You Only Get One Life (12 page)

‘I don’t have his private number,’ admitted our hero. Typical, I thought, that was the end of that conversation. He added, ‘But I know what hotel he’s at. I can give you the name, if you like.’ Now that sounded more like it – I could have some fun even if it came to nothing.

‘Girls!’ I said teasingly, ‘I’m calling Mr Stallone!’ I took out a few quarters for the phone in our bar and everyone laughed as I gave the coins a theatrical shake. The very idea
of calling up Rocky on a night out was absurd. But I did it – and of course there was no answer. That was an even funnier outcome for us girls in the mood we were in that night, though I did note to myself that the hotel operator didn’t hesitate before putting me through. It was clear that Sylvester really was staying there; for whatever reason that thought lodged itself in my scatty brain and wouldn’t go away. By the time I got back to my own room that night I had become determined to meet the man for real. How could I make it happen?

I took a sheet of the hotel’s headed notepaper. ‘Dear Mr Stallone,’ I wrote. ‘I’m a new actress on my way up and I’m in New York to promote a movie.’ I must have sounded like a crazed fan more than anything else. I was excited but I knew it was all too silly. ‘I would really like to meet you since I really like your movies. You can contact me in my hotel room at the address below. Best wishes…’ I slipped a photograph of me into the envelope and went to sleep. Later some people claimed it was a pornographic image of me – but then some people claimed a lot of things. But it wasn’t – it was from the portfolio I used to get work from agencies.

I didn’t have a huge amount of money with me and $20 was a lot – but I left the bill with the hotel to ensure the letter was hand-delivered to where he was staying. I’m not sure what I was expecting would happen but I was certainly startled when Sylvester Stallone called me himself in my room. What had just been a bit of a game for the benefit of my girlfriends was now very real and that unmistakeable growl introduced itself through the receiver I clamped to my ear. I was totally freaked out to hear the biggest star in the
world talk in person – I felt as awestruck as if I were a shy 13-year-old again and had only just seen him for the first time doing
Rocky
.

At the same time, even though my stomach was churning and I felt very unsure of myself, I knew I really wanted this. It took me back to the time when I was first approached by Marianne Diers in Copenhagen to be a model. I believed that you have to stretch yourself if you want to make your dreams happen and I always pushed myself out of my comfort zone and made myself take risks. If you’re not willing to say your desires out loud and go for them then you are left with no alternative but to admit that you’ve gone as far as you can; it’s hard but there’s no way around it. I’ve got so many friends who would make much better stars than me in modelling and acting, but they never got the big role or the Gucci campaign for that reason. Everyone wants to say who they are – but most of the time we are afraid to say it out loud.

Those I’ve known who have got to the top have talent matched by knowing what they’re capable of and the confidence to live like it. You can call it a technique if you like, you can call it whatever you want. The point is that it looks like it works to everyone else – so it does work. Nothing is better for the struggling actor or writer than to be themselves. If you really don’t think that you can do it, then you won’t be putting in a hundred per cent of the effort that you need to make the leap. That’s why so many 20-year-olds end up doing the same thing until the end of their lives, and they may be happy with that, but it won’t be for everyone. Inside me is both a romantic dreamer confident
that she’s good enough and a doubter whispering that it’s not okay, that I would be much better off not even trying and I’m cool where I am. Don’t try it. Imagine if you try and it goes wrong…

That negative side of oneself is hard to ignore. It has all the excuses – it tells us that there will be a better time to go for it under different circumstances and very persuasively says sorry, it just can’t be done at the moment. And so you argue things around until everyone’s happy and it seems natural and nothing ever changes. But it’s very simple – you do it or you don’t; you live it or you don’t. Can you deal with yourself or can’t you? You may recognise these conflicting energies and battles in yourself – I think we all have them. In me there were always the two Gittes fighting it out – now of course there was Brigitte, which made three of me!

