Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life (5 page)

This was also the first time I worked with serious artists so clearly destined for great things. After our lab, Peter went on to write the novel
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
and adapt it as a screenplay, receive an Academy Award nomination for adapting
About a Boy
for film, and cowrite and direct the poignant and hilarious film
Dan in Real Life
—among other admirable coups. As for actor and director Joe Mantello, he’s perhaps best known for his work with
Wicked, Take Me Out,
and
Angels in America,
and is one of the great theater directors and actors of our day.

Shortly after the lab, I moved on to a full-length play called
Beside Herself
for the Circle Rep, which gave me more of an education in the arts than I could’ve received in a decade at Juilliard.
Beside Herself
had a small cast of six, including Lois Smith, Susan Bruce, Calista Flockhart, and William “Bill” Hurt. I threw myself into weeks of rehearsals, while watching celebrated talent and directors “find the character” and “explore the stage”—two things every actor needs to understand. It was also intense and intimidating to be around people so focused on their craft, especially since at thirteen years old, I didn’t have any real sense of anxiety or pressure. I just went in, followed the experts’ leads, and looked forward to my daily Snapple-and-Smartfood snack when I needed a break. I especially liked watching the cast center themselves with pre-show rituals—especially Calista. She’d do a series of yoga-like breathing and stretching exercises, and every night before the show, I’d do them with her behind the stage. It helped me find a few calm, pensive, and reflective moments to quiet and focus my mind before performing in front of such an enormous and daunting crowd.

I’ll be honest, Bill Hurt could’ve benefited from our de-stressing techniques. During the show’s run, he battled in a very public custody trial with the mother of his child, and there was a constant mumble about this. The paparazzi that hung outside the theater day and night, waiting to pounce with questions and cameras, were actually my first encounter with these shutterbugs. I found it fascinating to watch people whose job was to watch people.

And though Bill was even-tempered to me and my family—he taught me how to blow enormous bubbles with a soapy wand and showed my brother Brian how to shoot rubber bands—he could also be unapproachable and serious. A lot of his conversations were way over my head, especially as a kid whose favorite activity was making mindless mix tapes. I remember telling my mom that I didn’t understand what he was saying half the time, which prompted her to ask Bill to speak to me with a more simple vocabulary. He shot back that if I wanted to be around adults, I needed to learn to talk like one. And that was the end of that.

My mom did her best to be a team player during my
Beside Herself
run. Four times during the play, Lois Smith’s character entices Bill Hurt’s character into her house with a fresh pie. So to help the play save money, Mom offered to bake four homemade apple pies, for nine shows a week. (We needed fresh pies for each performance because Lois pulls pies out of the oven four times during the show for Bill to eat.) That’s thirty-six pies a week! So between baking pies and coordinating schedules for me and my siblings, Mom was busier than Snooki on Cinco de Mayo—though sometimes we left the pies sitting on the kitchen counter due to our hurry to beat rush-hour traffic and make it to the theater by my call time. One time we were an hour into our drive into Manhattan when Mom had to make a U-turn to go home to get the pies she forgot on our kitchen counter. And though she spent all this time playing Betty Crocker, Bill never thanked Mom for her pies. He just complained when they were slightly burnt or said all that sugar was starting to give him a spare tire.

Bill’s occasional gruffness did teach me a valuable lesson about how to interact with fans. One weekend, I invited six Long Island girls to come see the show. I’d just told them about my theater work a few weeks earlier, so it was new and fun for them, and for me, to see how my two worlds would mix. Most of the girls had strict requests from their parents to get Bill’s autograph on their playbill, and while he did this for five of them, he accidentally skipped my shyest friend, Nicole. When I told Bill that he missed her, he said that if Nicole wanted her playbill signed, she had to ask herself. This made Nicole feel even more timid. I’m not sure whether my friend ever got that autograph, but Bill’s reaction left such a big impression on me about how not to treat young fans. Since then, he’s famously proclaimed, “I’m not a star, I’m an actor,” and while I get where he’s coming from, being an actor doesn’t excuse you from being a good person. When kids are terrified to approach me and struck mute, even though they’re fans, I call it “The Santa Effect”—and like the jolly character, I reach out to them more often than not. Rob Lowe has said that “the effect famous people can have on other people’s lives is not to be underestimated”—and I’m sure his fans are more rabid than mine and Bill’s put together. Our industry has given us a larger-than-life presence to a lot of people, and it’s not okay to let them down or be dismissive when they’ve helped us attain the status and privilege we have. As an adult, I do admire Bill for his incredible body of work and efforts to keep his private and public lives separate and am grateful for his lessons on professionalism, but I really hope he’s found a way to take life less seriously. After four Academy Award nominations, I think we’re all aware that he’s “an actor.”

