There Goes My Social Life (15 page)

“I'm glad you came,” he said, ushering me into his dark room.

“It's a nice enough day,” I said after I noticed that all of his curtains were drawn. “You should let the sun in.”

“Come on,” he said, climbing into his bed. “Just get in bed with me. I want to watch a couple of scenes with you to make you more comfortable.”

I'd heard of the “casting couch” and how female stars sometimes had to sleep around to get ahead. I was shocked that the producers just expected me to hop into bed with a fellow actor. I'm sure there are other actresses who did. In fact, many of my friends in Hollywood didn't think a thing of it, because the joys of fame and money were enticing enough to make it worth it.

But I wasn't going to sleep with this celeb for a role. I knew that. It just took me a moment to realize what was happening and to collect myself. I went and sat on the foot of his bed, my heart almost beating out of my chest. He put on a movie and began explaining what he wanted to do with me.

I stood up, turned around, and said through gritted teeth, “First of all, I'm not fucking you. Second, I'm not doing the sex scene. Third, I'm not quitting so you're gonna have to fire me.”

Then I walked out the door.

One of the best benefits of belonging to the Screen Actors Guild was this: If I quit, I wouldn't get paid. But if they fired me, I'd get paid regardless.

The next thing I knew, every producer came knocking on my door.

“Can I take you to dinner?” one said. “Let's try to clean this mess up.”

The expensive meal started out okay—filet, cooked rare—though I knew he was just doing damage control. By the time dessert rolled around, the producer was so drunk I had to drive his car back to the hotel.

“This business is absolutely crazy,” I said to myself. The producers replaced me with another actress, but I took the money and went back to my son.

I heard a sound at the door, and my blood ran cold.

Axel was still unhappy with my disappearing act. I moved from place to place with Austin, always haunted by the fear that he might show up. When I lived in the Valley with my brother, he found me there. And so I had moved in with a friend. My life was full of anxiety as I lived every day looking over my shoulder, scanning parking lots before I got into my car, and checking (and re-checking) all of the locks before going to sleep.

Sometimes, locks just aren't enough.

I had just put Austin to sleep upstairs and was talking with my friend. We exchanged glances.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

She nodded, so I crept closer to the door to investigate. Just as I got to the opening to look through the peephole, the door flew open. Axel had kicked it open, completely ripping it off its hinges. The door hit me in the head and caused me to fall onto the ground. Before I knew what was happening, Axel had jumped on top of me and begun punching me.

I started kicking, screaming, and fighting with all of my might.

I went to that place—that crazy place where all I felt was fury and all I could see was red. I'd been living in fear for too long. Years of pent-up fear and resentment surfaced and I felt an anger beyond anything I'd ever felt in my life.

Other than making enough noise to get the attention of hopefully some Good Samaritan neighbors, I had two things on my mind. First, Austin was asleep upstairs on the bed. By this time, he was three years old. He could've easily awakened and come down the stairs to see his mother getting beaten up. I could never forgive myself if he saw something like that.

Second, I had a gun upstairs in a shoebox.

Yes, I'd bought a gun, and I don't want to hear one liberal's criticism about that. Though I was not some sort of gun rights activist—and never would've called myself a Republican at the time—I knew this: I had a child and I was going to protect him.

I don't weigh much and I'll never be a match for probably any guy. I always liked to think that when I was attacked, I'd be some sort of badass who could kick and punch my way out of a bad situation. But that only happens in movies. In a physical struggle, even if I began lifting weights every day, I know I'd lose. I know from experience that I'd lose. And guess what? Having Austin made me realize this cold, hard fact: I was sick of losing.

There's a great quote that comes to mind. “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
¹
I like to change that a little bit to say, “But Sam Colt made women equal to men, if they know their way around a firearm.”

And so I got a gun and learned how to use it.

Or I hoped I knew how to use it.

