Lucky Stars

by Jane Heller

  I continued to stand there, dripping with flop sweat. It was a toss-up which made me more uncomfortable: failing Gerald’s test or having to witness someone else pass it.

  “This is wonderful,” cooed Brittany, who was now sliding her hands down her body, swaying from side to side, licking her lips.

  “You see this, class?” Gerald exclaimed. “Brittany is connecting with her sexuality, getting in touch with it, breaking down the destructive barriers in her psyche. Brittany, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call an actor.” Brittany, ladies and gentlemen, was what I called an exhibitionist.

  I quit Gerald Clarke’s class—he wouldn’t refund my money, the bastard—and told myself to go back to my roots, stick with what I knew, rely on the skills that had served me well in the past, before Jack Rawlins (or, as I had come to refer to it in this dismal period, “pre-JR”).

  I also told myself that I didn’t mind dropping down a rung on the acting ladder by auditioning for commercials again. As Mickey said, I’d be keeping the cash flowing in while we waited for the movie and television people to come to their senses. Commercials were a sure thing, we agreed—a needed boost to my fragile ego.

  The first commercial I went out for was a national spot for Tide. I was supposed to play a young mom who does the laundry, dresses her kids for school, hands her husband his neatly folded shirts, and then says, with a big smile, “We’re a Tide family. Shouldn’t yours be, too?” It was dopey in that way that a lot of commercials for household products are dopey (why would a young mom be excited about her stupid laundry detergent?), but I was just the hired help, so it wasn’t my place to judge. The main thing was that I was a shoo-in for the job. The entire creative team led me to believe I was. But when they showed my tape to the client, he nixed me for the part. Turns out I reminded him of his dreaded ex-wife. No Tide commercial.

  The second commercial I went out for was another national spot, this one for Midol. I was supposed to play a hip young woman who’s sitting in a restaurant with her friends, doubled over because she’s been stricken with horrendous menstrual cramps. As the camera comes in for a close-up of her face, she winces in pain, turns to one of the friends, and says, “If only I’d brought my Midol.” As I’m pretty good at wincing in pain, I got the job. Unfortunately, on the day of the shoot I was in a nasty fender bender en route to the studio and ended up wincing in pain for real. Not only did I arrive at the shoot over two hours late, but I arrived with a neck that was so whiplashed I couldn’t make it turn the way it was supposed to. What’s more, the two Percocet I popped wreaked havoc with my speech and instead of saying, “If only I’d brought my Midol,” I said what sounded like, “If only I’d brought my doll.” Yup, I lost the job. And to add insult to my pathetic injury, the person they replaced me with was none other than Brittany Madison.

  The third commercial I went out for was a national spot for Tic Tacs. I really wanted this one, because it was a cute spot, a funny spot, a spot that would showcase my comedic flair. I was up for the part of a bride who’s standing at the altar during her wedding, about to be kissed by the groom in front of a church full of family and friends, when she stops, stares into the camera, and says, panicked, “Does anybody have a Tic Tac?” The minister reaches into his robe, pulls out his Tic Tacs, and hands her one. She swallows it, smiles gratefully. The minister says to the groom, “You may now kiss the bride,” at which point the bride and groom suck face.

  The ad agency had already cast the actor who was playing the groom, so they brought all the actresses in to read with him—and to kiss him—to determine which couple had chemistry. He was a great-looking guy—sort of a young Mel Gibson—and I had no trouble getting in touch with my sexuality where he was concerned. Consequently, I won the job. The Saturday before the shoot, I went to the beach with Maura to celebrate. It was a relaxing day, during which we read, talked, napped, people watched. Big mistake. Two mornings later I woke up with a huge and thoroughly unsightly cold sore on my upper lip. Was I pissed! I had applied and reapplied the sunscreen. I had worn a hat with a wide brim. I had done everything I was supposed to do in order to not get a cold sore and, yet, there it was—a blister the size of a nickel and still growing. Maura did her best to camouflage it with makeup on the day of the shoot, but it was pretty damn ugly. Still, I wanted the job so much that I showed up and tried to pretend it wasn’t there. I ducked into wardrobe, donned my bridal gown, and kept my hand over my mouth until the cameras rolled. No one mentioned the Thing—not until the groom stepped closer in anticipation of our kiss and took a good look at me. Mel Gibson Junior lowered his head and was about to pucker up when he recoiled in horror and announced, “There’s no way I’m kissing that.” So much for the Tic Tacs commercial.

