You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up (8 page)

My tutor bolted over and tried to untangle the mess of chair, desk and me. I was dizzy and mortified from my graceless display. When I noticed that everyone was staring at me, I smiled from embarrassment and said, “Ta da!” to my amused but uncertain classmates. One of the kids ran to get my mother from my dressing room down the hall. The producers of the film quickly followed and my tutor requested we call an ambulance. They made me stay lying down, despite my insistence that I was fine. I just needed to walk it off and get a glass of water.

To my further humiliation, they did call an ambulance. But something else quickly took over the embarrassment. Had I known at the time what it was to be drunk, I would have recognized it as intoxication; I became completely drunk with shock. The pain vanished and I became aware of bizarre minor details. Life turned into a tilt-shift photograph, everything was fuzzy except for the almost excruciatingly sharp focus in the middle of my field of vision.

When the ambulance arrived, I learned that the EMT’s name was also Lisa, and through my fog this seemed absolutely hysterical. Two Lisas! One strapping the other to a board! I was Velcroed in with thick blue restraints and my head was sandwiched between padded blocks. The Velcro straps pulled at my waist-length hair but by that point my body had gone numb. All I could feel was a light tug, pulling my head to the side. As Lisa put me in the ambulance I remember begging them to not use the siren. They could use the lights, if they absolutely had to; otherwise they just needed to drive normally and calmly to the hospital. There didn’t need to be some siren, exclaiming to the world, “Excuse me,
coming through, a dumb-ass klutzy kid just fell out of a chair! Coming through!”

I was still in my film costume when we arrived at the hospital. I was wearing authentic 1930s clothing with a large pink bow in my hair. I was quite concerned about what the hospital staff must think of me. I kept trying to explain that I was an actor, not for any presumed prestige, but to explain that I was not this prissy in my regular clothing choices. A sea of faces were smiling and nodding above me as they cut the costume off my body.

That day, the crew had planned a birthday party for my brother in the film. I had seen the cake and the producers were giving the birthday boy a puppy; there was no way I was going to miss that. I asked my mom to call the studio and tell them that I would be back soon and if they would just wait a few minutes, I would get off this stupid board and be back to watch the presentation of the puppy, with a large slice of cake in hand. She rubbed my arm and agreed to make the call. She didn’t mention that I had passed out for quite a while, the party had ended many hours prior and I wasn’t leaving that hospital any time soon. The doctors were looking at my x-rays. My back was broken and as I slipped in and out of consciousness, I heard the word paralyzed.

The early assessments of my injuries were inconsistent and confusing. They knew that I had damaged three vertebrae and had severe whiplash in my lower back but they could not tell the extent of the spinal injury. They said that it was the kind of damage they see when an adult falls off a roof. Although at first they thought that I might be paralyzed, the prognosis was revised and they said that I would be able to walk but it was unlikely that I would ever be back to my previous abilities.

Tests and drugs were doled out and my days in the hospital blurred together. I’d wake up to various scenes that felt like they were part of a play I was watching. Mom talking to nurses. Mom on the phone with Dad. Nurses poking at me. Mom asleep in a chair. At one point I came out of a drug-induced haze to find a large gorilla standing over my bed.
He had dead, glossy black eyes, and reeked of gorilla sweat. There was a loud, persistent siren-like squealing as the monster attempted to hand me a bouquet of red balloons. When the nurses ran in to comfort me, I finally realized that the horrible sound was me screaming. The film crew ill-advisedly sent a guy in a gorilla costume to cheer me up. It was sweet and well-intentioned, however, let me just say that codeine and gorillas don’t mix, people. I still have nightmares about it.

In addition to the gorilla, various co-workers came to see me at the hospital. They brought flowers and books and healing crystals to line up along my spine, but Bobby never came. Brad brought good wishes and a card on Bobby’s behalf.

“He just…can’t. He can’t see you like this.”

It was only then that I realized that this might be a big deal. This was not another one of my clumsy spills that I could laugh off. I could almost handle being laughed at, but being pitied scared me. I took more painkillers and went back to sleep.

After a week in the hospital, I was fitted for a back brace and released with the doctor’s okay to get back to work. Bobby welcomed me back with a gentle hug, but everything had changed and I was no longer up for our porch sessions. I was pale, fragile, scared, and just trying to get the shoot finished.

They are not kidding when they say that the show must go on.

I was confined to bed rest except for five-minute spans, three times a day, which was the time that the doctor approved me to sit in a chair. Mom went into functional crisis mode, carefully watching the clock to make sure we didn’t go over my time limits. Always good in extraordinary situations, she stayed calm and became laser-like in her focus. This film became something to be conquered and she was going to make sure we finished the show and got out of there.

Since I couldn’t lift my arms over my head and I was now constantly wearing a metal back brace, the wardrobe department had to cut open my costumes and then hand-sew me back into them every day. The brace
was shaped like a cross. It was attached to my front with thick adjustable straps and had large pads that sat along my collarbone, my pelvis, and curved around both sides of my body. The metal was constantly cold, the screws and bolts that held it together were jagged and snagged on everything. Mom covered the brace in shiny dolphin stickers to make it less scary, but it still resembled something you would find either on a construction site or in a medieval torture museum.

