I'll Scream Later (No Series) (24 page)

I
N THE SPRING
of 1992 I was looking for a house to buy. It would be my first, and though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, I always trust my gut instinct and knew when I saw the right place, I’d just know it.

In late April, the Realtor called about a house in Hollywood that he thought was ideal. It had the space I wanted and the price was right, I should try to see it right away.

The house was in the hills above the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where I had stayed in 1986 when I went to the Oscars for the first time. It was not far from the apartment where I was living so I knew the neighborhood well. It was much closer to Le Dome, where I loved to treat myself to dinner, and Nicky Blair’s, where I had a favorite chopped salad that was the best ever, and a friend in Nicky, which was better still. And it was just about eight miles from the lot where
Reasonable Doubts
was being shot.

It sounded perfect. I was due to fly in for a quick break from
Hear No Evil,
I was missing Kevin, and so I thought I’d come see the house and see Kevin. Since Jack was already in Hollywood, I dispatched him to take a look first.

The day quickly turned disastrous, though I wouldn’t realize how disastrous until I landed in L.A. many hours late after my plane was rerouted from LAX to Burbank Airport after shots were fired at police helicopters in the skies above the city.

It was April 29, the day the Rodney King verdict came down, with a Simi Valley jury acquitting four police officers caught on tape beating the black motorist after a high-speed chase.

For six days the city would riot and burn. National Guard troops
would start filling the streets in South Central L.A. and span out from there. Guards wearing fatigues holding rifles could be spotted on rooftops, tanks rolled down the streets I was used to cruising.

One of the Tommy’s Hamburgers that Ruthie and I used to hit when nothing else but their famed chili burgers would do when we couldn’t concentrate—she on her studies, me on a new script—was in Koreatown on Beverly and Rampart boulevards in one of the battle zones.

Just as my life was coming together, it seemed the city I lived in and had grown to love was coming apart.

Jack was trying to deal with my flight change and didn’t realize what was happening until he went to his bank on Wilshire Boulevard, and saw the Big 5 athletic store across the street under siege and then a wave of looters running down the street holding TV sets still in their boxes.

By the time I landed, I knew there were riots, but it all seemed surreal and I couldn’t quite imagine what that meant. Kevin had left his car at Burbank Airport for me, so I was headed from the Valley back to my place. I realized just how bad it was when the car in front of me started swerving wildly—back and forth, back and forth—as if the driver was making sure no one could pass. I just tapped my horn and the car ahead slammed on the brakes. Four gangbangers piled out, shaking their fists and shouting at me. I can read lips; I knew just how scared I should be.

I used signs, gestures, anything I could to communicate that I couldn’t hear them, I was Deaf. I kept telling them over and over. My heart was racing and they were looking at me, deciding whether to believe me. I was trying to calculate how quickly I could squeeze through my window and start running. But then they turned and walked back to their car.

The rest of the drive home was a nightmare. Most of the streets were a maze of panicked gridlock, people driving on sidewalks to keep moving, and the faces in the other cars looked either frightened or angry.

The city was locked down, and everyone I knew was lying low, waiting for things to break. But Kevin, my new fiancé, was work
ing nonstop. Like every other cop in the area, he was pulling long, frightening hours. At least they were frightening to me.

Kevin is careful, I know that, but he also never hesitates to step in and do whatever is necessary to carry out his job. We are both perfectionists in that way. So my heart would sink every time he walked out the door in those days, and I would worry until he was home safely.

It really hit home for the first time what I was signing on for in falling in love with Kevin. This is the reality that I try to push aside to help me cope, knowing that each time he walks out that door to go to work, I never know what kind of danger he could step into or what he will face before the day is done.

He loves his job, has never wanted to do anything else, and he loves working the streets. But I was thrilled in the summer of 2008 when his latest promotion meant he’d spend more time at the station and far less on patrol.

The riots passed, though scars linger. For all of us, I hope we never see that rage rise up anywhere in our country again. I hope that we keep searching for ways to eliminate the anger and replant it with hope.

T
HE HOUSE IN
the hills turned out to be perfect. It had the look of an English country house with four bedrooms and views that did not stop. On clear days I could look west and see the ocean and Catalina Island. Below me was the basin of the city, with downtown rising to the east.

The two best times of day were the quiet early mornings, before the hum and buzz of Sunset Boulevard penetrated the trees, and the evenings, when the lights of this living, breathing city turned on.

As soon as I bought it, I dove into redecorating it. I wanted it to be cozy and warm. When I was asked by photographer Michael McCreary to participate in one of his projects to help fund AIDS research, I immediately said yes.

He envisioned a coffee-table book filled with photos not of celebrities—many of whom he shot as part of his day job as a top photographer—but their favorite rooms.

