, like Bobby Duvall had said when I was eleven. In that moment, I turned around and gave that movie a hug. I stopped trying to fight it. It touched people and gave me wonderful opportunities. That movie, and everything else that has ever happened, made me who I am. My life is not a secret to be kept.

I am that girl. But I’m a lot of other things, too.

Almost Complete List of Acting Credits

2000   
Double Frame

2000   
The Royal Diaries: Isabel—Jewel of Castilla

1999   
Jack & Jill

1999   
George Lucas in Love

1999   
Mentors—
“
Raising the Siege”

1999   
A Walk on the Moon

1998   
Dream House

1998   
Painted Angels

1997   
Newton: A Tale of Two Isaacs

1997   
On the Edge of Innocence

1997   
The Beautician and the Beast

1996   
Independence Day

1996   
Reckoning

1996   
Bermuda Triangle

1995   
Picture Perfect

1995   
Fight for Justice: The Nancy Conn Story

1994   
Due South

1994   
A Child’s Cry for Help

1994   
A Pig’s Tale

1993   
Vendetta II

1993   
Mrs. Doubtfire

1993   
Matinee

1991   
The Story Lady

1991   
The Rape of Doctor Willis

1991   
Rambling Rose

1990   
Night Court

1990   
War of the Worlds

1989   
The Phone Call

1989   
Glory! Glory!

1987-1989   
Friday The 13th The Series: Friday’s Curse

1989   
The Twilight Zone

1988   
Once Upon a Giant

1988   
Emergency Room

1988   
Alfred Hitchcock Presents

1986   
Christmas Eve

1986   
Kay O’Brien

1986   
Taking the Heat

1986   
The Right of the People

1985   
Eleni

One of the most important things I have ever learned is the power of practicing gratitude. Gratitude is so joyful and immense that it simply crowds out all the angst and suffering. I will attempt to express my appreciation here, and I’ll undoubtedly fail to capture the whole of it. It’s just that big.

Thank you to my trusted first readers, Lauren Macloed, Jen Higgins, Rachel Miller and Tracy Arbaugh—who gave loving feedback and laughed at the right places.

Thank you to Lizzie and my Yoga Soul Crew—for giving me a second home and a place to find myself.

Thank you to Bre and Eric Gregg, Karen and Graham Beatty, Serena Love, Sarah Cramer Shields, Loren Intolubbe-Chmil, Cecily Armstrong, Kirk Conard, Amy Kidd and Mara Wilson. You all know why.

Thank you to my parents—who have been with me since the beginning, teaching me humility, persistence and how to use a sledgehammer.

Thank you to my grandma, Arlene MacDonald—who transferred her love of words through the bloodline, even if her superior spelling skills didn’t survive the journey.

Thank you to my agent, Gina Panettieri—for staying to meet the last writer in line at the Pitch Slam, and for the late night emails talking that same writer off the creative ledge.

Thank you to Megan Trank, Jocelyn Kelley, Felicia Minerva, Michael Short, Eric Kampmann and the entire team at Beaufort Books and Midpoint Trade Books—who believed there could be a worthwhile Hollywood
story that didn’t include rehab.

Thank you to my fellow writers, Scott Craven, Jacob Tomsky, Ben Lorr, Amanda Eyre Ward and Quinn Cummings—for offering advice and understanding the pleasure and pain of living a life devoted to the written word.

Thank you to all my blog readers—for their enthusiastic kindness, and for giving me a safe space to begin to share my work.

And thank you most of all to my husband—for having unwavering faith in me. Your support and encouragement made this all possible. You held my hand when I was terrified and you gave me the courage to be myself. Thank you for every moment at our kitchen table. Even the ones when I was crying. Maybe especially those.

And finally, thank you to Grace.