That was certainly true when I auditioned for Aaron Spelling, the most successful producer in TV history. He was producing a new series called Pier 66, and I was extremely nervous when I met him. In addition to being a legend, I knew he had the power to change my life. No pressure, right? But he put me at ease almost immediately with a pleasant, personable manner. As we talked, he made me so comfortable that I forgot whom I was speaking with, which was part of his gift. While I gabbed away, thrilled to be in conversation with the man who’d cast Farrah Fawcett in Charlie’s Angels and Joan Collins in Dynasty, he studied me with the seasoned eyes of a sculptor, assessing whether I fit his vision, and I guess I did.
I got a callback, then tested for the pilot in front of the network, negotiated my contract in case I was approved, which was damn exciting to think about what I might get paid if the show went, and then, finally, to my amazement, I got the part. I was beyond thrilled. Fittings started immediately, and Mr. Spelling was at every appointment, offering opinions or quietly nodding his approval as he puffed on his pipe. His hands-on involvement made a lasting impression on me, and I’d think about him again years later when I did my reality show, and later still, when I lent my name to hair products and perfume. If it had my name on it, I had to be involved in as many decisions as possible.
After the fittings, the cast flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where we planned to start shooting the series if ABC picked it up, which was expected. Why wouldn’t they green-light an Aaron Spelling show? The man was a TV genius. All the talk among the actors was about having to relocate to Florida while we were in production. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t a bad place to live. As we waited for news, my sister called with wonderful news of her own: She was pregnant! I screamed. I was going to be an aunt. My parents weren’t thrilled with the circumstances; my sister didn’t plan on marrying the father, and my parents weren’t fans of his—kind of a double whammy of disappointment. On the other hand, they were excited about becoming grandparents and loving up a little baby.
It was actually the start of a difficult but satisfying time for all of them. After giving birth to a son, Alec—named after Alec Baldwin, whom both of us liked—Michelle lived for the next five years with my parents. My dad had left the phone company and, with my mom, opened a coffee shop called Jitters. Michelle ran it until she met her husband, Brandon. (They would get married a month after Charlie and I, and have two boys together. So it turned out great.)
In the meantime, ABC didn’t pick up the series.
At that point, however, I had no choice but to go back to auditioning and plugging away. I came close again when I scored a good-size role in P.C.H., a Melrose Place–type pilot about five coeds at a college near the ocean. With Jack Scalia, Sally Kellerman, and Casper Van Dien in the cast, I sensed it was going all the way, but at the last minute the network changed its mind and turned it into a made-for-TV movie. People asked how I dealt with the ups and downs, and the truth is, I didn’t. I’d spend weeks feeling excited and full of hope at the prospect of working on a weekly show and making good money, and then a single phone call would erase everything but the dream.
And it didn’t get any easier on my next job, 919 Fifth Avenue, a glitzy, sexy nighttime soap spun from bestselling author Dominick Dunne, starring Barry Bostwick and Lisa Eilbacher. Mine was a small but crucial role of a girl who was raped and murdered early in the second act, which meant I cried and screamed rather intensely in a short amount of time, then died. At the table read, I recited my lines without the histrionics that would be part of my actual performance, while making sure to add, “Of course, I’ll be crying and emotional here.”
After I finished, though, one of the producers appeared at my side. I could see he was angry, but I couldn’t figure out why. Asking to speak to me privately, he motioned to the corner.
“Why are you screwing around here?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” I replied.
“Why aren’t you crying? You didn’t cry at the table. The part calls for you to cry. Are you prepared? This is not a joke.”
Confused, I began to tremble. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been to a table read where someone actually cried and screamed.”
“Well, now you have. The network wants us to fire you.”
“What?”
“The network wants to do a read with you right now,” he said.
“What? I have to read again?”
“They want you to reaudition. Right now.”
“Why?”
“Because you fucked up,” he said. “They have no idea what you can do. And frankly, neither do I.”
Suffice it to say, his comments and crass delivery destroyed me, yet I had to hold it together, at least on the outside, which was a feat of acting itself. At the same time, I was livid with this producer and all of the other producers at the table for not sticking up for me. They could’ve told the network exec who’d complained that they had my crying on tape. They knew I could cry. But they caved, and I felt ambushed. I ran into a dressing room and called Chuck. I told him what had happened and said I wanted to leave.
Though sympathetic, he said I wasn’t in a position where I could walk out and piss off a network, and he was absolutely right. I knew better, too. You don’t walk away because something doesn’t go your way. You figure out a solution. In my case, it meant going back to the table and doing it the way everyone wanted, full out. Believe me, when the network execs and producers reconvened to reaudition me, I had no problem crying. I cried so hard one of my contact lenses popped out. They kept me in the pilot.
A month later, I was working on an episode of One West Waikiki, the Glen Larson–produced drama with Cheryl Ladd as the world’s best-looking medical examiner, when the 919 Fifth Avenue producer called—the same one who’d ripped me. Now he said if the pilot was picked up, they were going to reshoot my part with someone else and add me as a series regular. I was stunned. “The network loves you,” he said.
