Lucky Stars (3 page)

“You must be tired,” I said to my mother, in an effort to tell her to beat it without actually having to. “It’s late and you did all that shopping today. Want me to walk you home?”

“Thanks, dear, but I’m fine. Being out in the night air gave me a second wind. So, Ethan, what do you do for a living?”

“Hair,” he said in a snippy monotone he hadn’t used with me.

“What, exactly, do you do with hair?” she said, boring in on him. “Do you wash it? Cut it? Remove it? What?”

Remove it. Yeah, he does waxing, Ma. “Ethan is a very successful hairdresser in Beverly Hills,” I said.

“How nice,” she said, nodding at him, “although I’ve read that those dyes you people use can cause cancer of the scalp.”

“That hasn’t been proven,” he said. “It’s perfectly safe to use color, Mrs. Reiser.”

“Call me Helen. Please. And tell me something else: Do people often assume you’re gay?”

“Mom!”

“I only ask because so many men in your profession are gay, just as so many anesthesiologists are Indian. It’s an interesting phenomenon, the way certain groups seem to gravitate toward certain careers, isn’t it?”

Let me say, in my mother’s defense, that she was not bigoted in any way. She despised injustice and, as an example, lobbied her congressman to pass the hate crimes law in the state of Ohio. She was just incredibly blunt, had a tin ear when it came to conversational blunders, didn’t have a clue how to edit herself.

“I’ve got to be going,” said Ethan, who rose from the sofa, shook my mother’s hand and my hand, and then told me he’d be in touch. Right.

The minute he was out the door, she said, “My, he was a quiet one. He’s not the right man for you, Stacey, so listen to your mother.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being quiet,” I said, wishing she would be.

“No, I suppose not. Do you think he’s just shy or was he upset about something?”

“I think he was upset about someone,” I said, too softly for her to hear me.

t
hree

M
y movie with Jim Carrey,
Pet Peeve,
was finally coming out, which meant that I was scheduled to attend my very first premiere. I didn’t have a date for either the premiere or the party afterward, so I planned to take Maura. My
mother was profoundly insulted.

“My daughter is going to a movie premiere and she invites her friend instead of her mother?” she said, pressing her hand against her heart, as if she were bracing for cardiac arrest.

“Maura’s doing my makeup that day,” I said. “She’s done my makeup for a million important occasions, just as a favor to me, so I think it’s the least I can do to repay—”

“Oh, and I suppose
I
haven’t done you any favors?” she cut me off, her whine becoming sort of an Edith
Bunker screech. “What about all those hours I spent rehearsing your lines with you when you were in high school? Do you think I did that because I’m wild about
Our Town
and
Hedda Gabbler
and
Flower Drum Song
? Well, let me tell you, Stacey, I did it because I love you. I did it because I would sacrifice anything for you. And this is how you thank me? This is how you treat me? By forcing me
to
watch you from the sidelines, like a perfect stranger? And in your hour of glory yet?”

“Oh, Mom.” I tried to hug her but she turned away. She was a big baby when you got right down to it. “Please try to understand. I would take both of you if I could, but the studio only lets us bring one person. And I promised Maura, before you even moved here, that she could come with me if I didn’t have a date.”

“But I did move here,” she said. “Why can’t Maura be the understanding one?”

There were a few more back-and-forths, but in the end I caved. And Maura did understand. “Maybe your mother’s starstruck,” she said. “Maybe it’s not so much that she wants to be with you as she wants to brush up against Jim Carrey.”

I laughed. “My mother doesn’t even know who Jim Carrey is. She has virtually no interest in the entertainment business. She has virtually no interest in anything except insinuating herself into every conceivable aspect of my life.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” said Maura, who was much better at looking at the bright side than I was. Her last boyfriend, the one before the rich real estate developer, was a rich department store heir and when she found him in bed with another man and he begged her not to tell anyone, she asked for and got a lifetime discount on all merchandise in his stores.

“Okay. What’s the bright side?” I said.

“If you take your mother to the premiere,” said Maura, “she won’t call you the next morning and make you give her a blow-by-blow description of the event. That’ll save you a headache, right?’

