You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (21 page)

Of course, there were times when I thought back about the TV show and worried about my career path. As it turned out, the pilot didn’t get picked up anyway, so it was unlikely that it would have been massively career-altering. Regardless, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, dancing to “I Will Always Love You” on a boat that never left the dock, as my wilting corsage fell apart on the dance floor.

For many years, I carried a vintage lunchbox from the 1950s as a purse. It was made of tin and depicted cartoon vignettes from a school setting on the front. A marching band strutted across the top, and beakers bubbled in a science lab. On the inside lid of the lunch box, I taped a cartoon showing a different kind of classroom. A teacher stands at the front as attentive students lean forward in their seats. The sign on the door indicates that this is “Evelyn Wood’s School of Acting.” The teacher holds a pointer and gestures to a single word on the blackboard. It reads, “Pretend.”

This is very funny. Like most things that are funny, the reason it is funny is because it is true. Actors get a disproportionate amount of reverence for our craft. Personally, I think there should be Oscars given for coal mining. Or to those people who search for dead bodies in swamps. Those jobs are demanding. There should be a red carpet night for 911 operators and orphanage employees. A drug treatment counselor should be dripping with diamonds and answering, “Who are you wearing?”

Nevertheless, at some point, slowly and without my awareness, I submerged myself in L.A. life. Going out and hearing, “Hey, you look like that girl from that movie,” followed by a realization and screaming, became the norm. I went to have coffee with three different people, in
three different coffee shops, on the same day. It was considered productive to spend the entire afternoon driving to an audition and reading just four pages of dialogue. It became acceptable to not immediately remember if today was a weekend or a weekday. My work responsibilities included going to parties where I pretended not to notice when Cher walked by on her way to the coat check. I kissed everyone on both cheeks and used the word “brilliant” to describe a lot of people who might or might not have been deserving of the label. My car was full of half-read scripts and parking passes for film studios. Going to the movies four times a week was considered research and a tax write-off. I did all the things I was supposed to, but I always wondered if the L.A. lifestyle was an acting challenge that I wasn’t quite up for.

I wasn’t happy, but happiness wasn’t something that it occurred to me to desire. Who expects to be a happy artist? I assumed the job required me to be brooding and morose. I was doing what everyone else around me was doing, and they all seemed—if not quite content—at least deeply devoted to this existence. A non-movie life was the consolation prize to those who didn’t make it here, so clearly this was as good as it got. Life in Los Angeles became the accepted delusion.

The prom boyfriend and I didn’t make it much beyond prom, so I went on a date with an unbelievably hot guy who worked at my neighborhood Mexican restaurant. We sipped non-fat soy lattés and pretended to accidentally bump our legs into one another under the metal café table. He was very skilled at talking about himself, and I was fascinated to learn that having a Native American father and a Swedish mother resulted in an Abercrombie and Fitch model. He wanted to be an actor (no shock there) and talked about movies with the same dreamy, Vaselinelensed tone that everyone in L.A. did. I was finally able to offer up some of my autobiographical information and mentioned that I was Canadian.

“You’re Canadian? Whoa! Man, your English is really good.”

I spent a very long time considering whether or not we should have a second date.

Everyone knew
Independence Day
was going to be big. It had a big budget, big actors, a big director, and we blew up a lot of big buildings. It had to be big. This created additional pressure for the actors in the film because there would be a lot of press and we needed to speak coherently. As always for me, the best part of shooting was that feeling of community, which even included off-set opportunities to make out with 90s heartthrob Andrew Keegan. But sadly, actor hook-ups are not appropriate interview stories. I was supposed to talk about the magic of movie-making and my personal acting motivation, subjects that made me even more tongue-tied than Andrew and I ever were.

With James Duval and Giuseppe Andrews on the set of
Independence Day.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
.

There is such a thing as media training. This was not something that I ever had, but it exists, and should be mandatory for all young actors. If you are not trained on how to answer reporters’ questions properly, in a manner that is polite but still retaining a sense of your own self, interviews tend to feel like you are being filleted and offered up on a platter. The words, “I’d rather not talk about that,” didn’t exist in my vocabulary. I was terrified of looking like some entitled Hollywood brat. I felt the compulsive need to be nice to everyone and answer all their questions like a good girl. I was far more concerned about making interviewers like me than I was about protecting my soul. Therefore, interviews felt scary, unpredictable, and completely out of my control. Anyone who had the slightest interest in seeing my most sacred guts was welcome to get in there and poke around. They could even move in if they wanted to, and rearrange the place to their liking. As long as it felt like they would give me a hug when we were done, anything they wanted was fair game.

