You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (10 page)

My agent and manager concluded that I needed to spend more time in Los Angeles in an attempt to take advantage of the film’s modest success. Living in hotels for months on end was getting expensive, even the barebones hotels with the threadbare carpeting where we tended to reside. We didn’t know anyone in L.A. who we could stay with. Most of the other people we knew were living out of suitcases, too—kid actors and their moms who lived elsewhere and came to L.A. to chase down a job.

Like any good transients, we turned to the odd world of short-term rentals. My mother and I rented an unfurnished two-bedroom apartment on a month-to-month basis in North Hollywood. It was classic California valley architecture; our place was on the second floor and overlooked an open-air cement courtyard that was decorated with small palm trees in terra cotta pots. We bought a cardboard banker’s box for
me to use as a school desk. We picnicked on the floor and slept on lumpy, leaky plastic air mattresses that were intended to be used in a pool.

Such a fleeting and precarious life felt thrilling, like we were just dandelion seeds waiting for a strong breeze to scatter us absolutely anywhere. One good audition would mean a new job and we would fold up our lives and our cardboard furniture and simply vanish as if we had never lived in apartment 2F. The sparse, minimalist look of the place also offered a significant change from our small, cluttered house in Canada where there was often a dog/turtle/piece of construction equipment in the way. I could practice cartwheels unencumbered by something as invasive as a couch. Mom pointed out that one of the leading causes of injury in an earthquake was from bookcases or other pieces of furniture falling over, so we were likely in the safest place in all of Los Angeles, seismologically speaking. Her ability to make our peculiar life seem normal, and even sensible, was extraordinary. I reveled in the thought that maybe “different” didn’t have to mean “wrong.”

Auditions were picking up, but I’d still only have two or three a week, so there was a lot of time to fill. I could memorize about a page of dialogue a minute, so audition preparation was hardly time-consuming. Three months moved slowly. We didn’t really have friends, and you can only walk around at the mall for so long, even in California. I would sit around the bare apartment and read
A Wrinkle in Time
over and over again. Mom and I would play cards and browse the video store for old movies. We bought an annual pass to Universal Studios and went three times a week to go on the E.T. ride and watch the lady in a Lucille Ball costume pose for photos with tourists.

And I would write. I always wrote. I wrote fantasies, war epics, and pop-up books. I journaled constantly. Everything that happened to me had to be chronicled in a spiral bound notebook or else it didn’t really count. An event could only be processed and become real when it had words and phrases and commas associated with it. Otherwise, who could ever say it really happened? I tried to make sense of my life, and
attempted to work out my complicated feelings about auditions and the idea of possibly becoming famous. I wondered what it would be like to play soccer or violin. I wondered how it felt to take home a permission form for a field trip and not immediately wonder if I’d be out of town filming something when it was time to go to the museum.

However, I also felt badly for the kids who didn’t know how to walk into camera frame and stop exactly at a T mark on the floor without looking down. It was impossible to imagine a life that didn’t include table reads and wardrobe calls; it was like trying to imagine what the world would look like without the color blue.

About three weeks into our stay in California, distracted by Uno tournaments and daily trips to browse the sale racks at Macy’s and eat greasy Chinese in the food court, I realized that my schoolbooks had yet to be opened. My mom believed that I should be responsible enough to set my own schedule. There was no such thing as “school hours.” I was in charge of keeping track of that myself. The books were still stacked in the corner of my closet, complete with instructions from my teachers back home. I panicked. What if I was detrimentally far behind when I got home? I imagined sitting in class and being completely lost as they discussed viscosity levels or inferential logic. I imagined failing a grade and more deeply entrenching myself in weirdo status. Paralyzed in my fear, all I could do was stare at the books, piled up in the corner and threatening to bury me in an academic wasteland.

When I finally found the courage to crack the spine of my French textbook, it turned out that I could actually do a whole week’s worth of work in about two hours. I caught up pretty quickly and wondered why all that time spent in school was necessary if it could all be done so efficiently. Learning by myself was easy. I could just get to the important parts and not be distracted by that whole idea of socialization. When I went back to Canada and sat in the classroom, it all felt like boring filler, like glorified group babysitting. I looked forward to getting back to my own version of independent study in L.A., at my homemade desk rigged
up with an air mattress and a sagging cardboard box.

For our next stay in California, we landed at the Oakwood Apartments, a well-known temporary housing complex where production houses and theater companies often put their actors up. Oakwood did have one perk over our place in North Hollywood; the apartments were furnished. I use the word
furnished
with some trepidation because in the early 1990s they were furnished the way an Eastern European hotel by the airport might have been furnished in the late 1970s. There were dusty fabric flowers in vases filled with some sort of plastic resin that was supposed to look like water, and which was almost certainly carcinogenic. There were brown polyester bedspreads with frayed edges and cigarette burns. The watercolor prints of landscapes were bolted to the walls, as if anyone would actually be tempted to steal them. But the whole set up was better than our cardboard tables and I could just scotch tape a
Back to the Future
poster over the still-life print of peaches in its shiny gold frame.

We did several stints at the Oakwood over the years. Mom and I tried out a variety of floor plans. We rented the 400-square-foot studio apartment and shared the Murphy bed. I always hated making my bed, so just folding it back into the wall seemed an ingenious way to tidy up. Bedtime became much more exciting as I tried to ride the bed on its descent from its cave. It was a great disappointment when I was working more frequently and we got a two bedroom, which had an eat-in kitchen, a little balcony, and two separate beds that kept all four of their legs on the ground. It didn’t occur to me then that it was unusual that my jobs dictated the type of living arrangement that we had. Since that was the case with all the other actors in the complex, it just seemed like that was the way life in L.A. worked. Everyone’s apartment size was an indication of how good the last few months of auditions had been for them.

