You Only Get One Life (10 page)

What was hard to hear and went on to become something that has haunted me ever since was that my mother was not so much shocked as devastated by the news of my pregnancy. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘Oh Gitte…’ Mum had done the same thing at my age – exactly the same time, there were 20 years between us. She knew the demands it made on young people. But I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t go ahead: I wanted to be like my own mum and dad. Perhaps I would yet go back to work in the local library and bakery; that would be fine.

Kasper was a hundred per cent behind me. He had already had a son, Oliver, when he was 16. He was very wise about everything and reassured me that there was nothing to worry about. My pregnancy was part of what we both saw as a healthy relationship. For my part I loved my growing bump and the little bubbles of life I started to feel. I was so excited and constantly questioned my mum about what was going to happen and what I could expect over the next few months.

After six months I developed what the doctors called hypertension and there were worries about the effects of high blood pressure on me as well as the baby. I was in and out of hospital until at last I wasn’t allowed to go home at all and I still had two-and-a-half months to go. Already I was feeling
such a bond with the baby that the enforced confinement wasn’t as bad as it might have been – my memories of that time were of it being overwhelmingly positive. It wasn’t easy for someone as energetic as me to stay quiet for so long but somehow I managed to behave myself and Mum basically set up a library in my room. Books and magazines were piled up everywhere and it was only when it came to the actual birth that things got very serious.

As a result of high blood pressure the baby couldn’t get through. It just wasn’t coming out – its head would start to move but would then go back. I tried for 36 hours before the doctors intervened with instruments in a futile but also extremely painful attempt to get things opened up. They finally had to give me an epidural and make some four cuts before they could get my baby boy out. I’d been having 30-second contractions for almost three days by then and was practically insane in my agony; I’d almost given up by then. My dad had demanded that they do something to get the baby out. It was a very strange sensation, as if I had somehow accepted that this would go on forever.

And then I had this healthy, beautiful boy Julian in my arms after the most horrendous few days of my life. Nothing was wrong with him and it had all been worth every minute. I was terrified that Julian would have suffered some brain trauma but he was fine and he nuzzled at my breast, making contented noises.

Before the birth I dreamed that I would have a girl – I’ve always wanted one although I went on to have another three boys. Girlfriends with baby girls had given me some of their old clothes and I was going to call her Isabella or
Monique. Now I looked down at Julian and felt overwhelmed with the most intense love I had ever experienced. It was very specific, something quite unlike the love felt for a man, and it made me weep.

It was just as well that I didn’t know in those blissful moments that once the stitches came out I was going to feel unbearable pain all over again. Those days were torture as I waited to heal and looked after Julian at the same time. He would feed and I would love it and try not to disturb him while enduring exquisite suffering as the after-effects of the birth repaired themselves. But I had endless stores of love that made up for it and finally I was able to lie down with Julian next to me and we’d fall asleep together. I felt a very strong bond with him from the outset and even when we have been apart, it’s always been there. I know a lot of women who don’t lie with their babies for fear of somehow rolling over and squashing them – I just think you have reflexes as a mother which won’t allow you to do that.

Then an infection developed in my breast which made feeding very difficult, but we both got through it and it helped that I got a handmade bed from my grandmother. She was Jewish and had originally come from Warsaw. My mother transformed the antique Polish curtains from her old house into sheets and the bed was installed in Julian’s own area of the apartment. It all looked so pretty and I watched him swaddled in family history and memories. He had become a little bigger and he smiled a satisfied smile back up at me. I had my own clan now and it felt as if nothing could touch us.

And if the phone hadn’t rung some three months after
his birth perhaps nothing would have done. In the spring of 1984 I believed that my life was heading in one direction only. I certainly didn’t want anything to change, but when something did sneak up on me I would always follow my heart.

A
  beautiful summer’s day in Copenhagen and a voice from the life I’d left behind in Italy. David from Elite Models in Milan called me in July 1984. ‘Hey Gitte, how are you doing? How’s Kasper? And Julian? Hope you’re well.’ The pleasantries left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t want to get back into that world again and I knew he had to be ringing for a reason. ‘There’s a casting in town and they want to audition you for the lead role in a Hollywood movie. Are you ready for that?’

It was out of the question. For a start I was a model, not an actress and I was a family girl now. He was fine with that. ‘Your choice, but let me know if you change your mind.’ My parents and Kasper were impressed that I’d got the call. Kasper, in particular, had great faith in my talent. ‘Why not?’ was his typically laidback point of view. They thought it could be a good direction as an alternative to university. I began to consider the option seriously: I only needed to take
a flight to Milan to give it a try. Within 24 hours I had called David back. ‘Okay,’ I told him, ‘I’ll meet the producer.’

I was agitated on the flight to Milan.
What am I doing?
I thought to myself. I felt awkward and wondered how I looked in my jeans and white tank top. As it turned out I was given a costume, along with the 90 or so other hopefuls. I had a Viking outfit with a sword that looked as if it had come from a fancy dress shop and I was given six pages of script to memorise in 40 minutes.

I had no idea how to approach an audition and couldn’t decide whether to be angry with myself for having put myself in such an odd situation with all these girls I’d never met or simply to laugh hysterically. I took a couple of minutes to calm down while donning the funky warrior outfit and realised that, despite the pressure, I didn’t have time to learn that much dialogue.
Just do what you can
, I thought. That helped a bit, but I felt so unprepared. I had the ridiculous costume on but I still felt naked. The giraffe in Viking’s clothing. What the hell – I could be on a plane heading back home to my family within two hours.

