You Only Get One Life (27 page)

Within days the contracts were agreed and I couldn’t believe how lucky I’d been when I was all ready to go back to be treated under my own steam. I was to be the only one on the show who had previously been in rehab and I was the only one who went in sober; that didn’t really fit with the concept and I was asked if I could look a bit woozy to begin with, which was fine. It was kind of fun in a way and though I worked hard at going through my alcoholism, the show was much milder than anything I’d experienced myself. The alcoholic I’d become was finally replaced by the woman I’m now only finally getting to know.

The programme was filmed in a wing at a real-life clinic called the Pasadena Recovery Center rather than in a studio. Just the other side of the wall from us would have been the same mix of real clients that I’d met myself. Unlike them we were allowed to use the phone for an hour and a half every day and we had our own food brought in. We didn’t have to do any of the chores and we each knew that outside we had a world that we belonged in. Though all of us had unenviable stories, we also had careers and a network to support us afterwards and we weren’t just left to fend for ourselves like those girls whose situation had shocked me so much in LA.

I shared a room with Chyna, an actress who had formerly been a pro-wrestler. Popular in the US, she was also very pretty in her own muscular way. She had been a
Playboy
centrefold but her life had got very crazy in recent years. In 2004, she and her then-boyfriend made a sex video inevitably called
One Night in Chyna
. She misused pills and alcohol but what made her unique in the show was her denial. Until almost the last day she insisted she didn’t know why she was there. She had been physically abused, she drank too much and she was a cutter – she self-harmed – and she didn’t want to admit to it. Dr Drew also said she was had bipolar disorder (the condition formerly known as manic depression). Even when she did finally admit that she had a problem she wasn’t able to say what it was. I’ve often wondered what happened to her – I later read that she had been taken to hospital after an overdose.

Daniel Baldwin, one of the four acting brothers, left after just a couple of days and Jeff Conaway – who played
Kenickie in
Grease
– talked about leaving every day but never did. He was probably the sickest one of us all and was twice rushed to hospital during filming. It’s easy to judge people but harder to work out how they end up in such situations.

Mary Carey was a porn star who essentially showed up in a coma, thanks to a cocktail of pills similar to the one that killed Heath Ledger. She came out of it during the show but went straight back into the same world afterwards to make
Celebrity Pornhab with Dr Screw
.

American Idol
singer Jessica Sierra had never forgiven her mother for dying of an overdose, but she was one of the few to get completely clean after the show and she’s since returned to singing. I felt I was able to talk to her as someone who had tried to take the overdose way out. ‘It’s not because your mother didn’t love you,’ I said. ‘Mothers always love their children but we get lost – that’s what addiction does to you. You take the bottle over your kids.’

Child star Jaimee Foxworth and Crazy Town singer Seth Binzer were also on the show. Seth was so much the archetypal wild man of rock that I could never imagine him getting completely sober – it’d be like telling Keith Richards in his 1970s pomp that he should really go and get himself straight. Jaimee got clean in the end and has more recently had a child.

Ricco Rodriguez was a martial arts champion who also got clean.

Some of the participants had stories which made mine look like a walk in the park. I was fresh from a rigorous regime and my head was just in a different place; I felt
stronger and I also knew that I wanted it one hundred per cent. Very quickly, I became the group’s mother figure and though it was hard to hear all the awful testimony, I realized that I had a lot to be grateful for. I was all the more determined not to throw it away by going back to drinking.

My biggest challenge was living away from home without my boys and Mattia. We spoke every day and the producers organised a family day, which kept us going. There was a lot of criticism for the way the show used the stars’ misfortunes for sensationalistic effect. I didn’t agree. Personally, I got a lot out of the show at a time when I really was giving myself one last chance to get better and I felt that under Drew Pinsky I was in the safest pair of hands the programme makers could have found. It wasn’t exploitative just because there were cameras there. The US needed a show like
Celebrity Rehab
to start a discussion between young people and their parents about substance abuse. We could do with more of that in Europe as well: there should be more done about alcoholism by the media, schools and authority. It’s a problem in the UK and it’s even worse in my home country of Denmark. I only wish that something like
Celebrity Rehab
had been around when my modelling friend Gia was getting into the heroin use which would see her die of AIDS. Perhaps if addiction hadn’t been taboo she would still be around today.