The doubtful side always gets the last word in. It often dictates our lifestyle if we let it. If you’re happy with staying where you are, that’s fine. Even though I ended up split within myself a lot of the time, I feel positive about having followed what I wanted to do. I didn’t play it safe and I didn’t allow the paralysis of doubt to overwhelm me. Some people crouch at the starting blocks of a race and see hurdles looming ahead in which they get hopelessly tangled up. Others run a smooth race without focusing on the obstacles and they leap hurdles without even noticing. I would never have got through being a hostage, much less stayed in Paris and gone on to Milan otherwise; I just kept on. The way you approach life doesn’t make you any better or worse in the end – it is just a different way of doing things.

As you go forward in life you have a chance to change
direction and you always think whatever you do will be for the best. Sometimes it isn’t, but if you’re the sort of person who looks to move forward at least you won’t be stuck, whatever else happens. If I’d been directed only by the safety represented by my family I would never have left Kasper, but something else pulled me and I had to be completely true to myself. I had no idea what the casting call for
Red Sonja
would lead to, and when I wrote to Sylvester Stallone I didn’t know that he would call that night.

My hands shook slightly as I picked the phone up. I answered as Gitte – my new name completely escaped me. ‘Thanks for your message,’ Sylvester said. ‘Let’s meet. If it’s okay with you, I’ll come over in a little while.’ I told him it was fine, but I was thinking how crazy the whole situation was: Rocky was coming to my hotel room.
Rocky
! He wasn’t even Sylvester in my mind, he was still Rocky. I hadn’t thought this far. I looked nothing like the photograph I’d sent him – I was exhausted and I still had Red Sonja’s flaming red hair. What a mess!

A friend was with me and we decided on a very simple outfit with a little bit of make-up in the Danish fashion. ‘As he comes in – you leave,’ I said. That meant I didn’t need to get up from the couch to let him in myself and he wouldn’t have a chance to see how much taller than him I was.

He was on time and I tried to be as casual as possible. I offered him a glass of wine or water or something – I can’t remember. But the topic of conversation we started with was bizarre – divorces. There were 18 years between us but we were both going through the same thing and it made me think that we had so much in common. He seemed to be a
real gentleman – sweet, down-to-earth. I was completely floored. I just thought he was amazing. He gave me his home phone number and his secretary’s details too, and as he went to leave he said that if I was ever out in Los Angeles, I should definitely get in touch.

I totally forgot that I wasn’t going to get up and when he left, I stood to let him out myself. He couldn’t hide his shock as I towered over him. I felt rather exposed all of a sudden, looking down on him with my shocking-red hair everywhere – my poise evaporated and I started babbling, ‘Oh, it was so nice to meet you, thank you
so
much, it was great, it was lovely… good luck, bye, bye!’ And I did this Danish gesture you do with both hands when you’re seeing off friends and extended family as if you’re excitedly waving miniature flags at them.

He turned as he stepped into the hallway and it was like a movie. ‘Red Sonja,’ he said, with a very direct look. ‘Why don’t you come for dinner with me tonight?’ Well, yes, thank you, Sylvester. I mean, what was I supposed to say?

‘Great. I’ll send a car to pick you up in two hours.’ With Sylvester went the last shreds of my self-control and I called around friends to share the news. It seemed to me that I was about to go on a date with him and although there was still not much I could do with the Viking warrior hair, at least I had all my experience as a model to draw on to make a knockout impression on him that evening. I had a good choice of evening dresses with me from which I picked out a Gucci and I took much greater care with my make-up.

At 9.30pm sharp the car arrived. Sylvester was at an imposing round table with a tablecloth so white it could
make you snow-blind. His brother Frank was there and so was Sylvester’s girlfriend and powerful LA entertainment lawyer Jake Bloom, who I had last met in Rome with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was awkward seeing him again under such different circumstances but Sylvester was quiet and at least Jake wasn’t looking at me suspiciously like Sylvester’s brother or his girlfriend. I fell on Jake and greeted him as if he was a long-lost best friend.

Sylvester gave the lawyer a look as if to ask how on earth he knew me, but now at least I had someone to talk to in an evening where the girlfriend made it very obvious that she wasn’t at all happy with the way things were turning out. I did think it was strange that we weren’t there that long before he announced the evening was concluded. There was no natural winding down of the party. ‘Let’s go, everybody.’ Dinner was over. A brief kiss on the cheek and I felt a vague sense of guilt, as if it were me who’d done something wrong.

