Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (12 page)

M
agically, now that Rob and I were engaged, the press suddenly loved me—but they had a funny way of showing it. Starting the minute we returned from the Caribbean, I was followed by at least six photographers in SUVs every time I left the house. One particularly aggressive guy with dark curly hair must have specialized in zoom shots of dermatological conditions because he was always two inches from my nose. I nicknamed him Pops because it was easier to pretend this omnipresent man was part of some bizarre family structure than to fight for my right to walk freely to my car.

Amidst the press calls and congratulatory gifts and more than a hundred thousand new Twitter followers overnight (literally), there was an odd note that, instead of coming with the regular mail, slipped out of a stack of tabloids where it must have gotten caught and nearly lost. It was written in a long, elegant hand, and all it said was “Dear Elizabeth, I wish you all the best. ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’” I knew the line from
Hamlet
—and from the yearbook pages of at least six of my high school classmates. It was signed “Lexy.” Rob’s ex-wife. It was a kind enough sentiment, but, again, strange.

In addition to having ACE as my new agency, I had a new PR company,
Lotus. My longtime publicist, P. J., was out—as Rob pointed out, it made sense to work with the same people as him across the board. For “leverage.” Lotus told me to just roll with the press onslaught. Eventually, the value of the photos would decline, and the attention would die down. My new hair and makeup guy, Joaquim, moved into the guesthouse in Malibu, and if I left the house, even for a coffee, he spent a half hour getting me ready.

At least twenty messengers arrived every day with hanging bags from various designers. Now that I was being photographed constantly, I was a “trendsetter.” Genna, my stylist, picked my outfits for events. Meg helped me with the day-to-day and managed a spreadsheet that documented everything I’d ever worn in public, when and where I wore it, and who was there. I felt like an idiot not dressing myself, but the clothing situation had become completely unmanageable. I was expected to wear something different every day, and I had no idea what I owned anymore. Or had on loan.

One morning—a few days after my twenty-fifth birthday—Meg and I were in the Brentwood guest room, getting it ready for me and Rob to co-opt while the master was being renovated. (We were breaking through a wall to “capture”—as the architect put it—what was currently a spare sitting room so it could be my dressing room.) After we finished, I had to get ready for a lunch in Beverly Hills. I was wearing what Meg had laid out for me that morning: a hand-knit sweater and jeggings. The sweater was oversize and chunky, with dolman sleeves, a built-in scarf, and earth-toned stripes. Not something I ever would have picked for myself, and now that it was midday, the cloud cover had broken and it was too hot for alpaca, or llama, or whatever hairy yaklike beast had sacrificed its wool for my warmth. As I pulled my head out of the sweater, I caught Meg pursing her lips.

“What?” I said. “Do I look like a cow?”

“Stop it,” Meg said.

“Why are you making that face?”

“It’s just—do you maybe want to pose in it first?” She explained that Lotus made deals for us to be photographed in certain clothes. This was called a “trend launch” and my rate was $20,000 a pop—twice Rob’s—assuming the designer was mentioned by name in a major media outlet. If not, if the item was photographed but there was no mention of the brand, then the fee dropped down a tier.

“
Twenty thousand dollars?
To wear a sweater for five minutes?” I was no stranger to freebies, but now it turned out I wasn’t just getting free shit. I was getting
paid
to make use of the free shit.

“Well, not always. We drove them up pretty high on this one since it isn’t exactly you.” Meg wrinkled her nose at the sweater.

I looked in the mirror. “What’s me?” I asked. Meg laughed, but didn’t respond. “No, I’m serious,” I said.

Meg took a moment. “Okay, well, I think I’ve heard Genna pitch you as ‘urban refined’—tailored and classic, but with shoes and bags that pop.” She reached into the closet and pulled out a navy silk blazer that looked like someone had taken a razor to its back. “Here, is this better?”

“But what about the twenty thousand dollars?”

“Some other day,” she said, shrugging.

That $20,000 was at the back of my mind all day. It was a lot of money, but what did it even mean to me now? I never saw the bills, but we probably spent at least that much every time Rob shut down a restaurant so we could have a night out. At the same time, that kind of money could change people’s lives. It could provide clean water to some googleable number of children for a year. Aurora’s charity could build a school or two in Africa. And I could earn it for wearing a sweater. A dinner out; two wells in Africa (I googled it); a school.

My next thought was
Great, I’ll do it
. I’ll wear whatever they want—so long as the money goes to charity. I would relinquish my fashion autonomy for the greater good.

The next day when I proposed this to Meg, she just said, “Don’t overthink it. They’ll keep making the deals. Sometimes you’ll like the product, sometimes you won’t. Don’t sell yourself out. There’s always another opportunity.”

“And what about the money?” I asked. “I want it to go to a worthy cause.”

“Rob gives forty percent of his net annual income to charity,” Meg said. “It adds up to a whole lot more than your trend fees.” Right. So that was that. Sorry, Africa.