I
had butterflies the day of the premiere, was as excited as I’d been the first time I’d stepped on a stage at age eight. For me, the premiere was confirmation of my having “made it,” albeit in a minor way. The fact that I had scored a speaking part in an actual movie and that the movie was sure to be a hit and that I would be mingling with Hollywood’s elite along that red carpet gave me hope that I really was on the brink of bigger things, that my stint at the biker bar would soon be a distant memory, that from here on I’d never have to do a Taco Bell commercial again, never have to be told I wasn’t skinny enough or young enough or tall enough or that my lips weren’t the size of Angelina Jolie’s.

People often ask me why I became an actress, why I subjected myself to the rejection, the rudeness, the assault on my self-esteem, and the answer is: I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. The rush you get when you stand up there in front of an audience and manage to elicit a response—whether it’s laughter or dead silence—is so intoxicating that you can’t wait to feel it again. It’s like the effect of a drug, that rush of approval. Actors are basically pleasers—if we can’t please our parents, we might as well please somebody— so we’re addicted to being applauded. Sally Field was lambasted for her “you like me” unraveling, but every actor who made fun of her knew exactly what she was talking about. So I became an actress to win approval, to cause a reaction, to make an impression. But I also
went into the business to become someone else. Imagine being a good girl in real life and playing a total bitch in a movie. Imagine playing any role to which you have to bring emotions and actions and words that are foreign to you in the everyday. Imagine getting to experiment with personalities that are the polar opposite of your own. Imagine leaving your insecurities and conflicts and inhibitions in the dressing room and emerging as someone else. It’s like a thrill ride, that’s what it is. And it’s that thrill ride that keeps actors in the game, not the fame or the money or the chance to hang out with Jim Carrey. I played his receptionist in
Pet Peeve,
not his leading lady, but I played her with everything I had and I loved the experience. It could only get better from here, right? That’s what I thought That’s what I really, truly believed.

On the night of the premiere, my mother and I did the red carpet number. The cameras were out in force, the reporters clamoring for a whiff of anyone famous. It was such a glittering event that I didn’t even take it personally when a jerk from
Extra!
stuck a microphone in my face, then pulled it away, muttering, “Damn. I thought you were someone.”

Undaunted, I smiled and waved at the crowd, was determined to enjoy myself. Who cared that my mother kept reminding me to stand up straight and get the hair out of my eyes? Who cared that she complained bitterly about the flashbulbs that were blinding her or the TV cables that were tripping her or the smog that was inflaming her sinuses. What mattered was that, once inside the theater, everyone seemed to love
Pet Peeve,
my mother included. She hugged me when the movie was over and the credits rolled, told me she was proud of
me, called me her little Meryl Streep. Even Jim Carrey gave me a reassuring thumbs-up.

I was off and running.

And then came the movie’s opening day, three days later. At eight o’clock that Friday morning, my mother showed up at my door carrying every newspaper she could find and proceeded to spread them out on the floor of my living room and read the
Pet Peeve
reviews aloud.

The
Los Angeles Times
mentioned me briefly but glowingly: “As Lola, the receptionist, the energetic Stacey Reiser is a scene stealer.”
The New York Times
mentioned me briefly but less glowingly: “In a small role as Carrey’s eager-beaver receptionist, Stacey Reiser is grating.”
USA Today
didn’t mention me, and part of me was grateful.

“I’d like to give that
New York Times
guy a kick in the pants,” said my mother, my fiercest defender as well as my toughest critic. “How dare he call my daughter ‘grating.’ I’ll give him ‘grating.’ I'll write him one of my complaint letters.”

I smiled. My mother was renowned for the letters she regularly fired off to people, corporations, any unlucky soul who needed to be reprimanded, in her opinion. For instance, when she bought a box of All-Bran that turned out to be only three-quarters full, she wrote to Kellogg’s, declaring that she would never buy their products again unless they apologized. They not only apologized but sent her coupons for twelve boxes of All-Bran.

“Thanks, Mom, but I’d rather you didn’t write to him,” I said. “He might hold it against me the next time I’m in a movie. Besides, he only gave me an adjective’s worth of ink. Hardly a real review.”

“All right, dear,” my mother agreed grudgingly. “If you’re sure. Now, it’s almost nine o’clock. I’ll turn on
Good Morning, Hollywood
and we’ll see what that rascal Jack Rawlins has to say about you.”