It was mind-blowing to me, even then, that there were people who lived at the Oakwood full time. By nature, corporate housing is a temporary situation but there were a hardy few who had been there for upwards
of twenty years. It was very expensive to live there for any extended period of time and I wondered why anyone would do it. The architecture was wildly unattractive and the mind-numbing sameness of the twenty-six low, square buildings, lettered A-Z was the aesthetic equivalent of living in a McDonald’s.

It soon became clear that the true allure of the Oakwood was Hollywood itself. By living within the paper-thin walls of corporate housing, you were immersed in the acting community. There was something comforting about being with people who were struggling, just like you. You could pick up your mail and chat with a neighbor who understood what it meant to have a good audition or a bad one. They understood what it felt like when you nailed the scene, when the dialogue flowed seamlessly and the tears fell on cue or the joke got a laugh. Then, the producers would give you that smile and nod to each other and say, “you’ll be hearing from us very soon.” Those good auditions were such a high that you’d float back to the car and not even care about spending two hours in traffic to get home.

But, the neighbors also understood how it felt when you finished your scene and the producers sat stony-faced behind the long table. You knew you had flubbed the line and not tapped the emotion and had done that unnatural gesture with your hand. The producers sat quietly, their silence piercing the air and clearly expressing that they will not call you back. Definitely not for this job and maybe not for any other job, either. You had walked out with your head down as you passed the better actors just waiting for their turn. Everyone understood how that drive home felt even longer than two hours.

Oakwood residents knew what was filming, who was in town, which show just lost their backing, and which manager was open to new clients. It was the center of the universe for the not-quite-theres. One of our neighbors had been a professional extra for twenty years. He had made a career out of being the guy in the background. When he worked, he worked for fourteen hours a day, was treated like cattle, never had
any lines, was paid poorly, and rarely got any real screen time. That was his chosen profession because he liked to be close to that intoxicating on-set energy. Being part of a film community was so venerated, that it was worth the sacrifice.

Down the hall from us lived a woman named Sandra who had spent decades working as a stand-in. She was almost beautiful. All of her individual features should have added up to a movie star, but everything was just a quarter-inch off. Just a little bit too big or too small or too much to the left side. Her posture was not quite graceful, her voice just a little too high and grating. So, it was her job to stand in the shot while the lighting crew set up, so that the actress could take a break. That’s a real job. A set, while being a communal project that everyone is working on together, is also incredibly hierarchical. Who is lording over the top? Actors. Directors. Producers. They get all the glory and the praise, they pose in front of the step-and-repeat at premieres and get draped in loaner jewelry from Van Cleef and Arpels.

But a film couldn’t get made without Sandra standing in for her actress. She’s never been on a single frame of film, yet, she is important. Those people are integral to the process but like many others who devote their lives to filmmaking, they get little credit. That’s why she lives at the Oakwood and she’d never have it any other way.

Here was an entire community of people where I could finally belong. It was a place where everyone spoke on-set lingo, and no one looked twice at the people who paced by the pool, talking to themselves and gesturing wildly while rehearsing their lines. Hollywood’s superficiality, the politics that demanded to be played, the deep insecurity and brokenness that seemed to fester with each new rejection—it was all worth it to be part of the process. In a million subtle ways, my new neighbors showed me that this life was worth giving up everything for. I breathed in their admiration for the film industry and absorbed it so deeply that it almost felt like it originated from myself. It didn’t feel like it was merely devotion by proxy. I was hooked.

I was twelve years old when I discovered my propensity for falling instantly, madly in love. It’s the kind of love where I dive headfirst into someone else. It’s that kind of lose-my-soul-and-don’t-ever-care-to-find-it kind of love. The intensity is borderline violent. I prefer to think, even now, that my first love was equally crazy in love with me, but it’s likely that he was unaware of the whole thing.

I was going to be appearing in a mini-series called
Vendetta II
in which I was playing a blind girl. I was not blind throughout the whole film but rather, my character went blind after a mobster threw her off the side of a mountain in an attempt to kill her mother, a nun, who was played by the supermodel Carol Alt. So, for half of the mini-series, I was blind until a trip through the Italian countryside restored my sight, as beautiful views are prone to do.

For the first time in my eight-year career I was playing a role that I actually had to work on. Until this point, I was always hired to be the kid who was somehow upset about something. Playing the role of a moody pre-teen was a comfortable niche for someone who was overly sensitive and could weep at the mere suggestion of a dead puppy. I was good at acting upset.

This new job required research. I had to learn how to do that fixed
stare and how to use a cane. It was a staggeringly melodramatic mini-series but I was still striving for realism.

My grandmother’s friend Margaret was a teacher at the School for the Blind, helping blind students adjust to sightlessness and manage daily tasks. I arranged to meet with her and one of the students, to ask some questions and learn about life as a blind person. That’s when I met Scott.

The day of my training, my mother and I arrived at Margaret’s house and my heart dropped. Scott was beautiful. When he heard us at the door, he stood up, cane at his side. He looked confident and vulnerable at the same time, traits that would dominate my search for the ideal man for the next decade. He smiled in my general direction and I wondered if the blind have a version of love at first sight.

“I’m Scott,” he said.

“Lisa.” I staggered, suddenly short of breath.

“I hear you act in movies. That’s cool. How old are you?”

He was clearly a couple years older than me, and the fact that my age didn’t even end with –teen made me feel like I might as well be wearing diapers. I glanced at my mother and wondered if she recalled my exact age. If I stretched it a year or two, would she really notice? Probably. Besides, I didn’t want my whole future with Scott to be built on a lie.

“Twelve,” I admitted.

“I’m fourteen.” I hoped he would follow up with, “But I have always had a thing for twelve-year-old girls.” He did not make any such confession.

“Oh,” I wittily replied.