Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  Oh yes, in the midst of my upheaval I was nominated for an Olivier Award, London’s equivalent of the Tony Award. When I was told in my dressing room one night before the show that I was nominated, I asked between sobs, “What’s an Olivier?” I was actually nominated for both The Cradle Will Rock and Les Misérables. I was totally chuffed. I was astonished when I won. It was an out-of-body experience. There we all were at the Criterion Theatre. I think we did a piece from Les Miz and I sang a bit of “Dream.” Then my name was called and I won Best Actress in a Musical. Claude-Michel Schönberg said to me, “Patti, I weel never know eef you won for Les Miz or for zee ozzer show.” “No, Claude-Michel, you never weel know.” I won for both, but which show tipped the ballot, we’ll never know. I adore Claude-Michel and love to tease him … him and his cigar. He used to come to music rehearsals smoking a cigar, but I excused him because he’s French and they can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned—even when they’re insulting me.

  I had another experience at the Barbican I will never forget. One day after the matinee, the stage doorman told me I had visitors. Vanessa Redgrave and Frankie de la Tour. I knew who Vanessa was but the other one … sounded like a stripper to me. “Show them in.” Vanessa and a stripper? It was Frances de la Tour, the highly respected actress. They asked me out for tea between shows. “Me? Okay.” We went to Chinatown and Vanessa started to talk. She would very much like for me to perform my cabaret act in mining camps all over England for the Workers Revolutionary Party, she told me. But I’m an imperialist pig, I thought. I was drinking in every moment of this wacky scene. We finished tea and I think I said yes. The bill came and we split it down to the last pence. But you asked me out, I thought, and you have a Bentley! I went back to the Barbican, my head spinning, actually excited that I might be hanging out with Vanessa Redgrave in mining camps. Would she be my producer, my company manager, my assistant? Oh, the possibilities were endless. It never came to pass. I didn’t see Frankie again until she came to New York in The History Boys and won the Tony for her performance. I recounted the story to her. She vaguely remembered it, or she was humoring me. I stay somewhat connected to Vanessa, seeing her every time she sets foot on a stage. I sadly last communicated with her over the death of her daughter Natasha Richardson. I bled, as so many others did, for her and her family.

  Our run at the Barbican ended, my broken heart was mending, thanks to a lot of laughs with cast mate Roger Allam, wacky teas, and an unexpected award in my hand. We reopened Les Miz at the Palace Theatre in the West End on December 4.

  On opening night, Trevor Nunn came into my dressing room. “This is so right,” he told me. “If anybody belongs here, Patti, it’s you.” I was so grateful he said that to me. Not because I felt I didn’t belong, but because it validated the connection I was already experiencing.

  One of the great figures in the history of the RSC was artistic director Michel Saint-Denis, who along with John Houseman cofounded the Drama Division at Juilliard. That was my connection, the key to my sense of belonging. For me, continuity is very important in my profession and in my loyalty. My choices over the years may seem haphazard, but they’ve been shaped by the way I was trained and by the people who have influenced my life. When continuity reveals itself to me, as it did when I was walking the halls of the Barbican, linking it back to Juilliard, then having that reaffirmed by the head of the RSC at the Palace Theatre, it deepens all those connections that are so important to me.

  Again we were sold out with the same delirious audience reaction. It was pretty amazing to be having this experience. I had absorbed and deflected so many bad reviews and premature closings and now I was in a mega-blockbuster hit. You can’t predict.…

  Les Miz is a long show. And it was a long time between my cues. One night a couple of months into the Palace run, I got really tired of listening to the score. It happens. One just gets sick and tired of the play. It’s actually when I start to do my best work. When I’m bored, I stop “acting.” However, after the barricade scene this one particular night, I went back to my dressing room, took off my wig, my costume, my microphone, and my contacts. I turned off the Tannoy (the intercom), stuck some gum in my mouth, put my glasses on, lit a cigarette, and began reading the Madonna issue of Interview magazine. I was sitting there in my long johns because it was wintertime and the Palace Theatre was freezing. Just as I began thinking, I wonder where they are …, Roger Allam burst open my dressing room door with his foot.

