I don’t feel I was particularly honest on the night I met him. But who really is the first time they meet someone? If you’re anything like me, you want to put off an air of there being nothing about your life that could be anything less than absolutely perfect. The quintessential being, as it were. Someone this person sitting across from you could very well see themselves growing old with til the end of time. Maybe that’s stretching it a little, but sometimes the exaggeration is needed for dramatic effect.
And boy let me tell you, I can be pretty dramatic when I want to be. But honesty? I’m not so great with honesty. Especially when I’ve been practicing not doing it for most of my adult life.
Honestly, ironic use of words of which I am aware, I found it was easier to just pretend to be someone I wasn’t. To play a role and play it really well. Maybe that was just the actor in me. So yes, the cat’s out of the bag, I did choose to go into acting as a profession. Not because of my need to be someone I wasn’t, but because I truly enjoyed the art of it. I mean how many times do you hear that? An actor admitting it’s really about the art and not the inevitable fame that goes with it? And just so we’re clear, the fame has been quite the nice side effect.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’d been willing to do pretty much whatever it took to get in front of some of the biggest names in show business - yes, they still call it that here. I completed my studies at Juilliard and made my way out west for the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. I wasn’t much into stage acting, but would have done it if California hadn’t worked out. I gave myself one year to find a decent role. I didn’t realize what it was going to take. Not initially at least. I mean I’d heard all about the waiters and waitresses working their tails off and barely scraping by while hoping to be discovered. It’s not that I wouldn’t have stooped to that if it became necessary, but I was convinced there had to be another way.
I just didn’t realize it would have been the way I found. But alas, three years after my little incident that no one really knows about - aside from the director, me and maybe the good Lord if he happened to be watching that day - I am sitting here across from Tad Newbury having the most epic first date with the IT guy in Hollywood right now. As I stare, without abandon, pretending to be listening to everything he’s saying because as an actor, I’m really good at feigning interest even when I’m not actually listening to what’s coming out of his mouth, I can’t help but wonder about a lot of things.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just have gone to Ohio State like all my friends and had the typical college experience? Wouldn’t it have been fun to go backpacking through Europe after graduation? Wouldn’t it have been grand to chase a passion job like working on a boat for an entire year just like my best friend from high school did? And wouldn’t it have been easier to have just taken the waiting job down on Vine instead of agreeing to do that director a favor by disposing of his wife’s body?
But it did get me the leading role. For which I won an Oscar. And according to him, she had it coming to her for all the bad deeds she’d done.