Lucky Me: My Life With--and Without--My Mom, Shirley MacLaine

by Sachi Parker

  • • •

  MY career, such as it was, continued on its bumpy struggling-actress way. I went to plenty of auditions and met with a parade of agents and casting directors, but nothing was happening.

  It was Burt Reynolds who finally gave me my first film role, in Stick, which he was directing. The movie was based on an Elmore Leonard book and was shot down in Fort Lauderdale. I was playing Bobbi, the bartender, and I had three scenes with Burt himself, who was one of the nicest guys to work with.

  I was nervous and excited, and the night before my first scene, I came down with a 104 fever. I couldn’t believe it. My first big break, and I was deathly ill. What was I going to do? I called David back in Hollywood, in a panic. “I won’t be able to act tomorrow. I’m too sick. They’ll fire me. They’ll make the film without me!”

  David attacked the problem patiently and thoughtfully. “You know you’re not really sick, Sachi. This is all in your head. You’re making this fever happen.”

  He was right, and I knew it. The only time I ever got a fever, it was related to my acting career—before either an audition or a big scene in class. My own body was sabotaging me.

  David went to my level, so he understood this. He talked to me for about twenty minutes, and the fever magically receded. I went to bed feeling ready for the next day.

  The next morning, I woke up to another fever. It was higher now: 105. I called David. “I’m really sick this time! I’m not imagining it!” David, who was three hours behind me, sleepily talked me back to health. “You’re not imagining the fever, Sach. You’re imagining the reason for it.” Twenty minutes later, I felt fine.

  So I went off to the set, but by the time I arrived, I had a fever again. I called David back. And so it went the rest of the day. He talked me down from the ledge over and over until the shoot was done.

  I tried to analyze why I would do this to myself. Was I afraid to fail? Or afraid to succeed? Was I worried that I might be infringing on my mother’s territory? What if I get this job or that role? Maybe she won’t like me anymore!

  I remembered the fever I’d had at the deposition for my parents’ divorce. Had that been psychosomatic, too? Triggered by a fear of stressful, unpleasant situations? Was this going to plague me my entire career? Was I going to have a career?

  The actual shooting of Stick was delightful. Burt was a terrific director, nontemperamental and very easy to work with. Candice Bergen, who had the female lead, was a sweetheart. She was totally genuine, nothing actressy about her—and she was very friendly to me. Once, she asked me to have dinner with her, but for some foolish reason I said no. I really wanted to go, but she was already a big star, and I didn’t think I was important enough to hang out with her. I didn’t feel worthy. I was still a nobody, and I didn’t want to pretend I was a somebody. Hollywood can really fuck up your thinking.

  • • •

  BACK in L.A., I auditioned for Cocoon, the Ron Howard movie about aliens and old people in Florida. I was going out for the role of Kitty, the alien who appears as a young woman. I auditioned maybe seven times, and every time I felt the approval growing. Steve Guttenberg, who would have played my love interest, worked with me in the later auditions, and our chemistry was really good. After the last audition, at which I wore a short dress to show off my legs, I could tell that I basically had the role. I felt that it wasn’t so much my acting ability as the entirety of who I was: the girl-next-door type, pretty but not gorgeous, a good fit with Steve. The fact that my mother was on speaking terms with interplanetary life forms surely didn’t hurt.

  Ironically, the premise of the film is that a race of aliens called Antareans came to Earth thousands of years before and founded the mythical city of Atlantis. They were returning now to retrieve some of the Antareans left behind in cocoons. (I don’t know why they weren’t Pleiadians; maybe there was a copyright problem.)

  So it all seemed meant to be. Everyone loved the screen test. All systems were go.

  Then I got the call from Mort Viner, Mom’s agent. “Sorry, but they went with Tahnee Welch.” Who? Tahnee Welch, Raquel Welch’s daughter, an exotic beauty who was as far removed from the hometown sweetheart type as could be. Apparently they had two clear choices, and they went with the sexy bombshell.