Even deeper than my desire to people-please was my concern that during an interview they would find out the truth; I was not a real actor. Real actors were passionate and dedicated and never felt like they were just puppets. The film industry expected me to be one thing, but my heart always had doubts. I was an impostor. When I spoke honestly about being uncomfortable with the concept of fame, it only elicited confused looks from reporters. So, I said the things I heard other people say.
This is a dream come true.
I attempted to talk romantically and wistfully about my job and give people the impression that under my straight teeth and shy smile was an ingénue, primed for worshipping.

The
Independence Day
premiere was just as big as the movie. There were fireworks and multiple screenings in multiple theaters and streets were closed for hours to accommodate the parade of Hummer limos.
The party was so chockablock full of excessively cool people, that no one building could contain all the hipness. The screening was at the Mann Plaza in Westwood but the party continued outside, where the streets were equally decked out with carefully thought-out mood lighting and attractive servers.

My mom was my date. Having spent much of my childhood sharing a Murphy bed with her, she was still pretty much my best friend and constant companion. Our relationship was definitely unusual—part friends, part business partners—so I knew I could count on her to be a good premiere date and not drag me into any of the drama that came with bringing a boyfriend to these sorts of work events.

My insecurity was enhanced by premieres. I’d watch Faye Dunaway effortlessly pose for 200 paparazzi and then I’d hear Billy Crystal’s laugh as he entertained the crowd behind me. How was I ever going to be comfortable at these things? I held my mom’s hand as we turned sideways to shimmy through the masses and get to some freer space away from the bar. I realized that I was clinging to her like a small child, but it helped me somehow. I was eighteen years old, but holding Mom’s hand at least made me felt a little more protected. This did have the unintended consequence of leading people to think that my young-looking mother and I were a couple, but creating a lesbian rumor was the least of my worries at these things.

While Mom ordered us food at Johnny Rockets, one of the restaurants that had been closed to the public for our premiere, I waited out on the balcony where there were only a few people milling around. My feet hurt, and I was running through the list people I needed to say hello to, so I could go home and put on some sweatpants. A man walked out and leaned on the railing, apparently needing a quiet moment, too. I looked out into the sky and reminded myself that this was just part of the job, there was more networking to be done; I didn’t have my next show booked and premieres were filled with producers on the look-out. I took a final deep breath and calculated the exact amount of time this would
all require, when:

“Hey, want a smoke?”

I looked up and said that I didn’t smoke but thanks. I was immediately regretful of my healthy habits as I registered his face. It was PeeWee Herman.

Paul Reubens was offering me a cigarette and once you say “No, thank you” it’s really hard to take it back. I’d never had a cigarette before, since even being in the vicinity of a smoker sent me into a coughing fit. I doubted my ability to look cool even holding one, since my instinct was to hold it like a pencil. I was trying to figure out how to make small talk, when he turned around and started chatting with someone else. Someone who, presumably, knew enough to not hold a cigarette like a pencil.

I had grown up watching PeeWee’s playhouse. He had been my constant, non-judgmental friend. I’d watch him when I was home and the other kids were out riding bikes. I’d watch him when I traveled to location shoots and was spending long hours waiting around to film my scenes. He was predictable. I was never the weird one in the company of PeeWee, Miss Yvonne and Chairri. Their weirdness eclipsed my own and they reveled in it.

And now I’d passed up the chance to have a smoke with PeeWee. Almost sharing a smoke is not nearly as good of a story, but it will have to do because I’m not trying to get sued. “I love your work,” was a thoroughly unoriginal line at these things and there was really nothing else to say. I simply took a long last look at my childhood hero and went back into the fray of the party, wishing I were a smoker.

At a certain point, right around my PeeWee moment, although not necessarily because of it, some people might have called me “successful.” This concept is deserving of quotes because success seems to be the Bigfoot of the entertainment industry. People are convinced that
it is out there somewhere, lurking just out of reach, but no one has ever really seen it or felt it.
Mrs. Doubtfire
broke box office records and I got mobbed upon leaving my house.
Independence Day
was widely adored for the fact that we punched an alien in the face, and I had the honor of being the trailer girl who didn’t want to die a virgin.

However, like many actors I knew, I failed miserably at
feeling
successful. When we signed autographs we worried we would be failures if we never signed another one. When we were auditioning, we worried we would never work again. When we were working, we worried that the film might be terrible and could ruin our careers. When the film came out, we worried about publicity and what our next move should be and wondered if the public was getting tired of us. Then, we’d start auditioning again and the whole vicious cycle would repeat.