Somehow I slipped out of Axel's grasp and bolted up the stairs straight to my closet and grabbed the shoebox. I grabbed my revolver, which wasn't loaded, and headed to get the ammo. I could hear my friend downstairs yelling at Axel, trying to get him to leave. She knew exactly what I was doing and really wanted to avoid that scene.

“She called the cops!” I could hear her yelling. “You better leave, because she called the cops!”

He apparently wasn't buying it, and I knew I had a limited amount of time. As I fumbled with the bullets, I heard the distinctive, loud plodding of Axel's shoes coming up the stairs. One. Two. Three. Four. His steps were heavy and deliberate. He wasn't afraid of me.

Yet.

I finally got the gun loaded, headed out of my closet, and came down the stairs. I didn't expect him to be already halfway up the stairs. Suddenly, there we were face to face. He saw the gun. I have no idea what he thought was going to happen. Maybe he thought I'd gotten the gun just to scare him. Maybe he thought I didn't have the guts to pull the trigger. Either way, I could tell by the smirk on his face that he underestimated the fierce protectiveness of a momma. I wasn't going to let my son grow up in fear. Nor was I going to let any harm come to him. There, on the stairs, stood the one man who threatened my life. When he threatened my life, he threatened Austin's.

And so I lifted the gun up to his head and pulled the trigger.

It was a tough shot to make, since he was coming up and I was going down. My depth perception was off, and I was so disoriented by fear and anger that I missed. But by this time, I was committed. I wanted to kill him. I pulled the trigger two more times, missing him each time.

However, he got the message loud and clear. Axel ran down the stairs and out of my house.

By this time, I was hysterical, my clothes were torn, I had a black eye, the door was off the hinges, and Austin was crying upstairs. Immediately, I started to disassemble the gun.

It might seem like an odd reflex, but I wasn't used to being near police. I never saw them when I was growing up in the South Bronx, so I wasn't sure what it would be like if they showed up to your house after something so terrible—so very close to being tragic—had occurred. I was already filling with guilt and shame—
Why had I pulled the trigger? What if the bullet had connected?
I shuddered and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Take this,” I said, handing all of the various parts of my .22 to my friend. “Get out of here and take these parts with you. Get rid of them however you can, in different locations.”

As silly as it sounds, I'd seen this in a movie—
The Godfather Part II
—and somehow fell into autopilot. I didn't want to deal with the police, who I knew would show up momentarily after my neighbors undoubtedly heard the gunshots. I didn't want anyone to know what I'd done, I didn't want them to ask me questions, I didn't want to fill out paperwork, and I didn't want to go down to the precinct with them to fill out a report.

She took the pieces of the gun. “Where should I hide these parts?”

“Go and throw them off the side of the freeway every two miles,” I said, off the top of my head. “Just look for places.”

Two cops showed up at my door a few minutes after she left.

“Your neighbors reported gunshots coming from this apartment,” the shorter one said as he stepped through the opening where a door used to be. He had kind eyes, as if he'd seen this scene too many times and didn't even have to ask questions to understand exactly what had happened.

“Really? Not from here,” I said. “I don't have a gun. There's no gun here.”

The cop took a look at the door, at my black eye, then at his partner.

“You know, clearly someone kicked the door off the hinges,” he said slowly. “Just so you know, had you killed whoever was trying to get you, it would have been justifiable homicide.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. “There's no gun.”

Right behind where I was talking to the officers were two bullet holes.
Oh God
, I silently prayed.
Please don
'
t let them look up there
.

“So this door . . .” his voice trailed off and he examined it. “You just doing some remodeling?”

I began to tell him exactly what had happened that night . . . more or less. I definitely didn't tell them I'd tried to kill a man. As I talked, slowly and deliberately, I knew—with every minute that passed—that my friend had thrown yet another piece of my .22 off the side of the interstate.

If I hadn't had a gun to defend myself that day when Axel came after me—I don't even want to think about what would have happened.

