My Extraordinary Ordinary Life

by Sissy Spacek

  On the way to the farm, the driver said, “You know, you’ve been gone a long time, would you like to go to the grocery store and get some food?”

  “Oh, that’s so nice of you. But you don’t have to stop.”

  “Really, it’s no problem! I know you’ll be hungry when you get home, and Whole Foods is on the way.”

  “Well, okay! That’s wonderful. I won’t be a minute.”

  We pulled up in front of the store, and as I was stepping out, the driver said, “I just got a call. There’s a football game at the university, and they need an SUV. Do you mind if we switch out cars while you shop?”

  “Oh, no problem,” I said. “Just take good care of Cassidy!”

  The regular customers are so used to seeing me at Whole Foods that usually nobody pays any attention. So I thought it was odd that people kept coming up to me and asking for my autograph and taking pictures. Then I thought, “Oh, there are probably a lot of strangers in town for the ball game.” But it kept happening. It was so weird! When I checked out with my groceries and walked outside, I found the longest white stretch limousine I have ever seen in my life, parked right in front of Whole Foods. The chauffeur was standing next to the car in his uniform, holding the door open for me. And there was Cassidy sitting up in the backseat, looking like Mrs. Astor’s plush horse. Everybody was staring at me and taking pictures with their cell phones. They must have thought I was the most stuck-up thing east of the Blue Ridge. I laughed so hard I thought I would cry. I called Jack from the car. “You’re not going to believe this, Jack,” I said. In thirty seconds, a reputation that had taken me thirty years to build was dashed.

  I thought I’d be shocked when I turned sixty, but it was easy—a lot easier than turning twenty, when I was nearly panicked that I was getting too old to make it in the music business. It helped that my friends, the producers Helen Bartlett and Tony Bill, threw me the best and certainly the biggest birthday party I’d ever had, at their home in LA. Being a Christmas baby, I’m not used to celebrating my birthday and being the center of that kind of attention. I was overwhelmed, and I hardly noticed that someone kept filling my glass with champagne. When the time came for me to thank my friends and family for their beautiful tributes, I looked out at the lovely crowd and thought, Who are all these people and why are they staring at me? Jack had to get me home early that night, but Schuyler and Madison told me the last half of the party was wonderful!

  Other than a diminished tolerance for champagne, and occasionally losing my car in a parking lot, growing older hasn’t been so bad. I try to approach it as gracefully as possible and I welcome all good advice. I think Sophia Loren said it best. When asked how she managed to appear so young, she replied, “I try not to make any noise when I get up out of a chair.”

  One of the best things I’ve done in my life came late: Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, asked me to read the audiobook version of her masterpiece. I spent weeks wrapped up in her gorgeous prose, like a comfortable old quilt. I reexperienced all that I’d felt when I first read that book and saw the film that made me fall in love with movies.

  I continue to be offered roles in rich, nuanced films, like Get Low, with Robert Duvall and Bill Murray, and most of them I’ve been smart enough to accept. I can hardly believe I almost didn’t do The Help.

  When Tate Taylor sent me the script, I kept nipping through the pages, looking to see if my character had any memorable scenes. Tate wanted me to play Missus Walters, the batty mother of the film’s villain, but she only had a few lines of dialogue. When I read the novel to see if I could learn more about her, I discovered that Missus Walters played an even smaller role in the book. Still, I loved the Civil Rights–era story of how a misfit Junior Leaguer and a group of maids secretly wrote a book together in Mississippi. So I met with the director.

  “Tate, I love the script,” I said. “But I don’t think there’s enough there for me to make this character work.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “You can improvise.”

  Now, many directors say that, but very few follow through. Tate Taylor was the exception. I created my Missus Walters from memories of my father’s sisters, the eccentric, colorful aunts I grew up with in Texas, and then I added some red lipstick, cat-eye glasses, and cocktails. I’m afraid I shamelessly upstaged the other actors in all my scenes, and I don’t regret a minute of it!

  We filmed on location in Greenwood, Mississippi, located a couple of hours north of Jackson. To get there from the airport I drove within a few miles of the small town where my grandmother Elizabeth Holliday Spilman, was born. When people asked where I was from, I was able to tell them I was a Holliday, from just down the road. “Oh, that’s a fine family!” I’d hear again and again. A few long-lost relatives even tracked me down while I was filming, and I learned even more about my Mississippi family. It felt like a homecoming.

  One morning I was walking through the hotel lobby, on my way to the set, when a tiny blond woman introduced herself as Kitty Stockett, the author of The Help. I told her how much I loved her book, and we visited for a few minutes. I was wearing little round sunglasses and my typical summer uniform—Oxford shirt, knee-length shorts, and Chaco sandals—and I noticed that Kitty was looking at me intently.

  “You don’t look old enough to play Missus Walters!” she said.

  “Oh, just you wait!” I laughed. I’d like people to think it took hours to make me look that old. But the truth is, it didn’t.

