Scrappy Little Nobody (4 page)

She turned out to be all business when it came to this production, and, no, I would NOT be allowed to use a trick baton, I would learn to twirl the batons, because that’s what professionals do! And don’t put your hand there, put it two centimeters to the left! And learn right from left, Anna! The day I cried because I realized that Dainty June (the slightly older version of my character) was played by a different actress, she said, “Yes, that’s right, so let’s
rehearse the transition number again. Dig your own grave, little one.” Okay, she didn’t say the “dig your own grave” part, but she was not sympathetic.

With our ruthless and bejeweled director at the helm, the Biddeford City Theater production of
Gypsy
was actually pretty good. Looking back, I’ve wondered why she was so demanding. It was just community theater. Why did it have to be so perfect? But I’ve also now been around enough people who have a low opinion of anyone who is creative in a nonprofessional realm to know that that’s ugly and ignorant. People don’t have to do things by half measures because they aren’t getting paid for it. In fact, that’s all the more reason to throw every ounce of passion you have behind it. I think she could have yelled a bit less for the sensitive types like me who need to be told they are wonderful every half hour to accomplish anything at all, but I respect that she pushed herself and everyone around her.

The show paired me with an onstage sister, a.k.a. MY DEFAULT NEW BEST FRIEND! Virginia was an unsuspecting tomboy with maybe eight months on me, which was a lifetime of experience. She was unaware that we were going to be best friends, but after a while I wore her down and she introduced me to the excitement of the occult! The theater we were in was a beautiful 1890s opera house, and we played with a Ouija board in the balcony between rehearsals. She told me stories about Helen, the ghost that haunted the theater, and how if we played with the Ouija board too often, Satan would have enough power to bring Helen back from the dead to destroy us all. Kids are dark.

We stayed in touch for a while after the show, mostly because Virginia was very excited about becoming someone’s pen pal. At her suggestion, we promised to write each other letters, and as the show came to a close, she began to add more and more detail to her plan for our epistolary adventures. She said we could enclose small items like “beads we find” and smear the paper with our current favorite lipstick and circle it to ask, “What do you think of this shade?” The level of specificity rattled me.

Even at eight, I could tell that this was a contrivance based on something she had read in a book or seen in a movie. In her first letter to me, I found a handful of beads and a smear of lipstick. I still enjoyed the letters and tried to participate in the suggested spirit of her requests without doing exactly what she’d described. I sent her shells from the beach by my grandparents’ house and pictures I cut out of magazines. She sent her next letter with nothing inside, and we volleyed for a few more weeks until it petered out. Don’t try to participate in anyone else’s idea of what is supposed to happen in a relationship. You will fail.

The show also introduced a dangerous new concept to my family.
Gypsy
and the main character of Mama Rose explore the effects of the “stage parent” on both child and mother. My parents immediately saw in Mama Rose a blueprint of everything they wanted to avoid. We hadn’t met any stage parents in real life yet, but if I was going to be playing around with this theater thing for a year or two (little did they know), no one in my family was going to push anyone into doing anything, and for the next decade my parents went on high alert for signs that I wanted to stop. (I think they might still be waiting. Maybe that’s
why my mom is always telling me she loves me because I’m a good person or whatever.)

I get embarrassed about being a “child actor.” Probably because I spent a lot of time around child actors when I was one. They’re crazy. When people ask me how I got started, I’ll usually make some crack about how I was one of those “freaky kid actors,” and how “all that’s missing is the drug problem.” I want to get in front of the story so I can control it! Maybe people don’t have judgmental feelings about child actors. I just worry that it conjures images of pushy parents, or tiny diva hissy fits, or
Star Search
. Okay, I did audition for
Star Search
, but I didn’t get on the show, so I hope you’re happy.

