In the Country We Love

by Diane Guerrero

  As my fervor for my work increased, the depression fell away. I continued to see Lorraine, who nudged me toward more changes and set me up with some tools for staying on track. Perfect example: She suggested that I use affirmations as anchors. When the doubts in my head cranked up, when my insecurities popped to the surface, I’d reach for one of the phrases Lorraine had taught me to repeat: “I am an intelligent woman. I am a good person and a loving daughter. I matter, and what I have to offer also matters. I can forgive myself for whatever I did yesterday, because today is a new day. Think: You is smart. You is kind. You is important.” Truth? It initially sounded like hokey psychobabble to me; it felt weird to say these things out loud to myself. But I got over that and, in time, the practice helped me. And to this day, I count myself lucky that I got out of that hole without medication. Praise Jesus! Hallelujah, mi Dios! Many need antidepressants, and there’s no shame in that. None. You do what you’ve gotta do. But in my case, the sessions with Lorraine and my return to the arts pulled me back from the brink. I also cut back on the benders; I had become quite a lush. And there’s another piece of good fortune I’m grateful for—I didn’t have to check myself into rehab in order to lower the bottle. I still partied from time to time, but at least I finally knew what I wanted to do with my life.

  My classmates became my new circle of friends. In addition to my courses, I signed up for private lessons with Peter. From time to time, he’d take me and his other students to this church space he’d rented. He’d then pair us for scene work. That’s how I met Dave and Kat; they were actors on similar journeys. “I’m telling you, Diane, you could really get out there and do this,” Dave would often tell me. “The cream always rises to the top.” I loved that saying by my sweet friend Dave. I’d be like, “Me? Really? What are you talking about?” I mean, I secretly hoped he was right, but either way, his sweetness boosted me. And Kat was always keeping an eye out for me around the industry. She’s the one who’d gotten me the gig in The Zookeeper. By the summer of 2010, the three of us had become inseparable.

  My confidence gradually improved, and Peter recommended that I have better head shots taken; Boston Casting was hosting a photo clinic, and I signed right up. The pictures were decent, good enough for me to begin submitting them around town. In Boston, there aren’t dozens of agents and agencies like there are in New York. There’s the main agency, Boston Casting, as well as Carolyn Pickman Casting, also known as CP Casting, and Maggie Inc., a modeling agency. I uploaded my head shot and CV on every site that I could. For weeks, I received not even a nibble. But in the fall of 2010, I got my first official audition—meaning one I hadn’t scrounged up for myself on Craigslist. In other words, it was legit. It was a part in a Kmart commercial.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” I shrieked when I told Brian the news. You would’ve thought I’d just won the million bucks on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and as far as I was concerned, this was the much bigger prize. “I’m so excited! This means they looked at my head shots and liked them!” You get pretty mindfucked in this industry. Sometimes, a bite of anything brings your hopes to an all-time high, only to have them drop the next day. Making it as an actor is easier said than done, but you have to keep perspective and stay levelheaded—optimistic, but not overly excited. “Ahh, you’ll figure it out!” is what I’d often tell myself. “Just do the work and you’ll be fine.”

  On the morning of the tryout, my enthusiasm gave way to terror. What should I wear? What should I say? Will they like me? I had no clue how any of it was supposed to go, and it scared the hell out of me. I’d been given three lines, and I’d memorized them so thoroughly that I could’ve repeated them in my sleep. One was something cheesy like, “These cotton T-shirts are incredible!” I’d prepared as if I was making my debut appearance in the year’s hottest biopic. Believe me, I took this all quite seriously.

  I made my way into the studio. The waiting room overflowed with all sorts of folks, some brown-haired and lanky, others thick, short, and burly. I didn’t know who was there for what, and yet I still did what many actors do: I sized up the competition. There were definitely some pretty girls, but I was one of only a couple of Latinas. Who knew? Maybe that’d be the look they went for.

  One at a time, the actors were called in. The casting director, a goth woman with straight-edge bangs and a clipboard, at last said my name.

  “Diane?” she called.

  “Yes,” I said, sitting up and straightening the simple T-shirt and jeans I’d so carefully chosen.

  “Come right on in,” she said.

  I followed her into the room. There, a group of casting directors sat in a semicircle. No one cracked a smile.

  The goth lady explained the concept for the commercial and handed me my prop, a pink tee to be featured in the ad. “Do you want to give us your first line?” she asked.

  “Um, sure,” I said. I cleared my throat and stood up tall. “These cotton T-shirts are incredible!” I said with as much zest as I could while holding up the T-shirt. I had the most stupid grin plastered on my face.

  The group sat silent. “Okay, great,” the goth woman finally said. “Let’s hear your other two lines.”

  I delivered both flawlessly, and again, the directors stared blankly at me. “That’ll be all,” the main woman told me. “Thank you for coming in.” She then followed me into the lobby and called in her next victim.