In the end, 919 Fifth Avenue didn’t go to series. But I remember hanging up from that call and then turning to my mom and sister, who were with me in Hawaii for a girls’ week of pampering, and telling them the news. “It was that asshole producer who made me cry,” I said. “Now he says they want me as a regular.” My mom, my sister, and I traded high fives. It didn’t make sense, but not everything does at the moment it happens, such as my parents’ move to California, my decision to become an actress, or the producer’s tantrum when I didn’t cry at the table read. Often the only way you ever know for sure if you made the right move is to fix the problems that are fixable, don’t worry about those out of your control, and keep marching forward.
My philosophy in life has always been, if it’s meant to be, it will be. Things happen for a reason. One door shuts, another opens. If I didn’t get a part, a better one was waiting for me. I’m not saying I never got disappointed or broke down in tears, but, in general, I saw the glass as always half-full.
PART THREE
Getting
Naked
1
WHAT DOES IT mean to get naked?
Over the years I would ask that question many times and for different reasons, and come up with a variety of answers, though the first time I posed that question it meant just that: What does it mean to get naked? I had read Joe Eszterhas’s script Showgirls and was on my way to audition for director Paul Verhoeven. The two of them were responsible for the huge box-office success of the sexy thriller Basic Instinct, and the hype around Showgirls made it the hottest property in Hollywood—and also one of the scariest. The story about a young girl who climbed the Las Vegas ladder from stripper to showgirl required near-constant toplessness and seemed likely to push the boundaries of an NC-17 rating.
After reading the script, though, I knew the nudity was very real. This was a movie where whomever was cast as Nomi would have to step fully into the role and out of herself, and I wondered if I could do that. At twenty-four years old, I wasn’t far from those
days in Japan when I refused to pose for pictures in a bra and underwear, and this movie required exposing way more than that. I had to ask myself if I could do it, and if I answered yes, what would it mean to get naked? Would the risk be worth it? Would I be cheapening myself?
From the many discussions I had with Chuck, I knew one thing for sure: people in and out of the business were going to talk about whoever got the role. It was going to be impossible not to have an opinion, and whatever that opinion was, it was going to be extreme. As written, the role was one of the most daring parts for a young actress in years, if for no other reason than what she was going to have to show, physically and emotionally. It was definitely a dance on the high wire without a safety net. Despite being comfortable with my body, I was not exactly the exhibitionist type. But after reading the script several times, I was able to talk myself into a place where I could see the nudity was about the character, not me. Once I got there, I decided to go for it; I was ready for the high wire.
As I did with every audition, I tried to dress appropriately for the role. For this, I wore a simple dress. It let the director see my body without being overt.
He also saw a lot of other actresses and eventually opted for Elizabeth Berkley, the talented and beautiful actress from Saved by the Bell, who was also looking to make the leap from TV to movie star. In the end, reviewers savaged both the movie and Elizabeth, the latter unfairly, and I suppose I was lucky, in a way, to have not gotten the part. But I’ve always admired Elizabeth’s courage. I remember reading an interview in which she said that, like the character, she was turned on by challenge, and that’s why she sought the role and went for broke. I understood. I would’ve done the same thing. Interestingly, at least from my vantage, she was much more exposed in the aftermath, when she was hurt and having to put on a brave face in the wake of terrible criticism, than she was in any scene in the movie. But all of us are the same way after any project, whether you’ve made a movie or given a PowerPoint presentation at the office. Everyone has boobs and a rear end. But when your emotions are raw and on the surface, you’re naked in a whole other way that feels even more vulnerable.
So what does it mean to get naked?
I remember feeling way too exposed in another way when I worked on the TV movie In the Blink of an Eye. It was a month-long shoot in Utah, and rather than put me up in a hotel there, the production company had me fly back and forth to Salt Lake from L.A. I probably would’ve been fine with that if not for an extremely turbulent flight from Hawaii a year earlier that had turned me into one of those fear-of-flying freaks. (I’m a much better flier these days.)
On my first trip to Salt Lake, I landed covered neck to ankle in red, swollen, itchy hives. A friend from the movie met me at the airport and took me straight to the emergency room. They gave me a shot of adrenaline and I looked more normal than not by the time I got to the set. I wished the same thing had happened on my next trip into town. I flew in at night and went straight to my hotel, with my hives, hoping they would be gone by morning. The PA called at 5:00 a.m. to say he was in the lobby to pick me up. I lied and told him that I ate something that I was allergic to and had a horrible reaction. I had to lie, I didn’t want him to think I was nuts. When he saw me, he said, “Oh, wow, yeah that’s pretty bad!” My lips looked like a collagen experiment. My whole face was blown up! I was so embarrassed! He took me to the hospital where I told the doctor the truth and he gave me a shot of adrenaline. He gave me that plus a Benadryl, so I was zonked by noon and barely able to get through my scenes. The point? If you take your shirt off, people stare once or twice. But if you have mysterious red things on your lip and it’s puffy for no apparent reason, people stare all day long, thinking, “What’s going on with her?” And though I didn’t know it then, it’s much worse when you’re in the grocery store and your face is on the cover of every tabloid and gossip website. But in many other situations I’ve bared my soul and been far more exposed than if I’d bared my body. The same is true for all of us.