But our freedom to own guns and use them wisely is under attack from those who don't like or understand guns. Our Constitution guarantees our God-given right “to keep and bear arms.” It is a moral right given to us by our Creator to defend ourselves and those we love. The government has no business restricting my ability to protect myself. The reality is that having a gun saved my life—and no big-government bully can take that right from me.

Eric Holder has said his failure to increase gun control was the “single failure” of his time as Attorney General.
²
(I can think of a lot of other
actual
failures on his part.) But it was Obama who said people “cling to guns . . . as a way to explain their frustrations.” Well, trust me—if I had died that day, it would have been a frustrating experience. Having a gun to cling to sure did help.

I use guns for two reasons—to hunt and to defend myself and my family. Hunting drives all of my Hollywood friends crazy. I love going hunting and then casually mentioning it to my friends who recoil at the thought—as they relax on luxurious leather sofas—just to see them get all worked up. The movie producers making films that could be ads for the NRA are the same ones saying we should take away everybody's guns. It would be funny if it didn't put real people at risk.

All of them would be quick to defend their right to free speech—and I would defend their right to make violent movies. But our Second Amendment right to own guns is no less of a fundamental right. I'm only alive today because I had a gun—and I used it.

In my case, my gun was not loaded and the ammunition was stored in a separate place. However, even that's not enough for the Constitution-hating liberals in San Francisco. San Francisco's police code says that no one can keep a handgun in his home unless the handgun is either being carried or “stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock.” Of course, as constitutional attorney David French (the husband of my collaborator Nancy French) points out, this effectively makes handguns useless for defense when most break-ins and robberies happen—at night when people are asleep and would need to wake up and react in seconds. If San Franciscans are caught breaking this law, they can spend up to six months in jail or be fined up to $1,000.
³

But if my gun had been locked in a safe or disabled with a trigger lock when Axel showed up, I wouldn't have been able to get to it. When someone is trying to attack you, seconds matter. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a gun-carrying woman is less of a target and more empowered than one cowering on the floor waiting for “what's coming to her.”

I've been both.

But this time, I chose to be empowered.

I never had to deal with Axel again.

TEN

NOT REALLY CLUELESS

A dream is a wish your heart makes.

—from
Cinderella

“G
od, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” the man in the front of the room said. A couple of the people bowed their heads, one said, “Amen,” and I joined the remaining dozen or so who just looked ahead silently.

It was my first time in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I reached over and squeezed the hand of the blond-headed man to my right. He looked at me with his green eyes and smiled.

“You can do it,” Matthew said. He'd been sober five years, which, honestly, was one of the first things that attracted me to him. As I got to know him, I appreciated his laid-back approach to life, his even-temperedness, and his kindness. He was an aspiring actor and already knew me from my past work. His sobriety inspired me to give up drugs as well, so I joined AA and began to get my life together. Our relationship got pretty serious, so I wasn't totally surprised when he proposed. I selected a beautiful, but not very large, diamond for a ring . . .

Also, I paid for it.

I couldn't expect too much from a guy who lived with his mom. In fact, Austin and I had moved in with Matthew and his mother. So suddenly we were a very non-traditional family, but it worked. He was sober, I was sober, and life suddenly seemed more manageable.

Plus, I kept getting great occupational opportunities. I got a chance to work on
Renaissance Man
with so many iconic comedians and great actors: director Penny Marshall, Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, Mark Wahlberg, and Lillo Brancato. In the film, Danny DeVito is a broke Detroit advertising exec who loses his job and ends up as an instructor on a nearby Army base. His task is to increase the basic comprehension skills of eight tough cases. I was one of those hard cases.

Since all of the actors were from New York, we were naturally a little out of our element on set at Jackson Army Base in Columbia, South Carolina. They put us through a “boot camp” as part of a platoon to get us ready for the filming. We were instructed to act as if we were soldiers, but we got in trouble every day: for not wearing our hats, for using profanity, and for generally not following the social protocols of a Southern military base.

