Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (24 page)

Glenn drives me to the airport. I’ve had to leave on even shorter notice to make a meeting, but all flights are full. Glenn, however, always keeps two seats reserved on every Concord flight out of France. I use one to go home. But now the autoroute is in total gridlock. There is no way I’ll make the flight. Glenn wheels the car onto the side of the road, hits the blue siren, and drives the entire way on the shoulder of the freeway. Every once in a while we clip a car’s side-view mirror and it shatters with a bang. Glenn is unfazed.

As we pull up to de Gaulle, I am overwhelmed by a sense of finality. A very romantic, chaotic, exotic, bomb-filled month or so is coming to an end. In a life of extraordinary moments, even I know this one was remarkable.

“Good-bye, Glenn. I can’t thank you enough for all your help. For taking such good care of me, and for the fun and friendship.”

“And for Stephanie?” he smiles.

“Glenn, I’ve been around you almost every day for weeks and I’ve never heard you even attempt a joke. Until now.”

“I am learning from you. I want to have more fun in my life. I admire your ability to do that,” he says, looking almost wistful.

“Well, I admire you, too. Even if I don’t know what the fuck you’re really up to!”

He smiles and looks down. I head for the gorgeous needle-nose jet glinting in the morning sun.

I have my lunch meeting at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan, fly home, and eat dinner alone at McDonald’s in Malibu. I am transitioning back to reality.

Back in Paris, Glenn goes to the gym after dropping me at the airport, and then heads home. Getting out of the Mercedes in front of his house, he is shot multiple times in the chest, by three masked gunmen. He collapses onto the hood of the car. Hearing shots, his girlfriend comes out of the house, calling his name. When he hears her voice, Glenn forces himself to rise and button up his jacket, sparing her the sight of his wounds, which he knows are grave.

“I’ve been shot; I need to go to the hospital. We won’t be able to wait for an ambulance.”

He gives directions as she drives. He crosses his legs to hide the blood pooling in his seat. He is white and consciousness is fading. The ride takes fifteen minutes.

“I think the back entry will be quicker at this hour,” he calculates.

Somehow he walks unaided into the ER. The staff take one look at him and rush to help.

“I have five wounds. I believe they are 9 mm,” he tells them before passing out.

Glenn dies on the operating table.

His girlfriend tells me the story, in a matter-of-fact delivery. She is obviously in deep shock. I am sitting among my luggage at my house; the phone was ringing as I walked in the door from McDonald’s. I try to offer any comfort I can, but I, too, am devastated. I may not know who Glenn worked for or who had him murdered, but I do know that it was likely a pro from the highest levels. Which means it was well planned; which means they waited for the right moment; which means they waited until the moment I was gone.

I was later told that Glenn was honored by both the French and the American governments for heroic service. President Reagan had a small private ceremony at the White House and wrote a lovely letter of condolence to Glenn’s father. Neither of these ceremonies, nor the assassination itself, was covered in the press in much detail. Glenn Souham’s killing remains unsolved.

*   *   *

Fans breaking into my house to steal underwear. Princesses. Professional hits in broad daylight. My life is becoming unreal, even to me. And in spite of a (very) small inner voice warning me that this kind of chaos is not a good thing, I don’t know how to stop it.

Long, eventful careers, by definition, have cycles. Cycles are almost impossible to identify until you are well into their sequence. In retrospect, Glenn’s death would be the first movement of a cycle in which I would be put in the wrong place at the wrong time and with people whose agendas conflicted with mine. Or to put it simply: Now would begin a period when I couldn’t catch a break. Sometimes it would be completely my fault. Sometimes it wouldn’t.

My relationship with Stephanie is the first casualty of this undercurrent of conflict. While our life in Paris was a magical escape from reality, life in America is unrelenting reality. My mother, now deep into her illness, has a psychotic break after going off the drug Halcion, cold turkey. Steve, who has been prescribing medications for her, wants her committed; she wants him investigated for overmedication and attempted poisoning. This, as I bring the princess home to meet them.