At ten, I stood in a modest office in Manhattan and sang “Tomorrow” from
Annie
(I warned you) for a children’s talent agent. That was basically it. That was all I had to do. That, and cry in the lobby beforehand, because I got nervous and my mom had to remind me that my cousin Tina wasn’t going to get married thirty minutes from New York City every weekend.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, occasionally a friend who was struggling would ask me how I got my agent, and telling this story always made me feel like a lucky little jackass. I would try to make the story funny, like I didn’t know they were hoping to glean some actionable piece of wisdom out of it. The truth is, I had nothing to offer in the way of advice. Cold-call a talent agent? But first, be ten years old?

At that age, I didn’t have a résumé, but I wasn’t expected to. At ten, I had a big voice that stood in exponential contrast to my size. I could learn a melody. I didn’t sound like a dying cat.

I was not one of those kids who started young and never stopped working—there are many pathetic tales in these pages to prove it. But I’m glad I got my foot in the door at an age when some of the scariest people had to take it easy on me, because I was Just A Kid
.
If you are expecting to find advice, I will be no help at all. I have no advice. I do have a truckload of opinions, which I will happily prattle on about to anyone who gives me an opening. I’d just like to add the “for entertainment purposes only” disclaimer to everything in here, like I’m a psychic hotline or a bot on AshleyMadison.com.

I don’t know what my parents anticipated happening once I got a fancy agent four states away. Maybe they knew that supporting the larger dream while I was a kid was easier than praying it was a phase and begrudgingly supporting me later on. Maybe they only hoped I would book a commercial and get the kind of money that starts a solid college fund in one swoop. That would have been fine with me—I couldn’t differentiate between the prestige of a Broadway show and a regional commercial, so I would have been just as happy about becoming an underage corporate stooge.

The agency that took me on lined up a few auditions for Broadway shows—the very first one was for
Annie
(I don’t know what to tell you guys, it’s just what happened). Then they lined up a handful of commercial auditions. My first auditions for commercials were weird. As were all the ones that would follow.

Commercial casting directors were looking for either preternaturally beautiful children or children who were willing to cheese it up so hard they went blue in the face. At that age, I never thought about being pretty. That’s not because I was enlightened, it’s because I was a little kid and “pretty” seemed like adult criteria. (I did think about whether or not I would GROW UP to be pretty—all the time. I asked to see pictures of my grandmother as a young woman, I asked to see pictures of my mother as a young woman. I found out my mother’s side of the family was universally flat-chested, so I asked if my
deceased
paternal grandmother had anything better goin’ on back in the day. I was a ladylike and sensitive child.)

As for the cheese factor, I was no better off. This was the origin of my aversion to child actors. Most of them were fucking weirdos—a bunch of precocious extroverts who were learning to kiss adults’ asses and say things like “How old do you want me to be?” I was a loud, hyperactive loser, but I was self-aware enough to know that would make me look like a dick.

Perhaps because my family’s emotional range spanned from composed to stoic, I was not trying to play ball. For all the trouble I’d been in in my life for having “too much energy,” I could not figure out why I was supposed to be so excited about tangle-free shampoo. My hair was always tangled and I was doing just fine, thank you very much.

Kids in these audition waiting rooms were unlike anything I’d seen before. They would make a big show of running up to other kids they knew and say things like “I haven’t seen you since we outgrew the
Music Man
tour!” They would humble-brag about
the last commercial they’d booked or how they’d screen-tested for a TV pilot last week, and their sleazy managers would say, “Our little Portia is a booking machine!”

Usually my mom or my dad was with me in these waiting rooms. My mom was always kind and wonderful, but, like me, my mom is a people pleaser and a rule follower. We were at a professional audition; I would go in with my headshot and résumé and try my best, and she would be the supportive parent who accompanies (but does not pressure!) her child.

My dad had far less patience. He was my stoic life vest. He’s the smartest person I know. Not the smartest person I’ve ever met (I’ve met Dr. Oz and Dakota Fanning) but the smartest person I can call on the phone. He’s an incredible resource but also very frustrating. It’s like having Stephen Fry for a father. He makes you feel like an idiot just by breathing.