Well, whatever, I thought, completely nonplussed. Sylvester left in his limo with Frankie and the girlfriend. Jake stayed on for a moment. ‘What happened?’ I asked him quietly, as if Sylvester might somehow still be listening.

Jake didn’t say much before he left. My schedule left little time for me to think things through, though I still wanted to see Sylvester again. I took a chance and phoned to thank him for the dinner. He repeated the invitation he made in the hotel room to call him anytime I was out in LA and I told him that I would.

Flying back to Denmark I thought about his words and something about him made me curious, perhaps fatally so. If I’d been the love-struck fan maybe I wouldn’t have done
anything more about it and maybe he wouldn’t either, but it was more than me being impressed by his style, the undeniably sexy rumble of his voice and the very fact that he made the effort to come and find me. Something more passed between us even in the short time we’d spent together. We’d spoken straight away about personal and painful things like divorce and he had now told me twice to call him up. Single and ready to boogie, I decided I had all the excuse I needed.

Back at home, Sylvester seemed a lot further away than he really was. Everyone, particularly my mother, seemed very impressed that I’d met such a big American star and I guess it was a thrill to talk about it, but as a young, divorced mother living in a small room in my parents’ house the chances of ever seeing him again did seem incredibly remote. Work came up all over the world and it was only a matter of time before some agent or other offered me something in America, but I needed a really good plan if I wanted to ensure I’d end up on the other end of the phone with Sylvester in Los Angeles.

Playboy
. I’d worked with the legendary photographer Helmut Newton and called up the magazine in my brightest, most optimistic voice to introduce myself. It was always more than a top-shelf publication and for a long time had a reputation for good journalism and photoshoots with the likes of Annie Leibovitz and Marilyn Monroe. Besides, being Scandinavian, I didn’t mind doing arty nudes. I’d just finished a movie, I told them. I’d done shoots with Helmut and I would really like to do something for
Playboy
. What I really wanted, of course, was a first-class ticket to Los
Angeles and to be able to say I was staying at the prestigious Beverly Hills Hotel – immortalised by The Eagles in ‘Hotel California’ – when I called Sylvester. I figured I had a much better chance of making him listen to me if we were both working in the same world.

The deal worked almost too well.
Playboy
also gave me use of a limo for a week and offered me a fee. I had been so wrapped up in promotion and with everything in my personal life that I hadn’t noticed
Red Sonja
making me as hot as I thought I had to pretend I was, but I was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s co-star: I was big news.

I felt much more confident flying back to America: I was going to leave all the trouble behind me and things were really going to move. So I checked in, carefully took out the piece of paper that Sylvester had given me and phoned his office (it seemed cooler than trying him at home). ‘This is Brigitte Nielsen,’ I said, using my new name and sounding as neutral as I could. ‘I just wanted to let Mr Stallone know that I’m in town and I can be reached at the Beverly Hills Hotel.’ It was all so contrived, and the funniest thing about it was that I really did feel rather good saying it – I did feel as if I had properly arrived. Sylvester came on the line and was very friendly. He wanted to know what I was doing and I told him a photoshoot – he didn’t need to know it was for
Playboy
.

‘Would you like to meet for dinner tonight?’

There was only so much cool I could play. ‘Yeah!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I would really like to.’ I stayed in control that whole week. Every day I would slide into my limo to meet Sylvester, we’d go to a club, his brother might show up, and later Sylvester would try to persuade me into bed
but I would gently steer him away from the subject. It was all very flirty and I loved it. We were just playing and although he was persistent, it was always with a sense of fun. Not only was he attractive and in fine physical shape but he was smart and talented too. So many things came across in just the right way: I understood why the world had fallen in love with him.

He showed off a great singing voice and could do unexpectedly funny impressions of famous friends. It was an informal side to him which wasn’t always quite so readily on show. I got to see his house and was shocked by how many staff he had – there was security, cooks, plus people working on administration. It was quite impressive and at the same time rather intimidating: it made me enjoy the charm of the Beverly Hills Hotel all the more, with its immaculate gardens and the sense of all the musicians and writers who have been equally captivated by it.