  Three days later, my big break became my heartbreak. I didn’t get the part. I tried not to let it sour my mood, but it did sting. The fact that I’d invested so much effort made it feel like even more of a letdown. “You never know what they were looking for,” Peter told me. “It could’ve been something as random as they didn’t think you were the right height, or they decided to use a man instead. You just have to keep going out on as many calls as you can.” It took me a month to recover from the disappointment, but once I did, I followed Peter’s advice and got back up.

  Through Dave, I connected with Rebecca Rojer, who was then an undergraduate film student at Harvard. She was auditioning a bunch of people for the principal role in a short called Ashley/Amber.

  “You should try out,” Dave urged.

  “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I told him. I’d checked out some of Rebecca’s other work online and let myself get intimidated. Her stuff was good.

  “Diane, you’re totally ready,” Dave goaded. “Just do it.”

  Another reason for my apprehension: The script contained this scene in which the main character has sex with her boyfriend, and the dude dies. I was like, “I don’t want to do an indie film making love with someone who croaks! Or making love on film at all, for that matter.” But Dave was like, “Dude, you can sort that out later! Go in and see what happens.”

  On the day of the tryout, it snowed. The audition was on Harvard’s campus. That fact alone was nerve-racking. Dave came along. “This is awful,” I told him as we cut across an icy Harvard Yard. “It’s a mess out here. I wish I’d never signed up for this. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” As we walked, my mind flashed back to all those Sundays when Papi drove us through Wellesley; the look of the Cambridge campus, with all its ivy-covered buildings and gold steeples, reminded me of that community. It was a secret, elite world I never thought I’d get to be part of, and yet here I was—and it freaked me out. “Calm down,” Dave told me. “Remember, the cream always rises to the top.”

  Rebecca called me in almost right away. “How are you, Diane?” she asked, extending her hand. She seemed as nice as they come. Phew. “I’m great,” I said. Dave shot me a thumbs-up as we went off into a small studio. Literally ten minutes later, it was over. Just as I was preparing to rejoin Dave in the waiting area and delight him with another round of “poor me,” Rebecca surprised me.

  “I appreciate you coming in today,” she said, “and it’d be great if you could come back.”

  What? Did I hear her correctly? Is this a callback even before I’ve left the bui
lding? “Um, all right,” I said shyly.

  “How about next Wednesday?” she asked.

  “Yes, sure,” I answered. OMG.

  When I returned for the callback, I took one look around the waiting room and nearly crapped my pants. To my right sat an (insanely) gorgeous blond girl with plump lips and perfect teeth; on my left was a brunette who was almost as much of a knockout. I’m so not getting this. We all looked so different that I started wondering how we could all be up for the same role. Maybe she’s auditioning for multiple parts, I thought. Fingers crossed, ’cause I’d have no shot in hell against Angelina Jolie.

  When Rebecca brought me in a few minutes later, I went in there and did my thing—and I held nothing back. “Wait here,” she told me afterward. She disappeared from the room and returned wearing a big smile. “I’d love to have you do the part,” she said. The room stood still. “Really?” I squealed. “You would?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said. “I think you would be a perfect fit.”

  I was stunned. Literally. “I’m so glad Dave connected us,” she continued as I stood there looking befuddled. “I’d already auditioned a hundred girls for the part and couldn’t find the right person.”

  I left that room and called Dave on his cell. “She wants me!” I screamed. “Thank you so much for pushing me to do this!” It blew me away that I’d been picked out of so many girls. To say I was amazed is the understatement of the millennium. At last, after so many setbacks and failures in the previous few years, I was getting something right.

  Working on the film is still on my top ten list of most fun experiences. First of all, this film had a budget. No, I didn’t get paid, but all my meals were provided. And stop the presses: I was the main character! Not to mention that I was getting twenty-three minutes of meeee! I could also get a reel out of this. In the film, which is a dark comedy, Ashley and Amber are the same person, hence the slash. During filming, everyone in the cast had to pitch in (that’s the way it goes with low budget). And the “set”? For the set, we shot at Rebecca’s co-op, at a café, and sometimes even inside my apartment. We also did a lot of outside shots, in the snow. The whole thing was very crunchy-granola, um, I mean artsy.

  I got such a rush whenever I was on camera. Most of the time, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I took the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach. I was soooo serious, probably because I was fresh and nervous. I wanted everything to be perfect—by the book. I didn’t do a lot of what actors call “playing,” where you try different things and really make the material your own. When you’re feeling free, when you have a handle on who you are, you’re more able to go in there and try new things. I hadn’t yet grown to that place. The fear of failure stopped me from letting down my hair, and when I look back at the film now, I can see that my performance reflected that. But Rebecca was happy. “You gave me what I wanted from you,” she’d tell me, and I guess she was onto something. The film was later chosen to be screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, and I got to travel to Germany with the cast to see the big premiere. And yes: The flashback sex scene ended up in the film. #awkward.

  My life was shifting for the good, yet I still wasn’t calling my family all that regularly. When I did reach Papi, he seemed proud of me. “I’ve always known you were meant for this,” he’d tell me. “Remember how you used to sing all the time at the dinner table?” I won’t lie: It was still difficult for me to even be on the phone with Papi. But I was making progress, and the more we did talk, the better we both felt. Funny how confronting your fears will do that for you. Go figure. As for Mami, I really didn’t connect with her at all during this time, or know how things were going in Spain.