We were told the film was to be called
Red Sonja
, an adaptation of a comic published by Marvel. I’d never heard of either name so that didn’t help me at all. The whole atmosphere of the casting was completely different to anything I’d experienced as a model. I’d been to thousands of calls but here the girls were far more competitive. Everyone wanted that lead role so badly; you could smell the jealousy. Where hopeful models chatted with their rivals, even shared an apartment with them, it was all very bitchy here, very cold. It was quite funny in a way because
it wasn’t my world and I knew I wouldn’t see any of them again. The sooner I could get out of that stupid costume, the better: this really wasn’t me.

When my name was finally called out I was introduced to director, Richard Fleischer, who was sitting with two other men behind a long table. ‘Please, go ahead,’ he said. I gave them my most open and honest Danish smile and told them I couldn’t remember anything of their script, not one word: ‘I’m not an actress, I’m so sorry.’ About the only thing I could do was raise the sword aloft – so I did that.

‘Stop, stop, stop,’ said Richard. ‘Okay, don’t worry about the script, we’ll coach you through what we need you to do.’ He asked me to look as if I were really happy. Then I was to look confused – no problem there. Seductive was also pretty easy. I had to follow that by looking as if I was about to give up on everything and saving the hardest for last, I had to cry on request. Somehow I managed it all, though there was some laughter in the crying.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Richard in time-honoured directorial fashion. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ I felt very silly as I trudged out in my Viking gear.
What the fuck am I doing here? That director must have thought I was a moron
, I thought. I convinced myself that I had never wanted to be in a movie anyway.

I was in the dressing room when a plump little Italian woman summoned me back – ‘Mr Fleischer wants to see you.’

The film’s producer was the legendary Dino De Laurentiis and he was in his office with Richard when I arrived. There was a desk with two sets of papers. De Laurentiis was a small man with a deep voice and a dominating presence. I
seized the opportunity to drop the very few random Italian words I knew.

‘You speak Italian?’ he said. I laughed and told him I’d picked up some while modelling. ‘You did very well,’ he continued. ‘There’s the script and the contract. The part is yours. Whaddya want to do?’ There was a pause in which his words failed to sink in. This was like a Hollywood film in itself and I really couldn’t believe it.

So what I said was what I always said when faced with great moments in my life. ‘I don’t know – I’m not an actress. I’ll have to phone my dad.’ Unfazed, De Laurentiis turned the telephone on the desk to face me and slid it my way.

‘Hi Dad,’ I said and told him what I’d been offered.

‘Well… what do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. They say I’m very good.’

‘Why don’t you go for it?’

We ended up agreeing that my dad would look over the paperwork for me. The director added that I would be starring opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, a name which meant absolutely nothing to me: ‘The guy with the muscles.’ I said that it still didn’t sound familiar and anyway I don’t like big muscles. They laughed at me, the Danish backwoods girl, and it was all rather embarrassing. Arnold had already made
The Terminator
and
Conan the Barbarian
, though he was still known as the bodybuilding superstar – I really should have had some idea of who he was.

Filming was to begin at the end of September in and around Rome and was preceded by stunt training in London. I did riding – which I already knew well – and how to fight on
horseback. I did my own stunts, including falling off a horse properly. For two months I lived in an apartment in London and trained on The Armstrong Farm outside London and with a Japanese fight specialist. Slowly I became Red Sonja. I was totally dedicated to the role and as always, completely professional in my work.

Leaving Julian was hard. I’d just stopped breastfeeding him before I came over and that process was tough enough. Now I had to go away, but when training began he came over with my mum; Kasper too. I was very busy but he shared my excitement at my new role. Shooting was to take seven months and I combined this with taking care of the baby with the help of my family, but I could have done with just another couple of months of being with Julian full-time. The adjustment was one more major thing to take on when there was so much else to learn. Evenings were often spent with a language coach, who helped me turn a very heavy Danish accent into something that could pass for the speech of warrior Sonja.

The trainers were very impressed with how much I already knew about horses and how quickly I took to the physical side of things, choreographing the fighting and the sword play. I would go on to do my own stunts for years to come almost as if I had become a real Viking. Just four months since giving birth and I had become very strong. I threw myself into discovering who Sonja was and learning the dialogue. It came very easily to me and I fell in love with her. She had two sides – the fearsome superhero you see at first and the sweet, intelligent and fair woman you get to know after a while.

Fantasy characters present particular difficulties for an actor in constructing a framework for their role and bringing it out of the realm of the cartoon, but the more I got to know Sonja, I found a mirror for aspects of myself as a woman. Having a baby made it easier for me to identify with her and how she had to balance love with power; the private with the public – that was really what it was all about for me.

Red Sonja
saw me typecast as the emotionless super-villain character and that was just too bad. I guess my height and those icy Scandinavian features made it inevitable, but I always look back on Sonja herself, even though she was just a fantasy character, with great fondness and warmth: it was a good time. I was proud of what I’d created in that training period in London and ready to take on the shooting when the production got up to speed in Rome.

Being on set was a great experience. The crew had a way of working which suited me perfectly. I could see how this could become a passion for me in a way which modelling never was. There was a magic to movie making which was meant for me. I was encouraged to create character and express feeling where as a model I was only ever told to be blank-faced. Looking pretty and having a good body were just physical attributes that I only had limited control over. On set none of that mattered if I couldn’t turn in a convincing performance – there was so much more creativity.

Even when the cameras weren’t rolling I wasn’t just Gitte. Everyone called me ‘Miss Nielsen’. I was a star! One assistant would be manning the coffee machine, another
tasked with making sure I had enough to eat. The attention alone was pretty cool and the life more than made up for the poor pay. I got just $15,000 for seven months work, nothing compared to the sort of fee I could command as a model and probably less than the multi-million dollar production would spend on a secretary, but it didn’t matter: I was learning so much and having so much fun I would have done it for free. Everyone had to pull together as a team to make it work – from the director down to the guy sweeping the set. We all needed to make a huge effort to ensure the film happened and I loved that.