We were quite the contrast with the actual soldiers. I loved watching them walk in straight lines, move in unison, and exercise until they were dripping with sweat. (That didn't take long down South.)

It seems that at one point not too long ago, everyone supported the troops. It was natural and right to express appreciation for people who donned the uniform—with flags, yellow ribbons, or a handshake at the airport. Of course, when there's anything that's culturally accepted as “good,” the Left has to strike back against it. Now it's fashionable to knock soldiers down a little off their cultural pedestal.

Liberal writers point out isolated abuses at Abu Ghraib and feel they no longer have the moral responsibility to support all soldiers. Professors say we shouldn't go around thanking soldiers just for wearing the camouflage or for fighting in military actions that they don't support.

But there's enough lunacy to go around when it comes to the military. With Obama in the White House, some Republicans say that Christian conservatives shouldn't join the military until we get a better commander in chief. They argue that since religious liberty is under attack in the military—because chaplains are facing discipline for their religious points of view—Americans ought to just stop enlisting.

Give me a break. The military should be a politics-free zone, and all Americans should support them. When I was on that base, I was honored to be able to see what many Americans don't get a chance to witness—men and women who voluntarily make a decision to be willing to lay down their lives for this nation. Presidents, as unique and frustrating as they may be in their own ways, thankfully don't govern forever. But the courage and selflessness of our citizens has to be a constant quality of American life. We just can't make it as a nation if there aren't a certain number of people willing to raise their hands and take an oath to protect this country from its enemies. Christians don't get a free pass just because they don't like the guy in charge. It's spineless and isn't good for our national character. Freedom has been bought at a price—blood—and every American community should take seriously our duty to protect it.

Similarly, military service is an honorable choice that deserves respect no matter how you feel about specific military actions. When you shake a soldier's hand or give up your better seat for him on an airplane, you are honoring something far more transcendent: selflessness and courage that is a necessary ingredient for America's survival.

I don't see a lot of that in Hollywood. So I was glad, in those few months of shooting, to have a front row seat on the best elements of American life.

“Are you sitting down?” my agent asked me.

“No, I'm walking to the ocean,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Venice Beach,” I said, clutching the gigantic bag that held my sunscreen, my bottles of water, my towel. Matthew was walking a bit in front of me, carrying his surfboard. Strong offshore winds were blowing across the land toward the water, which caused my sundress to whip up around me. The winds were perfect for surfing, according to Matthew, because they caused the waves to break more cleanly and slowly. The waves that day were apparently perfect, which is why we had packed up and headed to the water.

Not that Matthew had much else to do. We'd been dating for two years, and I began to notice that his life basically revolved around surfing and trying to get a gig acting. That was pretty much it. I didn't care much about surfing, so I'd planned on going to the beach and laying out while occasionally pretending to look up and watch him on the waves. Something about my agent's tone of voice told me that my plans for the day were about to change. Maybe even for my whole life. “Why? What's going on?”

“You got it,” he said.

It had been just a couple of weeks since he sent me the script with the word “Clueless” on the front. I remember scanning the document, looking specifically for the part for which I was reading. Dionne Davenport. I didn't realize it at the time, but the script was based on Jane Austen's classic 1815 novel
Emma
. Okay, so it was a loose interpretation, but the basic plotlines and characters were there.

The film's main character Cher Horowitz parallels Austen's Emma. But instead of taking place in the early nineteenth-century countryside like the novel, the film is set in a Beverly Hills high school. Like her literary counterpart, Cher is attractive, wealthy, and spoiled. The only trouble in her charmed life happened at a very young age when her mother passed away from liposuction-gone-bad. I don't think that's how it went down in
Emma
.

The character for whom I had auditioned, Dionne, was Cher's well-dressed best friend who's a junior in high school. Together they befriend Tai Frasier, an unknown new girl from Brooklyn, who has an accent, a skater-grunge wardrobe, and a drug habit. In both the novel and the movie, the main character befriends the new girl and introduces her to a higher society. That, of course, calls for a makeover!

