You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up
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Authors: Lisa Jakub
YOU LOOK LIKE THAT GIRL…
For J
Every day
A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up
LISA JAKUB
Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Jakub
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jakub, Lisa, 1978-
You look like that girl : A child actor stops pretending and finally grows up. / Lisa Jakub – First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8253-0746-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Jakub, Lisa, 1978- 2. Actors–United States–Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.J2854A3 2015
791.4502’8092–dc23
[B]
2014035733
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Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books
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Printed in the United States of America
Interior design by Jane Perini
Cover Design by Michael Short
C
HAPTER 2
5th Grade Career Building
C
HAPTER 3
The Show Must Go On. Really
C
HAPTER 10
Please Wait at the Bottom of the Ocean
C
HAPTER 11
Professional Pretender
C
HAPTER 13
I’m Not Your Actress
C
HAPTER 14
It All Comes Down to a List
C
HAPTER 15
Love. No Quotation Marks
C
HAPTER 16
When Even Work Wasn’t Working
C
HAPTER 17
We Do It Different Round These Parts
C
HAPTER 20
I Am, Because We Are
Composite headshot, showing my versatility as an actor. As you can see, my hair can go forwards or back.
P
HOTO
: N
ICK
S
EIFLOW
LISA JAKUB
1985. Ontario, Canada.
Being a seven-year-old actor does not make you popular; it makes you fascinating, much in the way that dissecting a frog is fascinating. It’s an interest tinged with a feeling of uneasy tension. It’s a look-but-don’t-get-too-close kind of curiosity. It was a lot for potential friends in my Grade 3 class to wrap their minds around. There I was, sitting next to them during art period, dipping pipe cleaners in Elmer’s glue, when just that morning while they were eating breakfast, I had been singing the praises of Cottonelle toilette paper through their TV. It might have been normal for me, but they found it rather disconcerting.
Mikki was the perfect confidant. She would set her thoughtful, chocolate-milk-colored eyes on me and suddenly the weird, sideways glances and confused whispers would fade into the background. Mikki was four years older than me but our age difference never seemed to pose a problem. She had a dirty grey muzzle and long fur that poked out from between her toes. Her tail was always matted with a collection of dirt, leaves, and the occasional dead ladybug. She was arthritic and deaf. A thyroid condition made her rather obese and she possessed very little control over her bodily functions. While my dog was indeed my best friend, it would be untruthful of me to omit the fact that she had very little human competition.
That Saturday afternoon, they came on bikes. Five of them. One I knew; Karen. She was cute, tall, blonde, and the earliest known representation
of everything I found intimidating about women later in life. The other four kids I had seen around. They were Older Boys. They were nine-year-olds, and anyone nearing double digits was, of course, automatically and rightfully awarded a daunting level of prestige.
From the dining room window, I could see them coming. Karen’s pink streamers were waving from her handlebars, trumpeting the gang’s arrival. It was both thrilling and horrifying to realize that they must have been coming to my house to play; no other kids lived on my block. Clearly, they wanted to ride bikes with me. I had a bike, but riding it had proven challenging. My mother had kindly blamed my compete lack of balance and coordination on an ear surgery I had undergone half my life earlier, but since I still can’t ride well, the blame likely lays with a general lack of physical grace.
Since there was little chance of becoming proficient on a bike by the time the posse reached my front door, I required an alternate strategy. I grabbed my skateboard from the hall closet. This had become my way of seeming beyond the bike. I was cooler than the bikers. I rocked a board. My skateboard deck was laminated with tie-dye blue and green swirls and had a glow-in-the-dark sticker on the underbelly that said “SLIME-BALL” in all capital letters. I never really understood the purpose of such a sticker but it came with the board and it made me feel tough. Nobody had a bike with a mean word on it.
The plan was in place. When they asked me to ride bikes, I would take a cool moment to consider their offer and then offhandedly say the line, “I’d rather skate,” while flashing my edgy sticker. They would be suitably impressed with my independent, bad-ass choice and we would ride off into the sunset on our respective modes of transportation.
BANG. BANG. BANG. They were here. Karen and The Older Boys had come for me. Trembling a little with nervousness and excitement, I adjusted my board just so, attempting to make it look casual in my arms, the mean sticker facing out.
When I opened the door, there they were, fanned out on my front
step. The boys seemed to be mostly inspecting their shoelaces, but they took quick glances up at me. Karen stood in front of them, flashed a smile and flipped her hair in a way that made her suddenly look like she was seventeen. Karen pointed to my face as she addressed her gang.