  I was devastated. I thought I’d scored my first big part, and my career was off and running. Not so. Mom was philosophical. “You never know what they’re looking for. You just have to do your best and hope it works out.”

  “But you said we could make anything possible if we thought we deserved it,” I said, referencing her Oscar speech. “I think I deserved this.”

  Mom shrugged. “I guess you were wrong.”

  I went to the premiere screening of the movie with Mom and Mort. It was very difficult to sit through that film and watch my role being played by somebody else, but I called upon my Japanese stoicism and pretended to enjoy it. I understood why they’d cast Tahnee—she was gorgeous—but I also felt that by giving the character such otherworldly beauty, a dimension was missing in the romance. Steve and I would have been so cute together.

  I went up to Ron Howard after the screening to congratulate him. A very sweet, decent guy, he looked a little regretful. “I should have gone with you,” he said. I smiled graciously, but all I could think was, Why didn’t you?

  Anyway, I kept auditioning, and other, smaller parts followed.

  I only had two lines in Back to the Future, but everyone seems to remember them. They occur in the scene in the parking lot outside the prom. George McFly, played by my old acting partner Crispin Glover, is being beaten up by his eternal nemesis Biff. Suddenly George makes his hand into a fist and punches Biff, knocking him flat. I rush up with a group of gawking teenagers and ask, “Who is that?” and when I’m told, I exclaim in disbelief, “That’s George McFly?”

  It’s a great moment.

  I had two scenes in About Last Night…, the adaptation of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, with Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, and Elizabeth Perkins. I played a girlfriend. The actors were in their Brat Pack heyday, and they were all very hip and with it. I tried to fit in, but I wasn’t cool enough to run with them and I knew it.

  Then I landed a small part in Peggy Sue Got Married, as one of Peggy Sue’s high school girlfriends. I’d already played a girlfriend, and I’d already been in a time-travel movie, and now I was playing a girlfriend in a time-travel movie. I was starting to run out of options.

  So I went to Ireland. A young director, Ronan O’Leary, offered me a role in Riders to the Sea, his adaptation of the John Millington Synge play. I don’t know how he knew about me, but he’d seen me in something and liked my look. He thought I seemed very Irish.

  Ronan himself was like a little leprechaun, full of beans; he loved to talk, and he was passionate about film, which really appealed to me. I was perfect, he said, for the part of the young daughter Nora, who waits desperately for her brother to come back from a storm at sea. “The camera loves you. And you’re so right for this part. I have to have you.”

  It would be a short film, less than an hour long, but I jumped at the chance. My mother and sister in the film were to be played by Geraldine Page and Amanda Plummer. This was the kind of opportunity I’d been waiting for.

  Before the shoot, we spent about four days rehearsing in Paris, in Geraldine’s apartment on the Left Bank. I loved being back in Paris. I showed Geraldine and Amanda all the little cafés and bistros I used to haunt, and since I spoke French, I could proudly serve as their tour guide. We stopped at the place where I used to work, and I was warmed by the fuss the staff made over me. You’d have thought I was the big celebrity.

  Most of the film was shot on the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. As the play itself was set on the middle island of Inishmaan, we filmed in some of the actual locations. Inishmaan is a spectacularly wild place, with magnificent views of the Atlantic, and rocky outcroppings everywhere.

  I would wake up every m
orning well before call and walk around the island in the early fog. It was so beautiful in its desolation and loneliness. Just about every morning, I would visit the stone seat Cathaoir Synge (“Synge’s Chair”), which overlooks the Atlantic, where the playwright Synge would sit and be inspired. His great plays, including Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World, were supposedly written in this spot. Looking down at the surging waves, I would become Nora, and imagine my brother’s currach (boat) smashing against the rocks, and his Aran sweater washing up onshore. It was an ideal way to set my mind for the day’s work.