Perhaps Bill’s unpredictably stern and aloof presence throughout the show is one reason I was so surprised when he handed me a note, written on the play’s stationery, at the end of our run. He did this with all the cast members. Mine said:

Dear Melissa,

It’s been swell, swell, swell … working beside you. You have an angel in you. Not just pretty but also strong and wise … I see she will be there for you when you need her … [May] happiness and serenity visit your days abundantly.

Bill

I had no clue what most of this maturely worded note meant, even though Mom told me it was meant to be sweet. I’m sure Bill thought he was doing me a major favor by talking to me like I was a member of Mensa, and I wonder now if Bill had a softer core than he’d originally let on. Of course, the note was also his idea of a wrap gift while the rest of us handed out thoughtful jewelry and candles, so any points he gained for benevolence were kind of lost for being cheap or forgetful.

*   *   *

While Bill was no doubt an uncertain figure, I felt most at home with the beautiful women in our cast. Backstage, in the privacy of our group dressing room, it was lady central, and I loved it. Every day, I put myself to work with little tasks, while the women applied their makeup and all kinds of hair products. My favorite job? At a long mirror, in a room no wider than a railroad track, I’d slip between Lois, Susan, and Calista and collect any flower arrangements that had begun to droop. I’d then hang the flowers upside down for a few days until they dried perfectly straight. Finally, I’d put them back into their original vases, their beauty forever preserved.

It was among these women that at the age of thirteen I developed my first girl crush. I was mad about Calista, who was twenty-four at the time, the way young girls are when they look up to their prettiest babysitter or their most awesome camp counselor. Beyond teaching me how to physically and mentally prep for public performances, Calista became the big sister I always wanted, since I was the oldest of five at the time and needed a break from being a constant role model myself. She was honest, trustworthy, and open-minded, and she made me want to be a better version of me. As a young teen, the best way I knew to do this was to emulate her. On the non-school days that we rehearsed or performed, I spent the night at Calista’s Manhattan apartment with its view of the Empire State Building. Every time I drove into the city with my siblings, we competed to see who could see the skyline first, but out Calista’s window, it was always within reach and I never had to share it.

Calista also influenced my style a lot. She gave me her funkiest hand-me-downs, including a pair of black leather lace-up Kenneth Cole flats that she called “fence climbers,” since they had extremely pointy toes. Mom and I usually shopped at Daffy’s on rehearsal breaks, where I tried to channel her style. Back then, the discount clothing store carried the best designer stuff for kids and adults, so we really cleaned up. Daffy’s clothing was also a big difference from my usual preppy gear from Kids “R” Us. So much of a tween’s identity is linked to her clothing, so Calista’s suggestions and validation mattered more to me than she knew. Spending time with her felt like I was hanging out with Molly Ringwald in a John Hughes flick—complete with us as self-doubting, mildly neurotic characters and a Simple Minds soundtrack in my head.