I didn’t have to think about which room in my house that would be—what Whoopi described in the introduction as “that room that lets you be you.”

For me it was the family room, though at the moment that meant just me and Kevin. It had a fireplace that we stoked up when the nights grew chilly, walls lined with bookshelves, and a great destresser, Galaga, the classic arcade game in which my spaceships shot down more than their share of flying insects.

But the pièce de résistance was a huge wraparound, blue denim couch, as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans, and big enough to easily seat twenty. It was covered with huge throw pillows, and in the middle of it all sat a weathered wooden coffee table that wasn’t happy unless feet were propped up on it, with a bowl of popcorn within reach. I could just sink into that couch and not move for days!

A lot of our wedding would be planned on that couch.

S
UPER
B
OWL
XXVII in 1993 was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena—Cowboys versus the Buffalo Bills. I love football; I also love Garth Brooks, who was slated to sing the national anthem that year.

That’s something I’d always wanted to do, sign the national anthem at a major sporting event. Jack put in a call to Garth to see how he’d feel about me signing while he sang. He loved the idea.

It was great watching as they set up the stage on the floor of the Rose Bowl—it might look small when you see it, but up close, it’s massive. We were getting ready to do the run-through when Garth had some words with the producer and walked off the stage.

The dispute was over whether the network would also air Garth’s video “We Shall Be Free,” which I’d participated in with lots of other actors the year before. An agreement had originally been struck, but now someone up the food chain was getting cold feet.

The song is a moving portrait of Garth’s hopes for this country. The lyrics beautifully weave together the notion that once we end poverty, war, prejudice, injustice, all the things that divide people and countries, only then will we be free. There’s no condemnation, just a prayer for a better day.

But word had come down that someone at the network thought it was too political; the network would not air the video after all. Well, Garth told them, then he would
not
be singing the national anthem. The one thing to know about Garth is that he’s a man of his word, and he expects other people to extend him the same courtesy.

Someone with the production came over and talked to Jack, alerting him that I might be signing the national anthem by myself. This was definitely not what I had had in mind. I was terrified of stepping out there by myself, Garth-less, in front of that huge stadium, packed with fans, to say nothing of the biggest television audience of the year.

How desperate were the producers? They saw Eddie Van Halen there and asked if he would step in and sing. He declined. At some point they even asked if Jack could sing. No way!

I tried to steel myself, all the while praying that the network would relent and air Garth’s video. At the last second peace was declared!

Garth sang, I signed, the video aired, and the Cowboys won. It was a great day.

My bridesmaids

W
HEN IT CAME
to a wedding, I wanted the perfect blend of elegance and comfort. We were going to be surrounded by all the people we loved, and I wanted the evening to be like a great party for everyone, the kind that you remember years later.

The first question, where to hold the wedding, was once again answered by the Winklers. Just as they had opened their hearts, then their Toluca Lake home, to me many years ago, they opened up their beautiful yard for the evening in late August that Kevin and I had settled on as the day we would marry.

As in all things, they were incredibly gracious. When the wedding planner I worked with wanted to cover their pool to create a dance floor that night—even though it would mean removing the fencing around the pool—Stacey and Henry said absolutely.

The invitations were hand-painted and my dress was white silk taffeta—off the shoulders but with sleeves capped just above the elbow. The rusching of the fitted bodice opened up into beautiful open folds of the skirt that draped to the floor. Amazing beading was at the neck and the waist. The only jewelry I wore was a pearl choker, and my four-carat diamond engagement ring.

My wedding planner convinced me to tone down my love of purple a little, so we used pale lavenders and lilacs. The bridesmaids wore plum.

The tables were covered in chintz and lace, with enough food to feed probably twice the 250 guests who came to celebrate with us.

The ceremony was short—performed by a priest and a rabbi. Kevin and I signed our vows, so in a sense we married in silence. A good friend, Jann Goldsby, signed the ceremony for my many Deaf friends who had come from Chicago to share the night with me. Liz was my matron of honor and Ruthie was my maid of honor—I couldn’t have done it without my best friend and my soul sister!—along with the other important women in my life: my bridesmaids Barbara, Barb, Gloria, Kevin’s sister Kim, and my niece, Arielle.

All my family was there, aunts, uncles, cousins. I asked both of my parents to walk me down the aisle—which had been created out of rose trees—and give me away.

Just before the ceremony, my brother Eric slipped me the coolest, funkiest pair of sunglasses that he and my brother Marc had come up with. They were white, then covered in rhinestones with a little bride and groom on each corner. Just as Kevin and I turned around to greet everyone as husband and wife for the first time, I slipped on the sunglasses and grinned. Not to be outdone, Kevin and the groomsmen showed off the hot-pink socks they were wearing under their black tuxes!