“See, I told you guys the girl from TV lived here.”
The Older Boys took this as their cue to really examine what stood before them. One pushed his glasses up to get the clearest view possible. They squinted in scrutiny, trying to picture it, then nodded in agreement. My face did indeed match the television face. After murmuring to each other, “That’s pretty cool,” they each handed Karen a dollar before they got on the bikes they could all ride proficiently. And they left. Without ever saying a word to me.
They had dissected their subject. They had inspected me and poked around, displaying my most tender guts. When they got their fill of the weirdness they moved on, leaving me splayed out, pinned to a board, and rejected. I told Mikki that Karen was a SLIMEBALL. She agreed by peeing on the carpet.
My adopted hometown is small and sweet and adorably southern. We like grits and sweet tea and sing-songy little phrases laced with just a tinge of sarcasm. There are rolling hills snaked with post-and-board fencing and everyone waves at everyone. I spend a great deal of time now doing yoga, because after a yoga class, I feel wrung out and cleansed like my soul just went through the deluxe carwash.
In the dressing room after class, I was marinating in that state that yogis affectionately call “yoga stoned.” That’s when everything feels still and beautiful because you have cleared your mind and loosened up your hamstrings. The room was busy but quiet as everyone reveled in their spiritual accomplishments, as evidenced by their sweaty Lululemons. I was peeling off my yoga gear when a girl wrapped in a towel stepped
out from the shower. She was running her hands through her freshly-washed hair and I could smell fair-trade organic tea-tree conditioner. Suddenly, she froze, fingers entwined in the wet tangles near her scalp. She furrowed her brow at me.
“Hey, why do I know you?” she asked.
“Oh, well, I go to UVA. Do we have a class together?”
“No. I’m still in high school. But I totally know you.”
“I am here at the yoga studio a lot, maybe that’s it,” I deflected.
“No, that’s not it…I’ll figure it out,” she said slightly ominously. Just as she was starting to turn away she jerked her head back.
“Oh my God, wait. I know you from movies, right? You’re one of those actors who decided to move away from Hollywood and escape it all?”
At that point, the dressing room got even quieter and all the exhausted, yet suddenly interested yogis turned to look at us, wondering if she was right. I glanced down at the bra I was about to put on and was reminded how gross it is getting recognized while naked; this wasn’t the first time. I gave her the “hold on one second” signal and fought with my tangled bra straps, all while trying to plaster my most sparkly Hollywood smile on my face.
I gave up acting but I’m not convinced it’s possible to give up being an actor. Celluloid is eternal and if you happen to have been in films that are constantly on the Sunday afternoon cable circuit, it’s like you never left at all. I’m stuck to that film life like it’s fly paper; regardless of how much I flap and try to get away, another leg just gets stuck in the gooey mess. Although I am no longer an active member of the world’s second oldest profession, the condition of being an actor remains. I’m overly emotional, overly sensitive and under confident.
At the age of twenty-two, I decided to leave L.A. in an attempt to save myself from my smoldering misery. I had no right to my misery, it wasn’t earned through great loss or physical pain, but there it was anyway, sitting on my chest and quietly suffocating me. Leaving seemed to be my one and only shot at a fulfilling life, a life where I could be myself… whoever the hell that was. When I finally dragged myself out of the Hollywood fog and into the blinding light of the “real world” I realized that I was no longer able to hide behind the veil of needing to be emotionally raw for the purpose of furthering my craft. In the creative realm, my endless psychosis was passed off as sacrifice and dedication. In the “real world,” I was just a mess.
If you are looking forward to a tell-all, full of dirt and scandal, I would
like to apologize in advance. This is not a chronicle of the millions of celebrities I have slept with, as I have not slept with millions of celebrities, and I refuse to count early 90’s MTV personalities nor the brothers of famous people as “celebrities.” This book does not contain tales of wild nights trashing hotel rooms, romps through rehab, or orgies with rock bands. I have no eating disorders. I have never “accidentally” tweeted a naked photo of myself. This book is neither seething nor bitter. I am not crafting an exposé of anyone. All of that hackneyed Hollywood crap is overdone.
I am a pretty normal person. I just lived an unusual life for a while, and what follows are my observations of the people, places and things that one sees while living that existence. I am telling what I believe to be the truth of my life, with a few exaggerations thrown in because it’s funnier that way.