  Although I had a couple of credits to my name, I remained tight-lipped about my acting. For instance, I never invited the other girls at the bar to watch any of the films I was in. I did test the waters once by mentioning to a coworker that I was experimenting with acting. “So what are you going to do,” she said, “be in porn?” That hurt. And it reaffirmed my choice to shut up about everything.

  In 2011, my cover was blown. Early that year, an amazing opportunity arose, one that was pretty rare in Boston. I got an audition for the ABC series Body of Proof. For the audition, I had to simulate driving and falling asleep at the wheel; when the character awakens, she realizes she’s run over someone and is later arrested. By this time, I wasn’t a complete neurotic freak during auditions; I was becoming more comfortable. The same day I did the audition, the unimaginable happened: I got the part! Do you know how that felt for me? It was like I’d been told I was a series regular.

  A couple of weeks later, we traveled to Rhode Island to shoot the scene, the same one I’d auditioned with. I’ve arrived—my first union credit. I wasn’t just an actor; I was a traveling actor. I had a trailer and everything, complete with a hair and makeup team. I felt like I’d arrived. Weeks later, without my knowing it, the episode aired—and my scene was the show’s opener. You know how on Law & Order they always have that first scene before the show really comes on? That’s how it was on Body of Proof, so I was front and center. I started getting these e-mails from people in Colombia. I also got tons of messages on Facebook. “I just saw you on TV!” Dana wrote. I couldn’t believe it. I recorded it on DVR and watched it a kazillion times. It felt wonderful. All I could think was, That’s me! That’s really me!

  In retrospect, I’m still amazed at everything that happened during that short period. I did a 360. Many times in our sessions, Lorraine would ask me, “How does it feel to be in front of the camera?”

  “I feel free,” I told her, “like I can do anything.”

  Not that performing isn’t the scariest thing ever, but the fear is part of the exhilaration. And when you’re in it, feeling that rush, it’s just bliss. I’d had that rush in high school, when I’d performed at Springfest, and then again during my senior recital. The difference between me back then and me at this point is that I’d grown up. I had material to draw from. The journey I’d taken, even the most heart-wrenching parts, began to shape me as an artist and as a person. And as I let go of some of the judgments I had about my past, I also became less critical of my own work. When you put something out there it’s not about deciding whether it’s good or bad. It’s about creating it, and then letting it go with the hope that others take some light or inspiration from it.

  After the big high of the TV appearance, I began considering my next move. Brian’s and my relationship was stable, but by this point we both knew it had run its course. We’d become more like roommates than romantic partners, and whether or not I stayed in Boston, it was time for us to part. Life was clearly moving me toward a career on the stage, and, in order to explore that, I needed to be willing to step out. The place to do that was in the mecca of the acting world—New York City. As they say, if you can make it in the Big Apple, you can make it anywhere. I wanted to prove to myself and the world that I had what it took to do this thing.

  “There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” Zora Neale Hurston once wrote. The year 2009 was the one that asked me why I was here. The years 2010 and 2011 gave their answer.

  Me and the shiny Big Apple.

  CHAPTER 15

  New York City

  It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

  —GABRIEL “GABITO” GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Colombian novelist and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature

  “How’s everyone feeling?” Marishka, a coach at the Susan Batson Studio near Manhattan’s Times Square, scanned the row of faces. Eight others and I had gathered for our biweekly therapy session, um, acting course—one called Ex-Er Actor. The course included several components, including awareness and emotional flexibility. Marishka, this whip-smart, fiery, and soulful woman, nodded toward the first person in our semicircle. That was Ethan, a Brooklyn guy with wild, wiry black curls springing from his head.

  “Et
han, what are you aware of today?”

  “I’m aware that I missed my train on my way here and almost didn’t make it,” he said, sighing. “So to be honest, I’m aware that I’m feeling fucking out of breath right now.” A few of us snickered. Marishka smiled approvingly and shifted her gaze to the next person in line—me.

  “Diane, what are you aware of?” she asked.

  I glanced around at my classmates before I rested my gaze on Marishka. “Um, I guess I’m aware that I’m jittery today,” I said, twirling the bottom lock of my hair. “My mom left me this insanely long voice mail this morning, and, well—to be honest, I feel like a terrible daughter.” Some people laughed but I wasn’t being funny. Maybe I’d been very Kramer in my delivery.

  Marishka made her way around to the others. One girl had just lost her beloved cat and was overcome with grief. An older dude, a retired dentist, was aware of his exhilaration after hearing he’d gotten a part in a commercial; he was also aware that he had to be kinder to himself. And a redheaded woman, a mother from Queens, said she was aware that she was feeling neutral, and didn’t really feel like sharing. After everyone had gotten a turn, we moved on to part two of our class—the musical interlude, aka emotional flexibility. Marishka walked over to the stereo and put on Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” It was so loud, it practically shook the walls.