The rest of the night was filled with fun and food and dancing. We had seven food stations and the most amazing cake. Henry and Stacey were such gracious hosts, but the entire time they were greeting guests, Henry was worried about the “dance floor” that covered the pool that night—people were dancing wildly on it. Funny sight.

The final song before we left just around midnight was and is our song, “I Cross My Heart.” And I still do.

I
WAS IN
N
ORTH
Carolina; my destination was Cherry Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility where they house those who have, for the most part, lost complete touch with reality. It’s what we used to think of as an insane asylum.

At times when you are researching a character you find yourself looking in the face of some terrible tragedy that was the starting point for the story you’re going to be telling.

For me, Carrie Buck’s tragedy, which we would be telling in
Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story,
was that she never had a chance at life. As a baby she’d been abandoned by her mother and placed with foster parents. For a while she went to school, but she dropped out, taking on many of the household chores for her foster family. At seventeen, she was raped by their nephew.

It was 1923, and whether the family was motivated by shame or something even darker, Carrie was institutionalized and deemed both “feebleminded” and promiscuous. Her baby was taken away from her and handed over to her foster parents. In the months after, doctors went to court to test the Virginia Sterilization Act, which allowed them to sterilize Carrie after a court hearing. The Supreme Court affirmed the law, and Carrie was sterilized under the theory that if she was mentally incompetent, her children would be as well.

In a chilling decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

Carrie would ultimately be released from the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded and marry. Those who interviewed her over the years found a woman of normal intelligence.

Even more than sixty years later in what one would hope to be a far more enlightened time, the facility I toured was depressing, claustrophobic. Walking through the hallways, I could feel a weight of hopelessness pressing down, filling the corridors, sucking up all the air. You just knew these people would never leave, would never be able to live on their own.

I couldn’t help but think of my own situation—what if someone had mandated that the Deaf couldn’t have children, or the blind? It was that sense that anything outside what is deemed “normal” is automatically bad, something to be erased so that it doesn’t have to be faced or dealt with, or, more important, accepted.

So I took this character into my heart. If the times or the circumstances had been different, I wondered what doors might have been closed to me forever. I might make a mess of my life, but I wanted those choices and those decisions to be in my hands.

Carrie was the first character I would play who was hearing, who also speaks. That was entirely new terrain for me. I had to be able to react in scenes as if I could hear. I had enough play in my voice that I was able to sound like someone who was intellectually just a little slow.

I also studied Dustin Hoffman in
Rain Man,
with the sound and captioning turned off. If you’re an actor, hearing or Deaf, it’s a great lesson to watch a movie with no sound to see how an actor’s body language and face are communicating. By that measure, Dustin’s performance was a master class.

For the first time I was working with my friend Melissa Gilbert, who’d been acting professionally since she was a small child and was only ten when she took on the iconic role of Laura Ingalls on
Little House on the Prairie
.

Melissa would play a young attorney who works on the case and becomes convinced that what is happening to Carrie is inhumane. We were already close, but the two of us completely bonded on this film.

A different type of role for me. I played a hearing woman in the film
Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story
opposite my good friend Melissa Gilbert. (Credit: CORBIS/SYGMA)

I find that I learn something from almost any actor I work with. With each experience I try to keep myself open for what I might discover—good or bad—from my colleagues. I was intrigued by how Melissa could seemingly just flip a switch and be in whatever emotional peak or valley the script called for. She knew how to get there in an instant.

It was about the acting process—learning how to bounce off the energy and intensity of each other in any scene, many of which were highly emotional.

But it was also about the downtime, when we could just kick back and be girlfriends. We talked about important things, we talked about silly things, and, boy, did we have a great time gossiping!

The challenge of acting and reacting like someone who hears means so many tiny things: the tightening of the muscles in your back at the sound of a car door closing outside; the slight tilt of your head as the mail drops in the slot. All the physical and verbal changes that happen while carrying on a conversation with your back turned. All of that I needed to be able to do believably, even though I couldn’t hear the door close, the mail drop, or when dialogue began or ended.

I always work closely with my interpreter, but in this case Bill Pugin and I worked overtime to develop cues that he could give me off camera so that I could make my reactions look effortless.

I was proud of my work on this film, which is unusual for me as a perfectionist, and pleased when the performance earned me a CableACE nomination. But more than anything, I felt grateful that after all these years I’d been able to give Carrie a voice. She had passed away in 1983, in her later years saying that one of her chief regrets was that she and her husband were unable to have more children. She was buried next to her daughter, an intellectually normal child, who died at eight of an infection while still in foster care.

S
OMETIMES THE ROLE
brings the tragedy to you, but at other times tragedy pushes you to seek out and fight for a role, as when I heard they were casting for the AIDS drama
It’s My Party,
starring Eric Roberts.