My birthday had passed. (A dinner with Rob. More diamonds.) I was already getting more attention than any human being could tolerate. So why did I have a blowout twenty-fifth birthday party that garnered a tabloid grand slam? (That’s what Lotus called landing the covers of all three major tabloids—
Rounder
,
Glam
, and
Starlight
—in one week.) When Meg suggested the party to me, she gave me two reasons. The first was that now that I was a client, ACE wanted to throw me a sort of coming-out celebration. They were the most powerful agency in Hollywood, and, as my father had pointed out, it made sense to be at Rob’s agency. They would do anything to make their biggest client happy, and Rob would be happy if I was happy. ACE had the power to transform my career overnight.

The second reason to have the event was that apparently Rob had already signed off on it, so it didn’t really matter what I thought anyway.

It says something about Meg that when she said the birthday party would be fun, I almost believed her. Plus I needed to take my mind off
Man of Her Dreams
. The preliminary reviews were trickling in, and they weren’t good.

My birthday party needed a theme, because that’s how celebrity party planners work. You can’t just say, “Come to my birthday party,” stick some candles in a store-bought cake, and call it a day. Bethamy, who did all of Rob’s events, could see that I was an inexperienced hostess, so she spent hours walking me through the process, which, now that I think of it, wouldn’t have taken nearly so long were it not for Bethamy’s propensity for run-on sentences. As Bethamy informed me, first there had to be an idea board, and Bethamy was sure I had a favorite historical period or a tropical destination or a famous crime spree that captured my feelings surrounding my first quarter century of life, and if I wasn’t sure what to pick, no worries, because Bethamy herself had the best vendors, and her parties were
transformative
. Right now she was seeing a 1920s gangster theme—Rob in a chalk-stripe suit and a Panama hat. Me in a beret and tight sweater, smoking a cigarette (I liked that part). Did that give me any ideas? I felt sure Bethamy was trying to get me to suggest Bonnie and Clyde, but I refused to bite. With fake money bags and toy guns and cigars? Did I see it?
No, Bethamy, I didn’t see it yet.
A bullet-ridden getaway car? An old Ford?
Nope, nothing.
Finally I said, “I like books about explorers. Mountain climbers. Jailbreaks. The Donner party. Could you make a cannibal theme work?” That shut her up for a good five minutes.

Bethamy presented swatches for the color scheme, suggesting that séance (dark blue) and nugget (tan) were together very sophisticated, and she created an online idea board with inspirational images from centerpieces to movie stills to “floral design moments” illustrating which sexy vibe of all the sexy vibes she was planning to replicate. I didn’t have to worry about anything, because Bethamy was here. All I needed to do was show up and look pretty. And get something done about my brows, according to Bethamy.

We finally settled on a theme: “Fire and Ice.” Don’t ask me what that had to do with me, or turning twenty-five. I picked it because if I hadn’t Bethamy was pushing hard for “Prom,” and I had to draw the line somewhere.

The invitation went out by hand in a red lacquer box. Inside was a black candle (“ink” was one of my secondary theme colors) in Rob and my signature scent (the one Bethamy had commissioned for our engagement). The invitation was white, with a red vellum overlay cut in the shape of a flame. It was subtler than it sounds. They had to mock up the vellum six times to satisfy Bethamy, but the results were very chic, if excessive.

Aurora flew in from Chicago for the party. It was the first time she’d seen Rob’s house—any of them. (We were in Brentwood since it was more convenient to the party.) Aurora and I sat by the pool, and I listened while she ticked off the wow factors in my new life.

“And this is just
one
of the houses! Or should I say palaces. How many are there?”

“This one, Malibu, Aspen, the town house in New York, and a flat in London.”

“Flat. Listen to you.”

“That’s what they call it!” I said.

“Free clothes . . . because rich people get everything for free.”

“I donate a lot . . .”

“And servants. How many servants do you have?”

“They aren’t servants,” I said.

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Each house has people. I don’t even see a lot of them.” The truth was that at first I tried to remember all the names, and I certainly knew the key staff members, but I got fuzzy as soon as it came to
gardeners; house, car, and animal maintenance; and people who weren’t full-time, like the AV guy, the second security shift, and travel staff.

“Does it feel weird, a little Marie Antoinette?”

“Sometimes. Like I can’t just walk into the kitchen and get myself a peanut butter sandwich—”

“Or cake,” Aurora chimed in.

“But I tell myself that if you have money, it’s good to spend it. We’re creating jobs.”

“Yeah, the president should thank you when he gives his jobs report.”

“I’ll be sure to mention that when we go to the White House to screen Rob’s movie.”

“And parody has become reality.”

Rob had lived this way for so long that he didn’t notice it, so it was hard to talk with him about it. But the truth was that if I’d always said what was on my mind, I’d constantly be going around saying, “Oh my God we get whatever we want! Oh my God we can fly anywhere at any time! Oh my God how much did this necklace fucking cost?” Even if she was busting my chops, with Aurora I could at least finally acknowledge just how over the top it all was.