After only six weeks I was released to be met by Mattia, Killian, Douglas and Raoulino. The boys all said how proud they were that I had got myself sober. We hugged and I felt that deep inside me a new person was beginning to grow. It was one of the happiest moments of my life and
I doubt there is a better feeling than that of knowing your children respect what you’ve done. I was overwhelmed with love for them and that in itself provided me with a vital defence against the alcoholism. There were so many reasons to keep away from drink, but I didn’t need anything more than them.

Dr Drew said that I needed to pay close attention to the environment in which I was living so Mattia and I sat down to make an ambitious plan to change our lives: we wanted to design a programme that would minimise my chances of relapsing. The most important move was to get out of Los Angeles, the city of sin, for a while and relocate to the sunshine of Palm Springs, some 180 kilometres away. It was known for its fitness centres and health resources – exactly the opposite of LA. The pace of life was much more relaxed there and there weren’t so many liquor stores to tempt me away from my intended path.

In 2007 we made the move and I completely altered my daily routine. I kept off the drink, I gave up smoking and Mattia and I maintained a strenuous work-out. We became more interested in eating a healthy diet as well. After about a year we felt strong enough to move back to Los Angeles without succumbing to its temptations. We loved the city and it was still the only place to do business. You have to be available to do castings, which is now a little old-fashioned. In Europe everything’s done off computer listings but I actually preferred to meet with people.

We took a really nice villa back in the Hollywood Hills. It’s green and lovely out there but at the same time we had all the benefits of being close to the action. Studio City isn’t
far away and when I took the dogs out for a walk we could look over at the legendary house where Hitchcock filmed
Psycho
, the burned-out shell of
Airport
and the location of Clint Eastwood’s
Pale Rider
.

Instead of having cocktail parties we concentrated on realising the creative ideas that we’d had together. I’d wasted so much time drinking over the years. Now I had even more energy than before I drank and I was in even more of a hurry with less than half of my life left to me.

We also had to cut down our social circle. Most evenings I would be on Skype with my kids or settling down in front of the TV. I’m a documentary freak and it was really important to me to record the good shows. I was just a small fish in Hollywood – a
very
small fish – but it was still funny that every other day there would be something on a movie channel with me in it. I’d watch and marvel at how young I looked.

B
ob Marley’s ‘Could You Be Loved’ was on the radio next to me. His gentle voice reminded me that when you point your finger at other people they do the same to you. I loved that song. Marley was my idol when I was 14 and I’m still crazy about his music and lyrics; they have something meaningful to say about society but also a sense of release about them too.

Outside the sun was high in a cloudless sky. The waves crashed onto the beach and the wind tickled the leaves in the trees. I was lying on a towel with my feet in the sand and next to me was a large glass of cold Coca-Cola without a drop of rum in it. I didn’t have much difficulty keeping off the alcohol.

Mattia was playing with the kids in the water. They were getting silly and laughing together as they chased each other. I was proud that I was still able to be part of their world. When I was drunk I didn’t notice the seasons pass
or the birds flying high as I had done as a child. The sensations I felt on the beach in Jamaica that day seemed completely new.

Mattia and I had met the kids at Miami International, the third-largest airport in the US. It was the first time in almost a year that I’d seen Killian, Douglas and Raoulino but I couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so excited; my heart was just about ready to bubble over with joy. It wasn’t the first time I’d greeted them at an airport and with their father living in Milan, it wouldn’t be the last – but I couldn’t say when I’d last truly been Gitte. I couldn’t wait for the boys to see their new, sober mummy. Usually I had been able to see them about four or five times a year: Easter, a month of holiday time, Christmas and then whenever I was in Europe. It was a good set-up. I had only gone longer this time because I needed to take that year out to get straight.