So what does it mean to get naked?
It depends.
2
I HAD TO broach the subject again on the movie Starship Troopers. It was about a year and a half later when I auditioned for the role of starship pilot Carmen Ibanez, and Paul Verhoeven, the director, remembered having met me. The big-budget film was based on Robert Heinlein’s Hugo Prize–winning novel about a time in the future when people had to battle giant bugs threatening to destroy human life. I auditioned five or six times before they had me screen-test with Casper Van Dien, who was cast as the lead, Johnny Rico. Since Casper and I had auditioned so many times together before our screen test, we had good chemistry and hoped that would come across. We were hoping we both would be cast in the movie. This process went on for a couple of months. A few days after our screen test, I met Chuck at his office before going to a premiere with him, and he was grinning like a kid with good news when I walked in. I’d gotten the part. I was so excited to get that part. It was a lot of auditions and hard work, and I couldn’t believe I actually got a movie that was going to be in a theater! The first person I called was my mom. She was crying, I will never forget it. She was so happy for me! A few of my actor friends were like, “It’s a six-month shoot?! Ugh!” But I didn’t care that the shoot was long, I was working on a real studio movie.
In Hollywood terms, this was a major step up. I was going from guest spots on TV shows to a key role in a more than $100 million budget motion picture that was going to open around the world. Before shooting began, I did a four-episode arc on Melrose Place. An actor on the show and a couple of the production people couldn’t believe I was leaving for “the bug movie,” as they called it. But I was excited. I was going to be flying supersonic planes and shooting weapons—all pretend, of course, but very cool. Also, when Paul turned his attention to casting my character’s romantic interest, I suggested my friend Pat, who’d made a name for himself on Days of Our Lives and Melrose Place, and he got the part, which made it like a party.
All of us became good friends: Casper, Pat, Jake Busey, and Dina Meyer. We all were at the same stage in our careers—basically thrilled to have the job, which didn’t seem like work anyway. To get us in the kind of shape where we looked like “fearless and square-jawed” fighters, as Entertainment Weekly described us, we worked out daily with a trainer at the studio gym, and then, after about a month, they sent us to boot camp in Wyoming, where we had to tough it out in rough conditions, including a freak blizzard that caught us unprepared. Everyone’s sense of humor came out and we had a bonding experience as we huddled together in a tent in the middle of the night to keep warm.
Work on the movie itself was long, hard, and deeply satisfying, especially when Paul said he was satisfied with a scene. His approach each day was intensely passionate and creative, and all about executing his vision. One afternoon, he asked to speak with me. We sat down and he said he’d written an additional scene into the script, a love scene, and it required me to take my top off. He asked how I felt about that; if I was willing to do it. The multiple nuances contained in that question made it incredibly hard to answer on the spot. I’m also the kind of person who has a gut reaction to something, but I’ve taught myself to then step back for a moment or two (or three) and think about it from different angles to make sure my first instinct is correct. I consider the immediate effect of my answer, the longer-term effects, and then the best- and worst-case scenarios. In this instance, my radar was flashing a red warning light. We were well into shooting. Why did the director suddenly want me to add this sexy scene? Was it needed in the movie? Did it relate to my character? Or was it going to be one of those scenes where the action paused while the young actress showed her breasts? Cue the teenage boys in the audience. Beyond that, I had to consider the man asking. He wielded a measure of power in the business; what if I said no? What would the repercussions be?
To his credit, when Paul asked, he did it with no strings attached. He truly left it up to
me, and after careful consideration I said no. I didn’t think it related to my character or the movie, which had more than enough going on between the action and the undercurrents of social and political commentary. Though he tried to persuade me otherwise, Paul didn’t try so hard that I felt pressured, and ultimately I didn’t do it. Thankfully, I never experienced any fallout.
In a way, that movie spoiled me forever. My agent, Chuck, told me not to get used to it. My next movie could be a gritty independent with a crappy budget. The sets on Starship were incredible. Delicious food was catered every day. My sister felt as if she’d entered a different world when she visited the set with her two-year-old son, Alec; I took my parents to the red-carpet premiere in Beverly Hills; I received positive mentions in reviews; and after its opening weekend, November 7, 1997, Starship was number one at the box office. I knew I’d taken a step forward in the business. This was fun. I wanted to keep going.
I couldn’t wait to see what was next.
3
FOUR MONTHS AFTER wrapping Starship Troopers, I received the script for Wild Things, which I recognized for what it was—a smartly written erotic thriller set among high school students highlighted by a threesome designed to turn on every red-blooded moviegoer between the ages of fifteen and fifty. Neve Campbell had already been cast in the lead role, along with Kevin Bacon and Bill Murray in crucial supporting parts. They were still looking for the other females, the spark that would ignite the fire, so to speak.
I’ve never had a problem with sexy movies. Basic Instinct and 9½ Weeks are examples of excellent adult-themed movies that also cause your inner thermometer to rise. Liking them is one thing, but starring in one is another. I read Wild Things several times, thought about the nudity, and talked to Chuck about the pluses and minuses of taking on such a role, before I finally agreed to audition.
Real Girl Next Door Page 5