Through His Eyes

by Emma Dibdin

  I want to tell him I’m not into interiors, that I’m here because I love his work, but I can’t imagine a version of this that doesn’t sound pretentious.

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t here to meet you,’ he says, leading me onto the deck, which faces directly out into the canyon and its tangle of trees. Even now in winter, with some of the branches bare, the greenery is impenetrable, spiralling downwards. When I first moved to Los Angeles I scarcely knew what a canyon was, but they are as foundational a part of this city as highways or beaches or narcissism. The ravines cut into the land create entire neighbourhoods.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Had a few meetings up in Burbank and got caught in traffic on the way back down. Naturally.’

  ‘Of course.’ I laugh, and it comes out high and forced. ‘Should we wait for Peyton? I think she maybe wanted to sit in…’

  ‘Oh, right…’ He looks vaguely back into the house. ‘I’m fine with this if you are. Always feels strange to me having a third party hovering around during these things.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ The fact that he’s calling his publicist a third party suggests to me that they’re off to a rocky start. And there’s no way he knows I’m supposed to have only twenty minutes with him. At Clark’s direction I take a seat on a wooden arbour as he settles onto a loveseat opposite me.

  ‘So I’d like to start with a few questions about the house, if that’s okay with you. The renovation, the thinking behind it…’

  ‘That’s okay with me.’

  ‘You’ve owned the place for a long time, correct?’

  ‘Yes, I bought it back in ’01, right around the time my show was wrapping up. I’d just hit my thirties and I knew I wanted something more permanent, something that felt like a home and not a crash pad, but it was a bit of a fixer-upper. I liked the idea of having it as a project, but I never really had the time to put into it, and so I would just lend it out to friends when they were visiting, you know, stay here sometimes at weekends. For long stretches I would forget I owned the place at all.’

  ‘You used to live more in the city, right?’

  ‘My ex-wife and I had a place in Beverly Hills.’

  ‘So why the canyon? It’s not the most obvious choice.’

  ‘Well, no, but I guess it’s the ultimate embodiment of ego, isn’t it? The desire to be segregated yet superior, to look down and see everything spread out beneath you. To be in the city but outside of it, and, of course, above it. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I wanted some space, for myself and for my daughter.’

  ‘So you’re enjoying the seclusion?’

  ‘So far, although I do keep a two-bed condo in the city, for when the silence gets too loud. It’s another world up here.’

  ‘I definitely see the appeal.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In Echo Park.’

  ‘Is that a safe neighbourhood these days? When I first moved to the city, back in the late eighties, it was kind of a warzone over there. Lot of gang violence.’

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s pretty gentrified now. They did this huge renovation on the lake there, the year before I moved in, and that’s what convinced me. The cheap rent, too, but mostly it was the park. I used to live in West Hollywood and I was just miserable because—’

  ‘There’s nothing natural within a five-mile radius, right. And you’re stuck in your car all day, driving from one concrete cage to another, never really seeing the world. LA can be hermetic.’

  ‘I actually don’t drive. Growing up in London, it just never occurred to me to learn.’

  I don’t know why I’m telling him this. This interview is not about me, and I try to remind myself that he is only flattering me by feigning interest.

  ‘You don’t drive?’ He blinks at me. ‘How long have you lived in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Three years.’

  He lets out a long, low whistle between his teeth.

  ‘That might be a record. I’m not sure anyone’s ever lasted that long in LA without a car. How on earth do you do it?’

  ‘It’s actually not as bad as you’d think. There’s buses, and Uber.’

  He nods, and I’m conscious that I haven’t got a single usable quote from him in the last minute.

  ‘So, can I ask you about some of the features of the house? What inspired you to finally get to the renovation, after all these years?’

  Clark pauses, looks out into the canyon as if considering whether to answer.

  ‘Well,’ he begins, finally, speaking very deliberately. ‘You may have heard that I went through a divorce last year. And any time a relationship comes to an end, I think it should force you to re-evaluate. For me, the re-evaluation came down to a realization that I want to be more present in my daughter’s life, and more present in my own life. I know that it’s become very faddy to talk about mindfulness, and meditation, but I cannot overstate how important it’s been to me. So being out here in the canyon, up above the fray of it all, just felt like the right move.’

  ‘But the house wasn’t right before.’

  ‘Yes, it was… It needed some love. That’s how Jerome put it, and I think it’s accurate. We didn’t change much structurally, except that we added the separate wing for Skye. It was really more about knocking through some walls, turning two small rooms into one big, bright one, like in the living room.’

  ‘Why the wraparound pool?’

  ‘I wanted to see if it could be done.’

  There’s something about this attitude, the careless audacity of him, that’s breathtaking. To do something simply to see if it is possible. This is power.

  ‘Do you interview a lot of actors about their homes?’

  ‘You’re the first. Although I did a lot of research online about the craziest amenities that celebrities have built into their homes.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Vitamin C-infused showers, private jet pads… that’s a little much for me. The wraparound pool serves a purpose, you know. I thought about just building a little lap pool, which would have got the job done, but I have a strange pet peeve about having to turn around mid-lap. It always feels like slamming on the brakes to me.’