  I enjoyed playing an older character in The Help. It was fun and liberating not to have to worry about looking youthful and attractive—although Missus Walters was plenty attractive to her boyfriend at the nursing home. He was played by Tate’s father, John Taylor, who also was put to work as a driver. In fact the whole production felt like a family affair. Tate had grown up in Jackson with Kitty Stockett and had been good friends with Octavia Spencer and Allison Janney for years. We had a wonderfully diverse cast and crew, and many of the extras were friends and relatives.

  The film used a light and comedic touch to explore a shameful era in American history, when the races were so segregated that the collaboration between a white writer and a black maid was dangerous for both of them. But at its heart, The Help is a story about love and friendship that transcends class and race. We certainly felt that on location, on what had to be one of the most integrated sets in the history of filmmaking. We all blended together and got along so well that nobody seemed to dwell on the ghosts of the past that still linger in Mississippi. As a nation, we still have a way to go before we heal the division between races. But to me, being able to make a film like The Help seemed like a reward for how far we have managed to come.

  Not long ago I was walking through an old historic downtown mall in Virginia when a teenage girl came running up to me, all excited. “Sissy Spacek!” she squealed. “You’re Carrie! You’re Carrie!” She pulled back her sleeve to reveal a full color tattoo of me as Carrie in her prom dress, holding a bouquet of red roses. It was a beautiful tattoo, all pink and gold—it apparently captured the moment just before the bucket of pig’s blood was dropped on my head—and I had to admire it, but I was still shocked that this lovely young girl would do such a thing.

  “Do your parents know about this?” I asked her. And more important: “Do they blame me?!”

  Early in my career, I thought that making it in the business meant appearing on the Johnny Carson show. These days, a mark of success is having one of your characters tattooed on someone else’s body part. But nothing beats getting your star on Hollywood Boulevard.

  I had been acting in films for more than forty years, but there was one milestone I hadn’t crossed. Oscar on the mantel? Check. Handprints in the sidewalk at Universal Studios? Check Golden Globe? Check, check, check. Yet tourists were still unable to stroll over my name on the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” I only realized what a big deal it was when, in the summer of 2011, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce honored me with my v
ery own star on the Walk of Fame. There I was, on the sidewalk outside the El Capitan Theatre, in the company of Tinker Bell, Winnie the Pooh, and Steve McQueen. It’s a great piece of real estate right across from the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards.

  My family was there, along with so many friends that I felt like it was an episode of the old TV show This Is Your Life. I was so thrilled to see everyone that I forgot to be nervous about the dozens of cameras pointed at me, and the hundreds of fans yelling my name. And I had excellent company on the podium that day. Two of my dearest friends, Bill Paxton and David Lynch, had agreed to say a few words about me.

  When Bill spoke it was funny and heartfelt. I was reminded how important he has been in my life, and how far back we go. He talked about meeting me when he was a young set designer, and then acting with me on Big Love (although for some reason he never mentioned Twerp). Then it was David Lynch’s turn. “You owe me, Sis,” he said with a smile as I gave him a hug. David never attends ceremonies if he can help it. He rarely leaves his property up in the Hollywood Hills, where he works on his art, music, and film projects day and night, and his uniform never varies: khaki pants and white shirt, buttoned at the neck. Today he was wearing a stylish suit and looked very handsome and polished as he stepped to the podium.

  This, with his permission, is the speech, delivered in the clipped, nasal twang that one writer described as sounding like Jimmy Stewart on acid:

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a real honor and pleasure for me to speak about Sissy Spacek. This is perfect. Sissy is a star. Stars are mostly in space, and Sissy has the word ‘space’ in her name.

  “I’ve known Sissy for a long time. Her husband, Jack Fisk, is my best friend since high school. On the set of The Straight Story, a film that I directed, Sissy played Alvin’s daughter, Rose. Her performance is so beautiful and tender. Jack was production designer on this film as well. One night, Jack called just as we were finishing the day’s shooting. He was a half-hour drive away, just finishing a set for the following day. He wanted to know if I would drive over to see the set right away. Sissy wanted to go over to be with Jack, so I took her, and we drove together through the night on small, two-lane highways—all dark, passing miles of cornfields. It started to rain.

  “Now, a lot of the following story Sissy and I can’t talk about. The United States government has told us not to. But this part I can say: I thought it was a bolt of lightning, a tremendous white light, and suddenly Sissy and I were inside a giant alien spaceship. Thousands of aliens were around us. The commander floated up in the air and told us a spectacular story. He told us that in many, many galaxies in our universe, on so many planets, Sissy Spacek is revered. All know of her films, and even her songs, and all the beings love the fact that Sissy works both with the studios and the independents. He even told us that from now on he’s calling his ship a ‘Spacek ship.’

  “The commander told us that this day had long ago been predicted: Sissy getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He told us that this very day, millions of beings around the universe will celebrate Sissy getting her star. The commander asked that I thank all those who made this honor possible, and to thank Hollywood for being Hollywood. And for creating the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After Sissy signed hundreds of autographs for the aliens in the spaceship, like a snap of the fingers Sissy and I were back on Earth, standing in front of Jack and his finished set.

  “He jumped and said, ‘How did you get here so fast?’