I had met the remarkable Elizabeth Glaser at one of Swifty Lazar’s post-Oscar bashes. Not long afterward, she called and asked if I’d be willing to help raise money on behalf of AIDS research for children. She was setting up what would become the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and I immediately said yes.

This woman had a resolve of steel that I have never stopped being humbled by. She had been given so much to bear—contracting AIDS through a blood transfusion when giving birth, facing her
own illness, then that of her children, losing one and desperate to save the other.

It was heartbreaking, but Elizabeth had no time for tears, she had too much to accomplish before she couldn’t. I am so grateful for the time I had to know her and work with her. She was the definition of the word
selfless,
and the foundation that is her legacy continues to touch so many lives.

I think she must be smiling down as she sees how much progress has been made, that AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence, but also impatient that much is left to do.

Ryan White and his mother, Jeanne, also came into my life. In July of 1988, I worked with Elton John and Charlie Sheen to cohost the Athletes and Entertainers for Kids fund-raiser “For the Love of Children.” Elton, who had become close to the Whites, brought Ryan and six-year-old Jason Robertson, who was also struggling with the disease, onstage while he performed. I would occasionally stay in touch with Ryan and his mom over the years.

Both Ryan and Jeanne were such compelling examples of grace under fire. Most people I’m sure remember Ryan’s story. As an infant, he had contracted AIDS through blood products used to treat his hemophilia. Jeanne became nationally known when she pushed for Ryan’s right to attend school on the days he felt well enough.

So much fear surrounded AIDS in those years. People were convinced they could catch AIDS just by being around someone who was infected.

In Jeanne I saw a mother lion, a blend of faith and strength, attacking obstacles fearlessly. She did whatever was necessary to see that Ryan and his life were not marginalized.

It was impossible not to fall in love with Ryan; he was such a charming, brave kid. He had a really funny sense of humor and loved movies and movie stars. He used to say he was in awe when he was around celebrities. Like many others, I was in awe around him.

Like so many people, I lost friends who were not on the public radar to AIDS. They were loved, then far too soon, they were lost. One that hit me particularly hard was the death of David Oliver.

David and I had gotten to know each other in 1988. He was probably best known for playing Sam Gardner in the Emmy-winning miniseries
A Year in the Life,
opposite Sarah Jessica Parker, but I met him through Young Artists United, the political action group of actors that worked in the trenches for voter registration.

When I was without a boyfriend that year, he went with me to Hawaii to compete as my partner in a series of sporting events held just off the coast of Kauai. I don’t think we won a single event, but David and Jack and I had an absolute blast, especially on the days we toured the island.

David was smart and devilishly funny, and if a piano was anywhere within reach, he would sit down and get lost in the music for a while. We did an
US
magazine shoot with Helen Slater and Craig Sheffer—“Dressed to Kill,” four young Hollywood stars show off holiday party clothes to die for—that ran in November of 1988. The look was sort of French aristocrat, and we spent a day changing clothes and moods and scenes and it seemed as if nothing could stop us.

Over the next couple of years, we lost touch. I heard that he was sick, very sick, and I called and we talked. He was so weak, and he didn’t like his friends to see that. He asked me on his deathbed whom I was dating. I told him about Kevin—that he wore a uniform—and David smiled and said, “You go, girl!”

David died in November 1992. He was thirty, and no matter how AIDS ravaged his body, he was still as beautiful as when we first met.

So when I heard about
It’s My Party,
I wanted to get involved. The film followed the last days of Nick Stark, the role Eric Roberts was playing.

When Nick went from HIV-positive to full-blown AIDS and finally to lesions on his brain, he chose to end his life before the disease could run its horrific course. But before he goes, he gives a final party for his family and friends.

Randal Kleiser wrote and directed the film, which was loosely based on his own experience, as his partner had contracted AIDS and ultimately committed suicide.

Lee Grant played Nick’s mother, I was Nick’s sister, Gregory Harrison the lover who had left him after the diagnosis, Margaret Cho a close friend. Olivia Newton-John was in it, too. Many others were in the cast, all of us dealing with the losses that AIDS had exacted in our lives. Everyone worked for scale.

It’s hard to explain what it was like during that shoot. There wasn’t a day when someone’s emotions were not on edge, as a scene would touch the raw nerve of experience. But it brought out the best in all of us, with such support for one another, such love on that set, such healing.

The reviews were largely gentle and sad. A few criticized the film’s sentimentality. The box office was barely there. But it was one of the best experiences of my life.

The critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Watching the film is uncannily like going through the illness, death, and memorial service of a loved one.” In my mind, that was the true measure of its power.

Left to right: George Segal, Eric Roberts, Lee Grant, and Dimitria Arliss on the set of
It’s My Party.
(Credit: CORBIS/SYGMA)