  ‘Is swimming your workout of choice?’

  ‘Yeah, I used to be a runner, but it’s too tough on my knees now. I do the treadmill, but it’s not really the same.’

  I’m not here to ask him about his workout regimen, much as I want to reply by telling him how much I also love running, how much I also hate the treadmill, how alike we are in this respect. Don’t make it about you, an editor’s voice echoes in my head, from long ago. Don’t try to impress them. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you matter to them. An interview is a transaction, and that’s it, even if sometimes it’s well disguised as a regular conversation. I remember wondering, even then, if she was right or if she was simply bitter that she personally had never managed to make the transition from interview to real conversation.

  ‘So, the wraparound pool is about 150 feet end-to-end, in this horse-shoe formation,’ he continues, ‘and you can really get a good sustained swim without having to stop. Once I get going, I don’t want to stop unless I’m forced.’

  ‘Just for swimming, or is that a general life philosophy?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘You mentioned Loner before – I’m a huge fan of that show, by the way. You had your breakout role in television, back when TV was still considered sort of lesser than movies. That’s completely changed now, and movie actors are going to TV in droves. Have you thought about going back?’

  ‘Oh, sure, I’m always just looking to go where the good scripts are. I actually had a great meeting with Bob Fleischer at HBO a couple of weeks back, I’m looking at developing something over there – but don’t print that, if you wouldn’t mind, nothing’s finalized.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Television’s in such an exciting phase right now, and a lot of the creative talents I worked with in movies ten years ago are now going over
there, because TV is more willing to take risks. Or not even risks – just try things that aren’t known quantities. The kinds of movies that I made when I was first starting out after Loner, your mid-budget dramas, your romances, those are all pretty much gone. Now if you’re not making a multi-million-dollar blockbuster, you’re making an indie, and most actors like to live somewhere in the middle ground.’

  ‘You’ve made a lot of blockbusters, but never a superhero franchise. There are so many of them, you must have been offered roles, right?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Sure, I’ve had conversations. I was actually in talks for one of the DC standalones, but I had to turn it down. There’s a lot of strings attached there, and the idea of signing on for a six-movie commitment just doesn’t appeal. Maybe because I feel as though I’ve already covered a lot of the superhero territory with Loner. I mean, that character wasn’t a superhero, but he was this guy who wore his daytime face as a mask, and lived with a secret burden of responsibility.’

  ‘Yeah, he was a vigilante, an orphan—’ I nod, thrilled that he’s validating my long-held theory about Loner as a superhero narrative.

  ‘Driven to this fight for justice by this pain in his past, right – you really are a fan. And I always liked the idea that by day, he had to be this sort of hollow suit, and associate with these real high-powered New York scumbag types, because that’s what power looks like in ordinary America, that was the kind of power his father had, and with that kind of power comes an almost unlimited capacity to get away with things. That show really tapped into things that I don’t think it always gets credit for.’

  ‘It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways,’ I offer. ‘I mean, the golden age of the TV antihero sort of arrived a few years after Loner ended, with Mad Men and Breaking Bad and all these narratives about deeply flawed men you kind of root for anyway.’

  ‘Right. And because we were on a broadcast network, we were never going to have the freedom to go to quite the extremes we might have wanted to. But as I say, I’m enormously excited about where TV is right now, and I certainly hope to go back to the small screen if we can find the right character.’

  ‘Would you ever consider doing a revival of Loner? Pretty much every nineties show is coming back at this point…’ I trail off, as he’s shaking his head.

  ‘Absolutely not. This industry needs to learn how to let things lie. This constant drive to revive existing properties because there’s theoretically a built-in audience, it’s so short-sighted and so motivated by fear. We have to keep making new things, because at some point we are going to run out of things to revive.’

  ‘Yeah, I think there’s a lot of frustration about that.’

  ‘It’s a strange time to be an actor, you know, because the other thing that has happened over the past ten years or so is that actual acting talent, and training, has been steadily devalued. A young actress told me a story recently that has really haunted me: she went to audition for a role in something, I won’t name the project but let’s say it was something for a young adult audience, big money, an adaptation of a very popular book. She’d put herself on tape, gone through several callbacks, done a chemistry read with the male lead, and was down to something like the last four or five girls. And by the way, this young woman is going places – she’s truly the real deal, she has got something electric. But she didn’t get the part, and in confidence, the feedback her agent received was that her social media following wasn’t as big as the other actresses’.’

  I nod, thinking of Tom.

  ‘Can you believe that? This young woman is, like I say, the real deal: Juilliard, off-Broadway theatre, years of well-regarded work on television and smaller pictures. Imagine being passed over for an acting job because you’re not a social media… maven? What do they call that, someone with a huge following on all these platforms?’

  ‘Oh, an influencer.’

  ‘An influencer!’ He snaps his fingers derisively. ‘What a term. What a complete bastardization of a term.’

  If I had the balls, I’d point out the irony of the fact that he’s dating one of the most shameless ‘influencers’ in the business. But I suspect he has no idea what Amabella really does for a living; she probably lets him think she’s still a struggling actress, lets him pay for everything while she’s raking in millions in spon-con.