As Stephanie sits waiting in the living room, my mom has me cornered in the bedroom, forcing me to examine various used wads of Kleenex she believes have been shaped by Steve into voodoo dolls in an attempt to “intimidate” her into silence about his “poisoning.”

I should have sent the princess packing, called the family into a room, and gotten to the bottom of all the insanity. Shamefully, I did not. My conflict/stress/reality-avoidance mechanism, engaged so long ago in that hot Dayton lumberyard, had now grown into a monster.

Stephanie and I flee back to a “safe house” where we are encamped, trailed by rabid paparazzi. There is a large bounty for the first photos of us together, but so far we have managed to stay under wraps.

Finally, it is time for us to fly to Dallas, Texas, for our cohosting duties. The Princess Grace Foundation raises money to support young, fledgling artists, wherever they may be. The annual ball is always long on both Hollywood and actual royalty. Tonight’s black-tie event is packed; Frank Sinatra will perform.

In the VIP area, I lock eyes with the chairman of the board. Never known as a people person, Ol’ Blue Eyes is under siege at the moment; Kitty Kelley’s eviscerating bio has just come out. As Sinatra makes a beeline for me, I’m anxious. He marches right up, inches from my face, which he grabs with both hands. He leans in close, looking intensely into my eyes. He then slaps me upside the head, hand. “My grandkids
love
ya!” he says, and walks off.

Stephanie, in the month I was in Paris, never introduced me to her father, Prince Rainier. I thought it odd that she wouldn’t want him to meet her new boyfriend. Now I’m hosting an event for his charity, he’s standing ten feet away from me, and I still haven’t been introduced. He’s glancing at me from time to time, but it’s clear he has no intention of saying hello, much less thanking me for the two days of press and fund-raising I’m doing on his behalf. My American anti-caste-system inclinations begin to stir. I look over at him. He turns away.

Finally, I walk to him and offer my hand. The prince is doing that thing one does of concentrating really hard on a bullshit story someone is telling, hoping to avoid any interlopers. No luck this time.

“Excuse me, sir,” I say, as his group stares, openmouthed. “I’m Rob Lowe, I’m hosting this event and dating your daughter. Welcome to the United States.”

Later in the evening I find my old friend Cary Grant.

“Young maaaaaan!” he calls. “Congratulations on all of your success. I’m sooo proud of you.”

It’s a nice full circle from his early, kind words so many years ago. We talk for a while and he moves on. Within months he will be gone, the greatest movie star who ever lived. I know his amazing body of work well by now and take solace that I will have more to remember him by than soap on a rope.

Stephanie and I are now over the buzz of our initial meeting, and it’s becoming clear that the mutual infatuation has been sated. We both know it’s time to move on.

Near the end of the evening I look to the head table. It’s late and the men have congregated together, as have the women, who are off somewhere. I see Gregory Peck, Robert Wagner, Cary Grant, and Prince Rainier and approach the group.

“Excuse me. I just wanted to say good-bye and thank you for letting me be a part of a wonderful evening.”

Rainier grunts and nods, the rest offer warm good-byes and I head out.

Then, when I am almost out of earshot I hear my future
Austin Powers
costar Robert Wagner say: “Ya know, guys, I think that kid’s banged every one of our daughters.”

*   *   *

Peter Bogdanovich made
The Last Picture Show
,
Paper Moon
, and
What’s Up, Doc?
consecutively, in the early seventies, in what was probably the greatest back-to-back-to-back achievement of any director. Each movie is a classic and, for my money, two of them are perfect (
The Last Picture Show
and
Paper Moon
). Now, after an extended banishment, he is back in Hollywood’s good graces due to his newest hit,
Mask
, for which Cher was nominated for an Oscar.