Like my mom, he wanted to make his children feel loved and wanted, but he’s almost painfully Irish, so repression is more in his wheelhouse. The only time I’ve ever seen him cry was when he described the plot of the film
Rudy
to me. The unnerving thing was that I didn’t even realize he was crying for ten minutes. At first, it just seemed like he had allergies or he’d eaten some spicy food. Aside from the tears, there was no other indication that he was emotional.

Sometimes I’d sit there, surrounded by kids loudly going over their one line of dialogue with parents chatting about which voice coach they were going to use now that Mrs. Ulanova had taken on too many students and wasn’t giving little Teresa the kind of personalized attention she really needed to flourish, and
I’d feel myself start to spiral. I wouldn’t just wonder if I belonged there, I’d descend into big-question territory.
Is this what everyone outside of Maine is like? Is this what the future will be like? Is this what actors are like? Is this what
I’m
like?

I would turn my head maybe fifteen degrees and my dad would be staring straight ahead, and then, as if he’d been waiting for me, he’d throw me a look.
These people are freaks; let’s get this over with, get the hell out of here, and get a Hostess Cupcake from the rest stop on the way home.
It felt like coming up for air.

It only took a few months before my agent mercifully realized that I sucked at commercial auditions. They decided I should start coming in only for theater, which made me very happy. Not because as a ten-year-old from Maine with no experience I thought I was too good for anything, but because professional auditions were in New York, which meant that one of my parents had to take time off work, drive me six hours to the city for an audition that usually lasted ten minutes, and then drive me six hours back. Yes, you are correct, what my parents did for me was crazy and I’ll never be able to repay them as long as I live.

I had my first successful audition at age twelve for a musical called
High Society
, although when I arrived I assumed it wasn’t going to go well. In the waiting room, I was struck by the uniformity of dress. The character was from a rich family, and my competitors looked the part. How did a girl age ten to fourteen even come by a sweater set? Weren’t those available exclusively to toddlers and women over sixty?

The audition room was long and mirrored and had creaky wooden floors. I gave my sheet music to the pianist in the corner
and turned to face a small row of people sitting behind a folding table at the far end of the room.

“Whoa, whoa. Let me look at your nails, young lady.” Legendary casting director Jay Binder, who would become my greatest champion, was motioning me forward.

My nails were forest green with gold stars, which was pretty unusual, especially on a child in the days before Pinterest-chic nail art. I walked up to show him, unsure if I was in trouble or about to be told how wonderful I was.

“I got them done in Florida. I was visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving and my mom took me to a nail place.”

“Your mother let you get green nails?”

I nodded.

“Pretty cool mom. All right, what are you gonna sing for us, honey?”

I walked back to the center of the room with a great gift. Jay Binder had said,
Come up here, we’re not scary; we want you to do well, cute nails, now please go do something impressive.
Almost every audition that has gone well in my life started with something like this. A week later, I was told to come back and audition for the director and producers.

As supportive as they were, my parents were looking for a way to get me to New York without relying on them for transportation since they enjoyed having jobs and paying bills and other accoutrements of middle-class survival. By this time, my brother was
fourteen and they deemed him perfectly capable of accompanying his twelve-year-old sister on a bus to New York. So that’s what we started doing.

People who grew up in major cities may wonder why the hell I would act like it’s a big deal to be unaccompanied in New York City at that age: it’s populated with both adults and children, it’s a functioning metropolis, Kevin McCallister was only ten in
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
, and
that
kid saved Christmas. Conversely, people from suburban areas act like my parents sent me wandering around the site of the Baby Jessica well, blindfolded and holding a flaming baton. So pick a side and prepare to judge me either way!

My parents bought a couple of bus tickets, and my brother and I got ready for our day trip. We packed extra batteries for our Walkmen, the family cell phone “for emergencies,” two Lunchables, and this time—drumroll!—I wore a cardigan. I was gonna totally look the part. The one cardigan I owned was chunky and black with a jewel-toned pattern that looked so much like jet fighters from the Star Wars universe, I referred to it as my X-Wing sweater. I paired it with wide-leg jeans and black lace-up boots with thick rubber soles. How classy was I?