I cringed at the mere thought.
Good Morning, Hollywood
was a weekly half-hour television show devoted to show business goings-on, sort of a highbrow
Entertainment Tonight.
Its host, Jack Rawlins, was a total gasbag—a know-it-all whose reviews always created a buzz within the industry, I suspect, because he was a Harvard grad and spoke in multisyllables and looked, not like those blow-dried studly types you see on the other entertainment shows, but like some tweedy young college professor who has all his female students in heat. He was handsome, in other words, with blue eyes framed by tortoiseshell glasses and reddish-blond hair that curled around his ears and a long, straight nose that tilted up at the end and a very generous mouth, out of which spewed some very ungenerous words on occasion. Personally, I thought he was an effete snob whose sole purpose in life was to impress people with his wicked wit. What particularly galled me was how tough he could be on up-and-coming actors and how his comments could literally torpedo a budding career. Don’t get me wrong, he could be hard on the big stars, too, but they weren’t as vulnerable to his criticism, given their established fan bases, and they managed to stay on top whether he damned them or praised them. No, it was the strugglers like me who were really defenseless against him. For instance, he once said about my former roommate, after she’d given only her second performance in a film, “Watching Belinda H
anson is like swallowing an Am
bien. In fact, she induces sleep better than any pill
I’ve
ever taken.” Poor Belinda didn’t work again for a year. At least, not as an actress. Everywhere she went, people made snoring sounds.

“Here he is, dear,” said my mother, turning up the volume on the television set.

I leaned in, prepared myself for Rawlins’s review of
Pet Peeve.
I was sure he would loathe the movie, given his preference for serious art-house films as opposed to broad comedy intended for the multiplex crowd. The question was, would he loathe me or even mention me?

“Opening today in wide release is the new Jim Carrey vehicle
Pet Peeve,
”
he began. Then he chuckled, which was not a good sign. Not the way that guy chuckled. “Of course, I use the term ‘vehicle’ loosely.
Webster’s Dictionary
defines ‘vehicle’ as a conveyance—something that transports. Well,
Pet Peeve
doesn't do much transporting, unless you enjoy being carried off into a world where a toilet overflows, a hamster receives CPR, and a plate full of spaghetti lands in the lap of the Queen of England.”

“
I
found the movie very amusing,” sniffed my mother.

“Pay no attention to him,” I said. “He has zero sense of humor.”

We listened as Rawlins proceeded to rip the movie, its director, and its stars, especially Carrey, whom he referred to as “a mediocre clown masquerading as an even more mediocre actor.” And then, as I was turning away from the TV, figuring he was about to move on to another review, he said, “As Carrey’s receptionist, Stacey Reiser uses her precious few moments of screen time to pound us over the head with her lines. She has the subtlety of a sledgehammer and should consider applying for a job in construction.”

I couldn’t speak at first, couldn’t process what Jack Rawlins had just said about me. If my mother hadn’t been there, I might have remained on the sofa for hours
in a state of shock, hoping the floor would open up and swallow me whole. I mean, the guy didn’t just dis me; he annihilated me in front of a live television audience-— an audience that included every important producer and director and casting agent in town. He absolutely drove a stake through my heart with that review, and I didn’t want to deal with it, didn’t want to deal with the fact that I could be the next Belinda Hanson, but my mother
was
there and she was as mortified as I was. Before I knew it, I was the one consoling her.

“Don’t take it so hard, Mom. He didn’t trash me. He trashed my performance,” I managed, trying to pull myself together and cleave to the mantra I’d learned in acting class: in order to deal with a negative review, you must distance yourself from it, tell yourself that reviews are subjective and not necessarily the Truth and that one person’s harsh opinion of your work doesn’t make you a talentless fool.

“Well, he should be ashamed of himself,” she said hotly. “It’s one thing to be a movie critic. It’s another to be a horse’s ass.”

This was strong stuff from my mother. She was a pistol, as Maura called her, but she rarely cursed.

“If you ask me, I think he should be fired for incompetence as well as impudence,” she went on. “In the meantime, I will never watch his show again. I bet no one will. I bet
Pet Peeve
will be a big success and your career will reach new heights, dear.”

By the following week, it was clear that my mother was no prognosticator. The movie was a box office disaster, despite Jim Carrey’s popularity, and my career, unlike his, didn’t rebound. Jack Rawlins’s review—“Stacey Reiser has the subtlety of a sledgehammer”—clung to me like a poisonous snake, just wrapped itself around
me wherever I went. T
hanks to Rawlins, I was now officially tainted in the business. Sledgehammer Stacey. That was my adorable new nickname. My agent tried to do damage control, mailing the positive reviews I’d received to all the major players in town, but he couldn’t convince people—any movie or television people, that is—to take another look at me.