  “LuPone!”

  “Whaaaat?”

  “You’re on!”

  “Holy shit!”

  My wig, my costume, and I flew down three flights of stairs. By the time I hit the bottom step, I was fully dressed. (No contacts, no mike, no time.) The ghost of Fantine is supposed to make an entrance in the closing minutes of the show as Jean Valjean is dying, but I had left Colm Wilkinson onstage alone, dead, sitting in a chair, head listing to the right, barely breathing—enough to keep him alive—for sixteen bars of music. Yeah, I royally fucked up. I’ve often wondered whether Colm opened his eyes at some point during those sixteen bars and looked around to see if he was really onstage or in some dream/nightmare?

  Since I had missed my entrance, the dance captain told me to enter from the other side of the stage with the other ghost, Eponine. I said okay … But what do I sing? I seemed to think I only knew my lines in order. I finished the show totally freaked out, and during my curtain call with Roger, I was hissed by the RSC. I never did find out if they were serious or not. It’s the only time I’ve ever missed a cue.

  A lot of Americans who came to London that winter contacted me. I saw people I wouldn’t necessarily have seen if I was on the stage back home. Vincent Gardenia found me. Vinnie was doing the movie Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, whom I knew very well because of our time together in Israel Horowitz’s Stage Directions at the Public in 1977. I also connected with Michael Bennett and Bob Avian, who were mounting Chess in the West End, and Sigourney Weaver and Paul Reiser, who were filming Aliens.

  One day Paul, Rick, and I were having tea at a hotel when Rick said, “I miss pancakes. And I can’t find maple syrup.”

  “I know where the maple syrup is,” I said. And so the Day of the Yank Breakfast was born. I invited Roger Allam and Michael Ball from the cast, as the English contingent. Michael Bennett, Bob Avian, Sigourney, Paul, Vinny, Ellen, and Rick comprised the American faction. We had a drunken revelry on a Sunday morning in this incredible house in Hampstead Heath.

  I was now having a great time there. I was working on the London stage and I was living in Hampstead Heath, a section of London that remains so romantic to me. Roger Allam became my closest London friend, and I was reunited with Colin Stinton, my Edmond from a few years earlier, who had moved to London. And then some shit just had to hit the fan, now, didn’t it? It just wouldn’t be me if it was smooth sailing.

  First, I found out that I was not being paid commensurate to the highest-paid RSC actor, which was a contractual point. And that it had been going on since the beginning of my contract. Where the hell was my agent? I found out because I talked with another actor. Why do producers think actors don’t talk to one another? Their excuse was that they didn’t want to upset the senior members of the RSC. Huh? Whatever happened to a contract is a contract? You agreed to it, you signed off on it. They never paid up. A fissure between the management and me started to form. Then, after we had recorded the album, and even though my contract stated that no single of mine could be released without prior negotiations, a single of “I Dreamed a Dream” was released without the said negotiation or a “Hey, Patti, guess what?” I walked off the show.

  I walked off the stage and stayed away for three days. The company manager begged me to come back, but staying away was the only weapon I had to make them honor my contract. The day I walked, I called Colin Stinton and asked him to come to my house, but before he got there I bought a chicken and made a vat of chicken soup. I was a nervous wreck.
Colin showed up and as I madly stirred the pot, I freaked out on him. “I’ve never walked off the stage in my life, but I’m sick and tired of being abused by producers. Until they honor my contract, I’m not returning to the stage. I don’t care if I get on a plane tomorrow.” I looked in vain for a square bottle. In the end I did return, a negotiation took place, but why, why, why was I forced to walk off the stage to have this issue resolved?

  Over the years, nobody’s fought my battles for me. This is my career, my livelihood, and my talent. I will protect it if nobody else does. Too much experience has come through trial and error. I now have a very strong agent and lawyer and a rider that, in the words of one general manager, “reads like every mistake in Patti’s career.” He’s right, but with each new contract I try to make sure that every problem I’ve had in the past will never happen again. It’s impossible. Theatre keeps changing.

  I came home from London $25,000 in debt, but Les Miz is one of my strongest and most treasured experiences.