Our destination was a beach bungalow in Jamaica owned by a close girlfriend of mine. We were going to swim, chat and have fun for two weeks – which actually then stretched into a month. For once there was no programme to follow: we were just going to be a family.

‘We’ve been here for hours!’ I said to Mattia. ‘I can’t wait any longer.’

‘They’ll be here in five minutes,’ he said, and he was right. There they were – running through the passport check which, as ever in the US, had taken ages. And they had grown so big and they were so great; it was wonderful to see them again. I screamed with delight and we ran towards each other as if we were in some old, sentimental movie. They had their rucksacks on and looked very
grown-up. All of them have become giants – Killian at 19 was a good couple of heads bigger than me, as he liked to point out. My other son, Julian, was 25 and lived between Copenhagen and London. It would have been wonderful to have had him with us in Jamaica, but we would still have an amazing time.

‘We love you mummy!’ they chorused. They were as happy as me that drink was no longer between us and we chattered excitedly, Douglas and Raoulino close to tears as the emotion got the better of them: they all knew how important this was. I could see myself in them when I was younger and now I could play an active part in watching them grow. I looked forward to playing on the beach with them, fixing their meals and waking them up in the morning.

It hadn’t just been me I’d saved in rehab. Every kid in the world deserves to have parents who will always be there for them, to stand by their side and to inspire them. If I hadn’t have been able to do that it would have left a lasting scar on my soul. I hope and I believe that I was in time to stop myself going too far.

I’ve had a great many narrow escapes in my life; I’d been thinking that as I flew to Miami with Mattia. We’d been in the UK, where I’d played the boss of a brothel for a production that took me a couple of days to film, typical of the sort of thing I was doing to make money. On the plane back, I remembered the ticket I’d booked for Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York for 21 December 1988: I changed the reservation at the last moment and it was that flight which was blown up by a bomb over Lockerbie. Then
on 8 October 2001 I was due to fly on SAS Flight 686 from Milan to Copenhagen and that plane hit a small private aircraft on the runway and everyone died. For me in recovery as an alcoholic it was another reminder of how much I had to feel lucky about.
Don’t push your luck too much
, I thought as we flew.

The in-flight magazine had a picture of Michael Jackson on the front cover. It was a close-up dominated by his intense, dark eyes full of hurt. It seemed he was looking into my soul and I felt tears welling up. I knew Michael quite well when I was married to Sylvester and sometimes we’d met up since then, just chatting and on occasion even dancing together. I last saw him under sadder circumstances. We were in Modena in Italy for a charity concert given by our mutual friend Luciano Pavarotti. I was shocked when I saw Michael. He’d always been shy but happy and I remember him playing with Sylvester’s dogs in the backyard or showing up at parties after concerts to have some fun. Since then the paedophile accusations had taken their toll and you could see how his plastic surgery was coming apart. His clumsy make-up was thickly applied to hide scars and the glue holding his wig on was obvious. He wore a hat that was battered and his trademark white gloves were dirty. When I heard about his death I remembered how he looked that last time and thought at least he was at peace, even though his children have lost a wonderful father.

Today I still find it hard to understand how I could have been so selfish and so far gone as to have believed that my own kids would have been better without their mother around. I thank God I’ve become wiser since then. Michael’s
tragically early death was more proof that I should never take life for granted.

I no longer believe that the grass is always greener, but that old saying sums up exactly how we spend most of our lives. Often we get distracted by little irritations and we find it hard to accept things as they are: there’s always the new car, the bigger flat-screen and the more exotic holiday around the corner – if only we had the money for them. But would any of those things make us that much happier? And yet we pay for them even if we don’t actually buy them through stressing out about how much we want them. That’s already too great a cost. Do you recognise that scenario? I think most of us would, whereas what we should be doing is enjoying the journey we take in life.