  “Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the beings here on Earth that can’t be here today, and beings in galaxies across the universe, please join me in congratulating, for her great work, for this honor of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the great Sissy Spacek!”

  I was laughing so hard I could barely read the short speech I had prepared. I told the story of my first time in Hollywood, when I was pulled over by the police after hitching a ride with a van filled with hippies, and the cops pulled guns on us. Okay, maybe I changed a few minor details, but at least I didn’t spill the beans about the space aliens, like David did. But what I really wanted to say was how amazing it was for me to come up in films with the likes of David Lynch and Bill Paxton, and how lucky Jack and I were to have them all to ourselves in the beginning, before we had to share their talent and bad jokes with the rest of the world.

  Jack and I bought a place near the ocean, so our family could have a home base in LA. It’s only a coincidence that our living room overlooks the football field at the local high school. Sometimes I lie in bed and hear the sound of a marching band practicing in the stadium. It reminds me of my childhood home, where we could sit in our backyard and hear the band and the roar of the crowd at Quitman High on game nights. The sound folds over me, like the waves out on the Pacific, and rocks me back to that time and place in Texas, the source of everything that I am.

  After a long hiatus, Terry Malick came back to filmmaking with a surge of creative energy. Jack has worked with him on each of his films, including The Tree of Life. To me, it’s a masterpiece. Schuyler and I watched The Tree of Life together in a big theater in Westwood. I knew the film was very personal for Terry, and it was shot outside of Austin, in a town reminiscent of his childhood home. What I wasn’t prepared to see were scenes from my own childhood, growing up in Texas in the 1950s, which has become a part of the language and history that Jack and Terry and I share. Jack had crafted a world for Terry’s film so familiar and haunting that I watched in awe, struggling to control my emotions. There was the DDT truck, spraying clouds of fog for the children to dance in. There were the trails where my brothers and I used to run, the neighbors’ house that I slipped inside of to explore, and the brother that I had lost. By the end of the film, when the family is reunited in what might be heaven, I was moved beyond words. Schuyler was probably starting to wonder if I’d lost my mind. I don’t know how it would have been for me if I had seen it when I was younger. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as moved. But that film, a collaboration of two of the most important people in my life, spoke to me on a level so deep and powerful that I wept. I saw the world with fresh, new eyes, and I was grateful.

  Not long ago I was on location, and I was sitting beside a young actress in the makeup trailer. I asked her what she was interested in, what kinds of things she wanted to do.

  “Oh, I want to fly a jet plane,” she said. “I want to skydive! And helicopter ski! And take a boat down the Amazon!” Her eyes lit up as she talked about all the things she wanted to experience. Then she turned to me and said, “And what do you want to do?”

  I thought for a moment and smiled. “I just want to go home,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart’s content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison’s paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don’t mind the signs of wear and tear. There’s a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth, a memento from one Christmas when the girls were given geodes—hollow stones lined with crystals—which they cracked open with a hammer on the heart-pine boards. It’s part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve.

  Jack and I love to watch the sun come up over the pond while we drink our morning coffee. It’s these simple routines we miss most when we’re working away from home. But we’re grateful we have this place to come back to, a place to hold the treasures we’ve collected over the years. I like to keep my favorites out where I can see them: a piece of polished driftwood shaped like the head of a duck; a gray river stone cut through with a thin streak of quartz; a miniature dresser filled with drawings and letters from our girls, notes to Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny, and from some of the great actors I’ve admired: Lillian Gish, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Meryl Streep. In the entry hall there’s a tall cabinet with glass doors filled to bursting with reminders of who we are and where we come from. This is where I keep the gifts that Jack left for me to find on the set of Badlands: the three-legged horse and rider, the butterfly door knocker, the horned toad, all stacked on the crowded shelves along with old family portraits, my parents’ wedding cake topper, and clay pottery the girls made in grade school. Sometimes I find myself wandering from room to room, just taking in all these things that I love.

  Our girls come home for birthdays and holidays or whenever they just need a breath of fresh air. Schuyler fills the farm with musicians who camp out in the guest cottages and play music in the living room, working out songs on the piano and on some of the same guitars I played during my early years in New York. Madison, like her dad, always has art projects under way—building, welding, painting, and creating in every corner of the farm. Both girls bring their friends and pets, and the house buzzes with energy. Our home is a living, breathing thing, and it keeps us busy and on our toes (if only to avoid tripping over the extra dogs).

  Both Schuyler and Madison plan to move back to the farm one day, to raise their own families. Each has already picked out the spot where she wants to live. It makes me happy to imagine that kind of continuum: our grandchildren walking down the same farm roads our parents did, our lives growing new layers, like the rings of a tree that tell the story of each passing season.

  Like my father and grandparents and the long line of Moravian farmers before them, I love to plant things and watch them grow. The maple trees that we put in when the girls were babies now tower over the cottage where Gerri lived. For years we’ve grown vegetables in raised beds, but lately it’s flowers that delight me. The perennials I planted in the serpentine garden outside the dining room have matured like old friends. I planted irises around the pond with the spade my father gave me. And this spring there will be hundreds of new Moonstone peonies and tulips around the house.