  ‘Is the movie in production right now?’ I ask, trying to figure out which YA adaptation he’s referring to.

  He side-eyes me with a wry smile.

  ‘I’m not here to pick a fight with anyone. That’s all I’ll say, but that anecdote has really stayed with me, because it shows me what new actors are up against these days. If I’d had to impress casting agents with my following when I started out, there’s no way I’d even have got in the door.’

  ‘It feels so anathema to the old idea of a movie star, this very enigmatic, glamorous figure who was sort of unknowable by design.’

  ‘Precisely. Maybe I’m just old school, but I don’t believe that sharing the minutiae of your private life is helpful if you want the public to believe in you as a character. But I’m also not sure that some of these kids who are coming up now really care about playing characters. There’s a difference, in this town, between people who want to create things and people who just want to be seen.’

  ‘Every actor wants to be seen, though. Right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, in a tone that suggests what he really means is no. ‘I’ve personally always found a good character to be a fantastic place to hide. Giving a good performance is really the opposite of being seen.’

  I swallow, but I have resolved to ask this.

  ‘You said once, I think on Inside the Actor’s Studio, that you started acting at a young age because you had experienced some loss. A lot of loss. And that you were drawn to Loner because you related to your character as an orphan.’ I pause, watching his reaction closely, but he’s unreadable. ‘Has that early experience affected your idea of what home means? Or the way you approach making a home?’

  He is silent, still impassive, and everything in me clenches.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ he says at last, and I feel my shoulders sink in relief. ‘I haven’t really thought about it, but I suppose everything that happens to you, certainly before the age of ten or so, affects the kind of man you grow up to be. My parents’ passing certainly unmoored me, to a degree, and ever since then I’ve lived a pretty rootless existence, as a lot of actors do – nomadic. I would say that with this renovation, my goal was to create a house for the first time that really felt like a home, as opposed to a temporary base—’

  ‘There you are!’

  We both turn to see Peyton is pacing towards us with a fixed smile.

  ‘This is unexpected,’ she says, bright and terrifying. ‘Jessica, I thought you knew the interview was due to start at 4.40.’

  ‘My fault,’ Clark says smoothly. ‘I asked her if we could get started right away—I’ve gotta be out of here in a half-hour, something came up.’

  ‘When did you get back?’ she asks him, in a less accusatory tone than she used with me, more subservient.

  ‘Just about twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Well, we need you downstairs for a few profile portraits. Jessica, you have what you need here?’

  I open my mouth to say no, because I haven’t got through even half of the questions on my notecards, but Clark answers before I can.

  ‘Yeah, I think we’re about done here, right?’ Like a gut punch. That’s it. One minute we were having a conversation, getting towards something real; the next it is over. A transaction.

  ‘Absolutely. Thanks so much for your time.’

  He shakes my outstretched hand but barely meets my gaze, his attention now elsewhere. I have made no impression on him, of course, and why would I have expected otherwise? This is a man accustomed to life among the stars, and one of his greatest skills is making ordinary people feel as though they might be able to know him.

/>   He and Peyton walk ahead of me, and I let them go, busying myself with saving the interview recording to my iPhone, immediately emailing a copy to myself. I’m trying to retrace our conversation in my head, trying to identify a headline, but my thoughts are scattered and I can’t process the fact that this interview is already over, that I assumed I would have more time, that I completely failed to follow Jackie’s instructions and go in with a headline. I’m not even sure that I have an article.

  ‘I’m just going outside to make a quick call,’ I say to no one in particular when I get back downstairs, and head for the front door, away from the hum of activity in the back yard where Clark is now about to pose for a series of portraits by the pool. The sun is setting now, the winter sky almost purple over the canyon, and I breathe in deep to try to rouse myself back to reality, taking a few final notes on the front yard though I know that I already have more than enough details on the house.

  The front yard extends further than I expected, and I find myself close to the perimeter of Skye’s private patio, where the wraparound pool ends. I can only see glimpses of it through the hedge, the water that perfect chlorine colour that does not exist in nature, and there’s a pink tinge creeping into the blue of the water, reflecting the sky.

  I blink, look again, because those aren’t sunset colours. Chlorine blue tinged pink, a flash of red on tile, and blonde hair. And suddenly there’s a knot in my stomach and something thrills through me as I move, trying to find a better view, and finally there is a gap in the hedge large enough for me to see. Skye Conrad is lying on the steps of her pool in a beautiful one-piece cut-out swimsuit, the same one she was photographed wearing in Malibu with her squad, her hair spread out beneath her on the terracotta, and none of this is out of place except that her veins are open, and blood is flowing into the water from both her wrists.

  5

  For a while after I find her there is perfect silence, while I try to remember how to speak and imagine this situation as though I am outside of it, and somehow above it. It strikes me what an unbelievable story this would make if it were real, the starlet daughter of the beloved actor dying by suicide at the age of nineteen surrounded by a camera crew who had no idea she was there. I must watch her bleeding for a full minute before I make a sound.