  “Maybe I should write Jack Rawlins one of my complaint letters,” said my mother, after I arrived home from yet another tough day and moaned that he was responsible for my career woes. She had used her key and let herself into my apartment and was busily alphabetizing the cookbooks in my kitchen. “Or maybe I should give you a nice haircut, dear. Those split ends aren’t very flattering.”

  “Maybe you should stay out of this, Mom,” I said, losing my patience with her. I knew she was only trying to help, but what I needed was for her to leave me alone. “Maybe you should find something constructive to do with your time.”

  She reacted as if I’d slapped her. “What did you say?”

  “I said that you need to involve yourself in an activity, a project, anything besides me.”

  “Oh, I see. So I suppose you’re not a worthy project? I should go and volunteer someplace, spend my days with strangers, while my only daughter is struggling?”

  “I’m not struggling,” I said, sinking onto the sofa. “I’m plateau-ing. I was on the rise and now I’ve leveled off. The business goes in cycles. I’ll be up again. I know I will.”

  I didn’t know anything of the kind. I just wanted my mother off my back.

  “Fine. I won’t cut your hair for you,” she said huffily. “And don’t bother thanking me for organizing your cookbooks. Cookbooks. Ha! God forbid you should fix a decent meal once in a while, Stacey. If you ask me, you got that cold sore because you don’t take care of yourself.”

  “I do take care of myself,” I said. “I’m a grown woman, as I keep reminding you.”

  “A grown woman? Then where’s the ring on your finger? Or am I supposed to keep quiet about that, too?”

  “Oh, please, Mom. Not the marriage routine again.”

  “Yes, the marriage routine again. Grown women not only have lovely houses instead of apartments that look like a girl’s dormitory”—she gave my living room the once-over—“they have husbands, Stacey, nice husbands with nice jobs and nice manners. Some grown women even have children. But then I should be so lucky to be a grandmother. Of all my friends in Cleveland, I’m the only one whose daughter isn’t—”

  I grabbed the two throw pillows from each end of the sofa and covered my ears with them, stopping her latest harangue in its tracks. Not very mature of me, I admit. Not very grown woman-ish. But it worked. It shut her up and was, therefore, the best course of action under the circumstances.

  five

  I went over to Maura’s the following Saturday, hoping she would cheer me up as she always did. From the first day we’d met, when I was playing the part of a nurse on Days, she’d been my rock, my champion, the person who told me the truth but never criticized, never judged. That’s what a best friend is, isn’t it? Someone who talks you off the ledge when times are tough; who celebrates your success when others are envious of it; who can joke with you as easily as share intimate confidences with you; who urges you to keep going, keep pushing, keep remembering that life is full of possibilities and that even a bad review from a pompous movie critic isn’t the end of the world.

  It was an “up” just to watch Maura bustling around in her new house. Thanks to her steady work on Days and her occasional freelance gigs on movie sets, she earned a d
ecent living as a makeup artist and was able to buy a house—the kind of security struggling actresses would kill for. Her place, a Spanish-style three-bedroom in Burbank, needed a little TLC, but she was committed to fixing it up and had already replaced the avocado shag carpet in the living room.

  “The kitchen cabinets are next,” she said as she handed me an iced tea. “I’m not wild about the orange Formica.”

  “I admit I won’t be sorry to see them go,” I said. That was another thing about Maura: she was a doer. She made the most of everything—whether it was a house or a guy. Yes, she had a father complex and dated men who were certified geezers, but she saw the good in all of them, even the ones who couldn’t get it up without the Viagra. “So. How’s life at the show?”