Okay, that might not sound like Jane Austen, but the spirit of the movie definitely honors the novel. Austen, after all, described her main character this way: “The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” Cher, with her daddy's credit card privileges, thought very well of herself. In fact, she didn't even learn how to park. Why? “What's the point? Everywhere you go has valet,” the script read.

I turned the page, and then turned another. Before I even realized it, I was all the way through the script.

I wanted this.

A few days later, I walked into the reading room. I was in front of a table that included Amy Heckerling and Twink Caplan, who are still my friends, and casting directors. I knew Amy already had two great films under her belt:
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
and
Johnny Dangerously
—one of my favorite movies.

She wasn't what I expected. She was from the Bronx and funny as hell. She was ageless, wore black eyeliner, and had great unkempt hair. She wore tights and a black skirt. I could tell immediately that she's a very real and up-front person. Authentic.

I had prepared some lines that reflected the tone of the movie.

They nodded for me to go ahead.

I got this
.

This is mine
.

I had my sides—the parts of the script that I had prepared to use for the audition—down cold, but I held the papers in my hand anyway. I liked the feel of having them there, and I could refer to them if I needed to.

I did more than read the lines. I inhabited them. And I knew they loved it and loved me.

A few days later, I got a call back. When I went back into the room again, Amy and the producer Scott Rudin wanted me to read lines with other actors who were auditioning for the character of Murray—Dionne's boyfriend.

The first actor was Terrence Howard, who has since been in several movies and even nominated for an Oscar. The second was Donald Faison, an actor from Harlem who had a quick smile and a great spirit (and later became most famous for his role on
Scrubs
). When I read with him, our chemistry was apparent to everyone. Then, on another day, I was called back in to read with Alicia Silverstone, most famous at the time for starring in Aerosmith's “Cryin'” video. Again, we had great chemistry. There were many other people who auditioned for various parts, including Reese Witherspoon (Cher), Jeremy Renner (Christian and Josh), Owen Wilson (Travis), Zooey Deschanel (Amber and Cher), Leah Remini (Tai), Seth Green (Travis), and Lauryn Hill (Dionne). After about four auditions, Amy—who later revealed she was looking for somebody who seemed like royalty for the Dionne character—made her decision.

That's why my agent was calling on that sunny day.

“I got what exactly?”

“The role in
Clueless
. You're going to be Dionne!” he said. “We're going into the negotiations on salary, but I thought you'd like to know.”

I turned off my phone and almost fell out in the middle of the street.

“What?” Matthew asked. The driver of a red Mercedes, which had stopped at the crosswalk for us, leaned out of his window to express his impatience.

“Are you going to just live in the crosswalk?” he yelled, “Or can I go to work today?”

I ignored the guy and started jumping up and down.

“Are you okay?” Matthew asked.

“I got the part!” I said, tears rolling down my face. The Mercedes rolled around us, the driver shaking his head. “I got it!”

I got out of the shower, toweled off, and looked in my closet for some comfortable clothes. It was the first day of shooting, so I didn't have to look good when I arrived. Once I got to the set, they'd send me to hair and makeup first thing. No reason to waste time doing it twice.
These should work
, I thought, slipping on my Ugg shoes, jeans, and a tee shirt, and headed to the studio.

When I arrived, I was led to a “double banger” trailer, which is just a trailer that's been divided into two.

“Nice,” I said, as I looked around the lot. In Hollywood, you can tell the importance of the actor by checking out the size of their trailer—a place where they get ready, rest, and have alone time while on set. I looked around—there was a living room, a dining area, a closet, a bathroom with a shower. Other stars were stuck into “triple bangers,” which are trailers divided into three parts with three doors. But even they were better than “honey wagons”—trailers divided into four tiny spaces. “This is great,” I said after checking out my trailer.