  I was only going to do Fantine in London for six months. Before my visa expired and I had to come home, I started to get a little nervous about the next job. “Next” started with a phone call while I was still in London from producer Sandra Saxon Brice in L.A. She wanted me to come to Los Angeles for the television movie LBJ: The Early Years. She wanted me to play Lady Bird Johnson. Thank God for the next job. I got out of the Les Miz debt.

  “We’re going to have to dye your hair brown,” she warned, “because Lady Bird is a brunette.”

  “I have brown hair,” I said.

  “No, you’re a blonde,” she insisted. Ever since Evita, I’d had trouble convincing people I was not a blonde and Evita was not me. Nevertheless, I got the part, and Sandy, who’s from Texas, flew me there to meet Lady Bird. After listening to seven hours of taped interviews she had made with the producers, I paid her a visit. “Do you have any questions?” she asked.

  Seven hours of tape, I thought. What could I possibly ask that she hasn’t already talked about? I was silent, racking my brains trying to figure a way into the conversation.

  To break the ice she asked me, “What have you done?”

  “I played Evita Perón,” I said.

  And while I jabbered some inanity, she said, “Well, it’s a far cry from Evita to me. Evita was a bird of paradise, and I’m just a little mouse.” The statement was revelatory.

  That meeting, and the viewing in the Johnson Library of private home movies that she filmed on a Brownie camera, were my first clues that perhaps I’d underestimated Lady Bird. I have enormous respect for her. She’s one of America’s unsung and underestimated First Ladies.

  We shot the movie in Los Angeles. Randy Quaid played LBJ. He was definitely in the boots. I was barely in the hair helmet. But shooting LBJ turned out to be the most remarkable experience—it was where I met my husband, Matt Johnston.

  He was a camera assistant. I saw his beautiful blue eyes one day. I said no in my head and yes in my heart. One day between shots I sat on his lap wearing a wool suit (he’s allergic to wool) and in third-stage makeup (Lady Bird in her sixties). I asked him out on a date. He was so shy. I think he said yes. All I know is I fell in love with this man, head over heels in love, and we’ve been together for twenty-three years. We have one son, Joshua. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if Matt hadn’t come into my life. I don’t know what I would do or how I would survive without either my husband or my son. Matt loves me, protects me, and balances me. He is funny, patient, charming, handsome, kind, sweet, and smart. Joshua has all the best qualities of Matt and a few of mine. We are so deeply proud of Josh and love him unconditionally. We couldn’t have asked for a better son. I grabbed the brass—no, strike that—the gold ring.

  With Randy Quaid on the set of LBJ, 1987.

  I was still doing LBJ when my agent called. “How would you like to make a movie in Italy?” It was just like Robert Stigwood’s invitation to work in Australia.

  Nobody’s ever going to ask me to work in Italy again, I thought. I’m going.

  When shooting for LBJ ended in July, I was on a plane for Rome. The film was a movie for television called A Sicilian in Sicily, and it was a French-Italian coproduction with three Americans in the cast: Jimmy Russo, Vinnie Gardenia, and me. I played Vincenzina, the wandering gypsy. I said my lines in English and they were dubbed in Italian later. Even today I’m not quite sure what the film is about. I read the script three times and still didn’t have a clue.

  But so what—I was in Italy, the motherland! The producers were great, and I was able to talk them into sending me to the seaside before I started shooting. “I’m supposed to be a gypsy,” I said, “but I’m so pale.” They agreed and sent me to a resort on the sea, all expenses paid, to get a tan. I loved these producers! To get ready for the part, I was in makeup for three hours, and the last piece of makeup was the film equivalent of black underarm hair. “Don’t pluck or shave anything,” they told me. “Not eyebrows, not arms, not legs, nothing.” They dyed my hair black and gave me a permanent. When I was done I looked as Italian as the local women. I’ve always known that my face was more European than American, but now I looked like a seriously hot Italian … at least until I started eating.