My stand-in, Gelene, would take my place for rehearsals. She looked a lot like me, with her long brown hair and slight build, so she was used as my body double for any scenes where I had to be moving. They dressed Gelene up in my costumes and filmed her from behind so you wouldn’t see her face. She made a perfectly good able-bodied me; she would run through the frame and no one was the wiser. When the shot required my face to be seen, I was carried to set and seated in a chair with my arms propped up on the table, where I would try to make my drugged eyes not look too stoned. Most of my lines were cut or shortened since I sounded like a meth addict. Normally, having lines cut is devastating for an actor, but I was just counting down the days until I could get back to Canada.

While scenes were being lit and set up, I would be carried to a twin mattress that had been placed on the floor in my dressing room. My mother would often leave me alone to get some rest and I would linger in my twilight stupor, waiting to be called back to work. She would pull the shades so I could sleep but I mostly stared at the pattern on the couch, trying to make out shapes and faces to keep myself occupied.

I took shallow breaths, the only kind that the tight back brace would allow, and wondered what this injury really meant. The doctors said it was really uncertain what kind of recovery I would have and what my physical abilities would be. Was this the end of my career? I wondered if I would even know how to be a kid who went to school full-time.

I knew how to work. There were the on-set politics to navigate and the lines to learn and the motions to replicate at exactly the same time for the continuity of every take. There was hair and makeup to sit still
for, even if the hairdresser pulled a little too hard and the makeup felt heavy and greasy. There was the lighting to be aware of so that you didn’t stand in a shadow or cast your shadow on another actor. School was foreign territory, with its own unspoken rules that I didn’t understand. I worried about my ability to survive it.

But there was no guarantee that my body would be acceptable for film anymore. It felt unfathomable that this was the end of everything that I had known but I’d always felt like it was going to end somehow. Wasn’t acting temporary for most kids? I’d drift off to my drugged sleep feeling more confused than ever.

What usually woke me was the assistant director, saying that it was time to go to set. But one afternoon, I had a different visitor: the new puppy that my co-star had been given. He was a sweet little guy who tended to wander the halls of the office building that the dressing rooms were in.

“Hey, Buddy. C’mere,” I called from my mattress.

He wandered in to the room in that wiggly-butt puppy way and sniffed around. He looked in my mother’s giant carpetbag that held my script and snacks, he sniffed around my stack of untouched schoolwork and attempted to crawl under the side table to reach a lost potato chip. Then he came back to me.

“Whatcha doing, puppy?” I cooed at him.

What the puppy was doing, to my dismay, was peeing on me. There I was, broken-backed, unable to move, and being peed on. I’d never felt more vulnerable in my life. When I started yelling, my mom came running, followed by a couple other production assistants who all tried gallantly to stifle their giggles. The wardrobe people were even more unhappy than I was, as they carefully hand-scrubbed dog urine from my vintage, fifty-year-old wool skirt.

When the film was finished, my mother and I returned to Canada where I laid on the couch for many long months. School was out of the question, as I couldn’t sit in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time. So, a loop of old movies kept me entertained and distracted from the pain. I watched
To Kill a Mockingbird
and cheered when Bobby as Boo Radley stepped out of the shadows to save the day. It was somehow comforting to see my friend. I watched Scout and Boo sit on the porch together, just like Bobby and I had. It brought tears to my eyes when Mary Badham smiled up at Bobby, recognizing his gentle soul.
Hey, Boo.

I was incredibly lucky to experience a growth spurt that allowed my spine the space to heal. I slowly came back to myself. After hours of daily physical therapy, only a few minor issues lingered. My right foot would drag when I got tired and some nerve damage in my lower back would act up occasionally. But I gained my weight back, gained my strength back and I was soon back to life. Back to life meant back to work: I didn’t have to conceive of a regular life after all. I had a princess to meet.

While I was wearing a back brace and watching game shows, the editors of
Rambling Rose
were cutting and splicing and creating art. The film would be my introduction to the world of premieres. I had already been in the movie with John Malkovich, but actors of bit parts (even the significant, doe-eyed bit parts) don’t get invited to the fancy premieres.

Later in life, it would become clear that attending premieres would feel like getting flayed. Some people must enjoy them, maybe the same kind of people who get excited about getting an invitation to parties at roller rinks or backyard barbeques or anniversary celebrations. Because premieres are much like those regular parties, except add another 700 people, paparazzi, forced ass-kissing motivated by a deep-seated fear that you will never work again, and small, low-carb food served on toothpicks, as required by scrawny Hollywood actresses to keep them that way. However, my first premier set the standard pretty high. It was a royal premiere in London, which meant the guest list included Princess Diana.

Publicity shot for “Rambling Rose.” With Laura Dern, Lukas Haas, Robert Duvall, Diane Ladd, and Evan Lockwood.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLCO PICTURES
.

When you are being introduced to royalty there is serious protocol because Brits are not known for screwing around when it comes to tradition. There were many rules to adhere to; when I met the princess, I could not speak until spoken to and when I did dare to open my mouth, I needed to say, “Your Royal Highness.” This level of formality felt completely awkward; my instinct would have been to give the princess a hug, offer her a piece of gum, and show her a picture of my dog.