I screen-tested for
Mask
and lost the part to Eric Stoltz. Bogdanovich had me put a stocking over my face with eye holes cut out, to simulate the “mask” that the actor would wear. But he told me, “Your eyes are too identifiable, too unique.” And that was that.

But now he is directing a romantic comedy, and I’ve chosen it as my follow-up to
About Last Night
. I loved what Bogdanovich did with Ryan O’Neal and I’m hoping he still has the mojo to do the same with me. And looking at
Mask
, it seems like a good bet.

But from day one my instincts scream to me that there are serious problems. For the slightly older female lead, names like Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, and Melanie Griffith are discussed. But Peter is adamant that he be allowed to cast Colleen Camp, a good friend of his, with whom he’s worked before. I like Colleen, but I know this type of movie needs star power. Still, I defer to my director, who, after all, has made some of the best movies in the genre.

Peter also wants to rewrite the script from page one. The script was good enough to get us all to want to do it in the first place, so I’m worried about changing it. Even when Bogdanovich adds a major new character for his girlfriend to play (in spite of her having never acted before) and creates another role for his estate manager, I say nothing. Maybe these changes will elevate the movie to
What’s Up, Doc?
But inside, I suspect otherwise. Rather than blow the movie apart, which confronting Bogdanovich most certainly would have done, I drink almost every day after work to quiet my conscience.

Any one of these conceptual changes
alone
should have been sufficient grounds to depart immediately over “creative differences,” but I had no leadership in my life. (My agents also represented Bogdanovich and they weren’t going to rock the boat.) And I was an inveterate people pleaser who had very few personal boundaries. Plus, I loved Peter. He is one of the most well-read men I have ever met and among the most charismatic. He could lead you anywhere and you would follow, happy to be in his entertaining, insightful company. But every artist can chase his own vision into a blind alley. And on
Illegally Yours
, he did just that.

After seeing the final cut, the studio let it sit in the can as unreleasable. Eventually, it came out in a few cities to scathing reviews. The original writers took their names off of it. But stars have no such luxury, no way to avoid the fallout, and that is one of the reasons they get, and deserve, the big bucks.

My agents and I were smart enough to go directly to another movie to minimize the damage to my leading-man momentum. And this time, the movie would turn out pretty well.

Masquerade
is a sexual thriller out of the Patricia Highsmith mold. Morally ambivalent in tone, it is a dark, sexy, and sophisticated movie that gives me my first antihero role. Meg Tilly is terrific as the vulnerable heiress I seduce, and Kim Cattrall is perfect as my bored, sexually predatory mistress. Directed by Bob Swaim, a hot director who has recently swept the French Oscars, it also reunites me with Oscar-winning cinematographer David Watkin. With Oscar-winning composer John Barry on board, the filmmaking is state of the art.

Until this movie, I’ve been relegated to fairly pedestrian locations. Tulsa. Chicago. St. Augustine, Florida. But
Masquerade
shoots entirely in the Hamptons and I fall in love with the low-key, old-money style and lazily debauched nightlife.

Charlie Sheen is also in the Hamptons, shooting
Wall Street
with Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas. It’s a good combination for fun and we make the most of our surroundings. Charlie and I compete to see who can play harder, then show up to work and still kick ass. Verdict: Sheen by a nose.

By the end of the
Masquerade
shoot, I’m raw and ragged. I’ve done two films with no break at all. In both I was in every scene, working thirteen-hour-plus days from February to July.
Masquerade
was a grind for all concerned. On the last day the writer says to me, “If this fucking movie doesn’t work, I’m quitting for television.”

The movie bombed. It was stylish and sexy (maybe too much so), and I still like it very much. But the studio releasing it was being sold and was in chaos. I also heard that the studio president’s wife hated “all that sex” in the movie. At any rate, my stock took another hit and it would be my last starring role in a studio movie for years.
Masquerade
’s writer kept his promise and quit for TV. A half billion dollars later, I am happy to have driven Dick Wolf, the creator of the
Law & Order
franchise, out of the movies to greener pastures.