  Matt and I were newly together as a couple at this point, and I gave him a ticket to Rome as a birthday gift. We were living in the Hotel de la Ville at the top of the Spanish Steps. It was so romantic. We shot for three weeks in Rome, then flew to Sicily for the last two weeks of the shoot. We flew into Catania, went south to Agrigento, and arrived at the Hotel Akrabello. Matt and I walked into the bar, which was packed, and from across the room I heard someone call out, “Patti!” It was Joss Ackland, who had been the original Juan Perón in the London Evita. What the … I’m in Sicily and I know someone?

  Joss was part of a large cast and crew working on the film version of Mario Puzo’s The Sicilian. That’s who the rest of the people in the bar were. Now there were two film companies in this tiny, tiny motel. Every day around four P.M. they’d run out of liquor.

  Joss was playing the capo di tutti capi, the Mafioso boss of bosses. Director Michael Cimino had sent him to Sicily to live with the real capo for six weeks prior to shooting. Can you imagine living with THE BOSS? He’d shoot me before too long because I’d ask too many questions.

  “What are the Mafiosi like?” I asked.

  “See for yourself,” Joss said, and gestured toward the end of the bar. There sat four preppy young men, very handsome and very well dressed. These were the sons of the capo, and might easily have passed for Yale or Harvard grads. Where were the bad suits and the greasy hair I remembered from all the movies I’d grown up with?

  Italians have a different mind-set about making movies, and I guess about life in general. We shot on location pretty much the whole time, and wherever we shot, there was amazing hospitality. In Sicily the women would greet the set in the morning with all kinds of food and pastries. Wherever we had our lunch breaks, they laid a feast on us.

  And of course long lunches were routine. The art director would find a local restaurant; we’d eat the local meats and vegetables and drink the local wine—lots of local wine. Lunch would last two and a half hours. I’d be smashed on my ass and be expected to shoot when we got back to the set. I gained thirteen pounds in two weeks. I know I screwed up continuity. I was thirteen pounds less in this shot, then thirteen pounds fatter in the next shot. I’ve never seen the movie but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts (mmm … doughnuts) I was cut out of it. Matt gave me a lecture in Sicily on the roundness of me. That didn’t stop me eating. It was Italy, for God’s sake!

  In true moviemaking fashion, there was a lot of time off. Matt and I traveled all over Sicily. The art director’s father and stepmother, Leo and Pucci, hooked up with a local man who showed us rarities of the island that we never would have seen by ourselves. Leo’s description of Sicily was so perfect: a cross between the moon, the desert, and paradise.

  We return
ed to Rome and shooting was winding down. Matt surprised me one day—he told me he loved me as we crossed a bridge in a little town outside of Rome. I was already in love with him. I’ll never forget the moment.

  I was sad when the shoot ended. I learned enough Italian to thank the crew. They were very happy I made the effort to say it in their language.

  We came home. Matt moved into my apartment in Manhattan, and I was happier than I’d been in a very long time.

  Then came one of the roughest choices I’ve ever had to make in my career. Cameron Mackintosh offered me Fantine in the Broadway production of Les Misérables.

  It was a choice I’d already made. Two weeks into the London run of Les Misérables, I came offstage after the barricade scene and walked to the stage door. Cameron was standing there.

  “I can’t play this in New York,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said. “The part’s too small.”

  “No, that’s not it,” I replied. “It has nothing to do with the size of the part. I’m in the perfect theatrical experience. I’m in a perfect musical with a perfect company in a perfect environment. I can’t play this in New York. It would never be the same.” This is my company and my experience.

  All a stage actor has is his or her performance and the memory of it. I didn’t want anything to touch that memory.

  Everybody expected me to reprise my role on Broadway. I’m sure people thought I was nuts not to. I forced myself to remember what I’d said in London about not wanting to spoil the memory, and told Cameron I couldn’t do Fantine on Broadway.

  Even though I’d said no, I still didn’t want to be anywhere near New York City when Les Miz opened. When the ship Queen Elizabeth II offered me the chance to lecture on a cruise through the Indian Ocean, I took it. It was a great way to escape. Matt and I had an amazing time and now we were on a plane home and about to land at Kennedy Airport when someone in the seat behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see Colm Wilkinson’s agent.