  “Crazy as ever,” she said. “We’re doing sort of a science fiction story line where Deirdre Hall, Kristian Alfonso, and some of the other cast members have to age forty years. It’s tougher than the usual stuff, but I love it. It makes me feel like a magician.”

  “You are a magician.” Maura was wonderfully talented. Never mind how she transformed me with her makeup brush now and then; she could render actors unrecognizable, because, unlike most people in her field, she knew how to work with prosthetics and wigs and wardrobes, having gotten her start on one of the Planet of the Apes films. When Maura Lasky gave you a makeover, you got a makeover!

  “How’s everything with your mother?” she asked after we’d moved outside, onto her patio, and sat down.

  “Same answer as yours: crazy as ever,” I said. “She needs to get a life, Maura. She really, really needs to get a life. She’s smart and energetic and she should be doing something meaningful instead of nagging me twenty-four/seven. I wish I could make her see that.”

  “Sounds like she should apply for a job.”

  “Exactly. She’s a college graduate, with a degree in education. She’s well-spoken, if you don’t count the fingernails-on-the-blackboard voice. She’s domineering, as we know, but she’s not a bad caretaker. And she’s amazingly organized. She’d make a terrific office manager, for example.”

  “Hey, that’s a thought, Stacey. Why don’t I ask my producer if there’s an opening in the production department at Days? Maybe your mother would enjoy working in the wacky world of television.”

  “My mother?” I shook my head. “She despises show business. She’s made that clear to me over and over. No, she has to find something practical, like a position in a marketing research firm. Or maybe a doctor’s office.”

  “I’ve got just the spot for her.” Maura laughed. “How about getting her a job at a prison? She’d be the perfect warden, wouldn’t she?”

  I laughed, too. “She’d be totally in her element as a warden, bossing all the inmates around, sticking them in solitary confinement if they messed up, forcing them to listen to her consumer complaint rants, like all the reasons why she prefers Quilted Northern toilet paper over Cottonelle.”

  “Speaking of jobs,” said Maura, her tone turning serious, “have you gotten any lately?”

  I reported on my flameouts with the Tide commercial, the Midol commercial, and the Tic Tac commercial. “I’m supposed to go out for a Maidenform commercial next week, but the way things are going, I doubt I’ll get it.”

  “Hey, that’s not the Stacey Reiser I know. You’ve got to stay positive.”

  “I usually do stay positive, but the bras they’re advertising are their soft cup line. I think you need actual breasts to wear them.”

  She smiled. “There’ll be other commercials then. There always are.”

  Dear Maura. As I said, she was my rock.

  Unfortunately, there weren’t other commercials. At least not within the next few weeks. I’d go on auditions and fail to get the jobs every time. The casting directors dismissed me with either “You’re not the look we’re going for” or “We need someone less ethnic” or just plain “Thanks anyway.”

  Hoping for some sage career advice, I went to see Mickey Offerman, my agent. Mickey was not one of the trendy young men in black that you see everywhere in L.A.—the ones that are always shouting into their cell phones and hustling deals over drinks at the Four Seasons and getting written up in Variety. No, Mickey was a throwback agent—a cheesy-looking guy with a bad toupee and an equally bad nose job. He was in his late sixties, when nose jobs tended to be about nostrils—i.e., you could see right up them. The other thing you could see when you trudged up the stairs to his seedy little office in West Hollywood were black-and-white photographs of people he used to represent (“used to” being the operative words). Sally Struthers. Gabe Kaplan. Joan Van Ark. Actors of a certain era who were no longer in the spotlight, to put it diplomatically.

  So what was I doing with Mickey and why didn’t I dump him for one of the trendy young men in black, particularly since my career had stalled? A couple of reasons. First, I was loyal. When I’d come to L.A. in my twenties and pounded the pavement with my head shots and resume and couldn’t get anybody to take me seriously, Mickey was the only one who would. Sure, he’d turned me off with his tacky, Rat Pack-y style. For example, I think he actually said to me at our initial meeting, “I just love to find gals, bring ’em in off the street, and make ’em stars.” He even called me “little lady,” as if that’s what men call women in this century. But while the other agents in town wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t lift a finger to help me, Mickey did. And because he was a one-man operation, he handled movies and television as well as commercials—a plus, as far as I was concerned.