When we had time to kill before a matinee, rehearsal, or evening show, Mom, who was only nine years older than Calista, came with us to Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street for our favorite pre-show meal at John’s Pizzeria. This place has been famous for its brick-oven pies since 1929. I thought their pizza had the most delicious thin crust, rumored to taste so good because of New York City’s tap water. Mom, Calista, and I could each eat a whole pie by ourselves. Years later, when Calista was rumored to have an eating disorder, I was tempted to leak shots of us surrounded by some big ol’ pizza pies to prove the gossipers wrong. I suspect she’s always been thin because she has a lot of nervous energy, and every time I read about a study that links fidgeting to weight loss, I think of Calista. Sometimes when she focused on a scene during rehearsals or listened to a director give notes, she crossed her arms around her body and rocked back and forth. I’ve always had a lot of energy myself, and if people diagnosed kids in the ’80s with clinical conditions as thoughtlessly as they do now, I’m positive I’d have been labeled ADHD and prescribed some serious meds. Though people just said I had “excess energy” back then, Calista’s rocking still looked appealing to me, so yes, I started to mimic her. Once she noticed it, she told me to stop, and said I shouldn’t rock like her. She never explained why.

Looking back, I realize that Calista probably felt nervous and insecure about her first role on Broadway. She was always hard on herself and concerned about other people’s impressions of her. On the night our
New York Times
review came out, she was particularly anxious. Mom drove Calista home most nights, since she lived near the Midtown Tunnel, which we took to Long Island. In the car, she was really concerned that the critic Frank Rich’s feedback could negatively impact her career and the show’s run, since his was the only review that seemed to matter. I remember how Calista’s adrenaline was pumping, and how confused she was about his review. It said:

Among the younger alter egos, Ms. Flockhart, in her New York debut, shows unusual promise. She brings consistent emotional clarity to messy post-pubescent effusions, not the least of which is the line, “No wonder this place is such a slushy dung heap of a horror!”

Impressive, right? Mom told her this, over and over, but I could tell from my mother’s insistent and strict tone that Calista’s nerves were on overdrive. Maybe Calista needed to hear how good she was from my mom, whom she admired, in order to believe it herself. I thought Calista was perfect, but nobody asked the thirteen-year-old in the backseat.

*   *   *

While my own reviews on stage were top-notch, my peers at home gave me questionable ones about who I was becoming, and what I began looking like, without their influence. As my wardrobe gradually took more cues from Calista’s closet, mixed with influences from our show’s young and punk backstage crew, Long Island didn’t celebrate my inner riot-grrrl. I’ll never forget when one chick came up to my locker to let me know that my black tulle skirt with red felt polka dots clashed with my black-and-red-striped shirt. She was so sure that dots and stripes were a bad mix, but I was so secure in my NYC-inspired outfit that I wore it again the very next day.

Of course, this faux pas was nothing compared to the ridicule I faced for wearing a pin on my jean jacket that said “Latent Thespian” among all the Hard Rock Café and George Michael buttons that covered its pockets. A theater friend gave it to me as a joke, but my dumb schoolmates didn’t know what a “thespian” was and assumed I was coming out of the closet. The truth is, I wanted to go completely goth or punk, but it always seemed like too much work to wear so many layers, all that makeup, dread my hair … so I settled for a leather coat, tight jeans, and a big, heavy, black men’s watch that I scored during a reading of
For Esmé—with Love and Squalor
for Broadway’s Circle in the Square. It was a prop, but the director let me keep it as a memento.

Yet despite my notice-me looks, most of my classmates were clueless about my second life, minus a small handful of friends. Once when I was miserably failing French class, I tried to translate, from English to French, “Jacques fell off the windsurfing board,” and this kid named Karl, who’d been a friend until middle school, decided to pick on me. After I did my best
“Jacques est tombe de la planche a voile,”
he called me out in front of everyone as being terrible at French and then tacked on the line “… besides, you’re a has-been. I haven’t seen you in a commercial in years!” Karl was right that I no longer did commercials, but I was also the youngest honorary member of the Circle Rep Company, so I didn’t feel like a has-been until he said this. It was a weird moment for me, because while I enjoyed spending time with adults who gave me respect and made me feel like a princess, I was still a tween, so I also wanted to impress the hormonal dipshits. Karl’s comment stuck with me for many years after, as I continued to be a sweaty, blubbering mess around people my own age.