  There were no hotels on the island, so we were all put up in different homes. I stayed in a classic Irish cottage, with stone walls and a thatched roof. The husband and wife—I’ve forgotten their names, but let’s say Donal and Maureen—treated me like a princess, tending to my every need. Maureen refused to let me lift a finger to clean or help out. When I told her I needed a hot bath every night to relax, she insisted on drawing it herself. There was no hot water, so she would fill the bathtub with freezing cold water and then put hot coals in a little stove beside the tub, which would heat the bathwater to the desired temperature. She also made her own black bread every morning. I would come back from my walk and have a fresh warm slice; the bread was dense and heavy, almost hard, and it looked like it was made of peat turf, but I would put a big slab of butter on it and it was delicious.

  The diet on Inishmaan was basic: fish, chicken, seaweed soup, brussel sprouts, and all manner of potatoes (mashed, roasted, boiled). The ground yielded nothing but stones—there was almost no soil for the crops to grow on—and whatever sprouted up was blasted down again by the wind. It was a harsh, punishing world; you could feel it in the souls of the people. Their days were full of struggle and pain, but their nights at the pub were full of joy and laughter. It’s easy to sentimentalize the fortitude and spirit of the Aran Islanders. I wouldn’t say they were happier than anyone else, but their lives had a spare, stark clarity. There was no bullshit there. People weren’t bedeviled by choices, because they had no choices. They lived simply, and simply lived.

  My hosts had a marvelously Irish relationship, full of loving contentiousness. Maureen would bark orders at Donal—“Wipe your boots! Fetch some coal!”—and he would bolt down his dinner and head for the pub, or sometimes they’d go together, and I might tag along. Every single night, they would make love. I couldn’t miss hearing their old bed as it creaked rhythmically in the small, quiet house. It was a comforting sound, the sound of life going on.

  I think I enjoyed the Aran Islands even more than the filming, but both were great experiences. Ronan was a wonderful director to work with, never condescending or sarcastic. There was always positive energy coming off him. I could tell that Geraldine respected him a lot, and that spoke volumes for his talent.

  Geraldine Page was perhaps the finest actress I’ve ever worked with. She was a totally honest artist, incapable of a false moment. She was also a master of business—working with props, fiddling with her clothing, bringing the scene alive by simulating the naturalness of real life. “Most actors don’t know how to do business and talk at the same time,” she told me. “But in life, that’s what you do. You don’t stop to deliver a line and then go back to washing dishes, and then stop to deliver another line. It’s all of a piece, and you have to make it seem that way. Whether you’re setting a table or adjusting your sleeve, you have to keep it natural.”

  She also taught me to get my lines down as soon as possible. “You don’t ever want to think about your lines. They should be part of you, under your skin.” If you have to think about the script, you’re not dealing with the emotions underneath. Her advice for learning lines: “Fold your own laundry.” If you run your lines as you fold, you’ll find out how well you know them. If you can’t fold the laundry correctly, then you have more work to do.

  Geraldine was an amazingly generous colleague on the set. Whenever we did our close-ups, Ronan would offer, as customary, to have the stand-in read Geraldine’s lines off camera. Most actors would have been happy with that arrangement, but Geraldine wouldn’t hear of it. She’d say her own lines, thank you, and what’s more, she’d give 100 percent of her acting ability in every take. None of this would show up on-screen, except in the performances of her fellow actors, and that’s what mattered to her. She cared deeply about the whole piece, and if there was anything she could do to make it better, she would.

  I absorbed her lessons like a sponge, and took them with me. I always try to be off camera for another actor’s close-up. Folding laundry during rehearsal is now a cherished ritual. I remember doing a play a few years later: there was a scene at a restaurant table, and I worked up some business about cleaning the outside of the salt and pepper shakers with my napkin, because it seemed in tune with my character. This wasn’t something the director wanted; it just occurred to me naturally, a way of informing a small moment onstage. When the play was reviewed in the L.A. papers, a critic made admiring mention of my business with the salt and pepper shakers. That wasn’t me, I thought; that was Geraldine.