  The other reason I stayed with Mickey was less altruistic: he was the only one who still wanted me. When you’ve plateau-ed in the business and can’t get work no matter how hard you try, it’s not the best time to go looking for a big-time agent. So it was Mickey I clung to, Mickey I listened to.

  “Like I told you, we’re gonna have to let the dust settle a little,” he said the day I went to see him. He was wearing tight blue jeans, a purple shirt unbuttoned mid-sternum, and a pair of sunglasses on top of his toupee, as if to hold it down. “Pet Peeve tanked and Jack Rawlins trashed you. We’re gonna have to deal with that.”

  “How?” I said. “Unless I get some commercials soon, I’ll start panicking about my finances.”

  “Take a part-time job until things pick up again, kid.” By now, he had dispensed with the “little lady” and referred to me as “kid,” probably because he had no desire to sleep with me. As he had a desire to sleep with every woman he saw, I felt somewhat insulted.

  “No more biker bars for me, Mickey. Been there, done that.”

  “So do something else. There are plenty of jobs in this town. Why don’t you take one until you’re hot again?”

  “When do you think that’ll be?”

  Mickey patted my hand. I braced myself for him to say, “When hell freezes over,” but he said instead, “When your time is right. This business is all about timing, Stacey. You know that. You were the fresh face when you first came here. Now there are a million new fresh faces. You’re in your—what—mid-thirties?”

  “Early thirties.” Thirty-four was early, compared to thirty-five.

  “Tough age bracket,” said Mickey. “They all want twenty-year-olds now.”

  “But I can play twenties, Mickey,” I said, hearing the desperation in my voice. “I’ll redo my head shots, dress edgier, walk the walk.” Whatever that meant.

  “Look, kid. Let’s get real about this, okay? I’ll keep doing my best to send you out for stuff whenever I can, but you gotta face facts. It’s possible that you won’t make a comeback tomorrow. You might have to wait until you’re old to get parts again.”

  “Old?”

  “Yeah. Once you’re in your forties, you can play mothers, aunts, teachers, judges. The meaty character roles.”

  I just sat there, feeling like a tire that had blown out. Mickey must have felt sorry for me, because he patted my hand a second time. “This is a tough, tough business,” he said. �
��At some point you may decide it’s not for you, not anymore.”

  “Acting is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” I protested, fighting off tears. “It’s all I’ve ever imagined myself doing. And I’m good at it, Mickey. I know I am. Okay, maybe I’m not Oscar caliber, but I’m not Sledgehammer Stacey, either. I mean, am I really supposed to quit a profession I love because Jack Rawlins didn’t like my performance in a movie that sank at the box office? Jim Carrey’s doing okay. Pet Peeve didn’t hurt his career one bit. That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Nobody said this business was fair. Take Jack Rawlins, since you brought him up. Is he a major talent? No. He’s a good-looking guy with a better-than-average vocabulary. And now he’s getting rewarded for trashing movies. It’s not fair, but it’s the business.”

  “He’s getting rewarded? How?”

  “You haven’t heard? They’re expanding his show to an hour and going wider with it. He’s not just gonna review movies now; he’s gonna interview guests. Sort of a Charlie Rose meets Roger Ebert.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Not fair, right. Jack Rawlins is gonna be a big star and that’s how the cookie crumbles and you gotta concentrate on you, on what you’re gonna do.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m not gonna do,” I said resolutely. “I’m not giving up. I’m an actress—even if I have to get a part-time job to pay the bills. If a lightweight like Jack Rawlins can make it in this business, so can I.”

  Talk about a stirring performance. Mickey was so moved he let out a long belch.

  “It’s the cholesterol medicine they’ve got me on,” he explained. “Gives me gas.”

  I trudged out of his office, more determined than ever to hang in, hang on, hope that my big break was just around the corner.

  six