  We finished shooting on Inishmaan, and I said a sad goodbye to Maureen and Donal. By now I was no longer a guest in the cottage. I’d become a part of the family, and Maureen was barking orders at me, making me do my own wash and heat my own bathwater. She gave me an Aran sweater as a parting gift—she would have knitted it herself, but she didn’t have time. It was warm and comforting, like their home, and like the sweater from Hildy in New Zealand, sticky with lanolin oil.

  We moved on to Dublin to shoot some interiors. Even though Riders was a relatively low-budget film, it was big news in Dublin, where everyone knew Synge’s work by heart. One of the many visitors to the set was Kevin McClory, my mom’s old friend. I had stayed with Yuki at his mansion in Connemara so many years before, on our break from Charters Towers. It was so great to see him again!

  He took me to dinner at our hotel restaurant, and was full of compliments and enthusiasm. How grand was this?—he had known me since I was a baby, and here I was, acting in his town, a movie star! He was so proud of me. He knew Riders to the Sea as well as any Irishman, and he thought the character of Nora the perfect role for me.

  I listened intently, eating it all up. I knew this boded well for my career. Kevin was a big producer, and he was saying just what I would have wanted to hear: that I was an actress of consequence, and he wanted to work with me.

  After we said good night, I went upstairs feeling fairly intoxicated by my run of good fortune, and decided to order myself a massage. Geraldine and Amanda had had massages on the company; why not me? The desk clerk asked me if I wanted a man or a woman. Either, I didn’t care. Back in Japan, it didn’t matter about the sex of people who gave massages, because, as a rule, they were blind—not out of prudishness, but because their sense of touch was far more acute.

  About an hour and a half later there was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” I asked. A male voice answered. “It’s me.”

  Oh, it’s the massage therapist, I thought, and opened the door.

  It was Kevin McClory. I was confused. We’d said good night two hours ago. “Kevin? What are you doing here?”

  He smiled. “I want to come inside.”

  He wanted to come inside? “Why?” I asked, but as I looked at him, I knew exactly why.

  Now, Kevin was a very handsome man, tall and dapper (not to mention rich as Croesus). There was much to recommend him as a one-night stand. But he was my dad’s age. He’d known me since I was a baby. And let’s not forget, he was my godfather.

  I was so shocked, I really didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have the feminine wherewithal to say no, or to josh him out of it—“Oh, Kevin, you know that’s not a good idea. Do you want me to get you a hooker?”—or to even voice my puritanical outrage. So I slammed the door in his face instead. It was all I could think of.

  He called me later from the lobby, but I wouldn’t answer. I had no idea what to say
. And that was that. I never heard from him again. I probably sabotaged my career big-time with that move, and I’m sure there was a savvier way to handle the situation.

  On the other hand, he was my fucking godfather!

  • • •

  I was extremely proud of my work in Riders to the Sea. I felt it really marked my arrival as an actress. Back in Malibu, I got a tape of it, and we had a little private screening, just Mom and a few friends. I really wanted to see Mom’s reaction. I knew she was going to be bowled over. I couldn’t wait.

  Before we started, she was bubbling over with a sort of calculated, actressy enthusiasm. “This is so exciting. I can’t wait to see this. Everybody get in your seats, the movie is about to start!”

  It was very cute, and a little annoying. In her own way, she was grabbing a little bit of the spotlight. I didn’t care, as long as she was being supportive.

  The movie started. I looked over at Mom. She was leaning forward, gazing at the screen, her chin in her hands, like a child waiting for a special treat. Oh, Mom, you are so gonna love this!

  It was about fifteen minutes into the movie when I looked over at Mom again and—something had changed: she was sitting back now, and she had a tight, analytical look on her face. The pure joy of moviegoing had vanished. Then she abruptly stood up and went into the kitchen.

  Was something wrong? I waited for her to come back. She never did. I could hear her rattling around in there.

  “Mom! You’re missing the movie!”

  “I can see it from here!” she called from the kitchen.

  I could see her too, and what she was doing was digging into a pint of ice cream. She stood just behind the kitchen door, and kept sneaking furtive glances from around the corner at the TV while she ate. You could tell that she was trying not to watch, but she couldn’t resist.