The Actress: A Novel

by Amy Sohn

  “It’s just . . . What if Steven’s looking for a date?” he said. “For the festival.”

  “You think they’re inviting me as some kind of . . . whore?” He glanced at her quickly in the passenger seat. She was pouting.

  “Not a whore, no. A date, for appearances. Think about it. What are the two things Weller lacks? Heterosexual legitimacy and intellectual credibility. You bring him both.”

  “Jesus. You think Steven Weller needs me? I don’t even have a career yet. I’ve won one award.”

  “He knows you’re going to pop. I just don’t want you to be upset if you go to Berlin and Walter Juhasz never shows up.”

  “He’ll show up, okay? I heard Lael and Taylor talking about his movie. They both auditioned.”

  “Well, there you go. I figured I was reading it wrong. You know I don’t have the greatest faith in the Hollywood machine. You should go.”

  She put her feet up on the dashboard, wishing Dan hadn’t said what he’d just said. If he were right, it seemed a sick proposal. To be a red-carpet escort for Steven Weller—that went against everything she was about.

  Maybe Dan was only pretending to think Weller was gay to convince her they were using her and give her a reason to say no, because he was jealous. She had felt it bubbling up between them after the awards ceremony. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of her landing a Walter Juhasz film on the tails of I Used to Know Her, and despite all his lip service over the years about wanting her to succeed, he wanted her to succeed only at the same pace as he did. If that was true, it meant their relationship had been built on nothing. She felt a wave of carsickness and cracked the window. It vibrated loudly on the freeway. No one opened the windows in L.A.

  5

  The hotel-room phone woke Maddy at five-thirty in the evening. Her suite at the Hotel Concorde in Berlin was clean and spare, bigger than the entire apartment in Brooklyn. She couldn’t imagine what it cost—a thousand dollars? Two? Walter Juhasz’s UK production company was picking up the tab, but the room seemed exorbitant for an unknown.

  The last few weeks had been surreal. The return home from L.A., the decision to sign with Bridget and Nancy Watson-Eckstein, and the white gardenias Bridget had sent to the apartment hours later, the card reading, “To successful collaborations. —B.”

  And then Steven Weller’s private plane, with its overattractive stewardess and real flatware. There had been a handful of others on board besides her, which made Maddy feel the trip was wholly aboveboard: Todd Lewitt, plus two publicists from the studio, and Flora Gerstein, Weller’s fiftyish personal publicist.

  That morning Maddy had walked around one of the gallery districts, planning to look at art, but she was so exhausted, she’d headed back to the hotel. She’d managed to watch a few minutes of Juhasz’s Body Blow, from the stack of DVDs that Bridget had given her, before the jet lag caught up with her and she drifted off in the king bed.

  It was Bridget on the phone. The premiere of The Widower would be that night, she explained, and they would go in two cars, Maddy, Bridget, the publicists. They would enter the theater before skipping out to have dinner while the movie played. Evidently, stars did not watch their own screenings.

  Maddy dressed in a simple sheath dress she wore for hostessing, and put her hair in a sloppy bun. In the mirror, with the lavish splendor of the hotel room behind her, what had looked classy and risqué at La Cloche now looked cheap and a little slutty.

  As she was starting to do her makeup, there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, a bellboy handed her a garment bag. Inside was a stunning strapless red silk dress with gold woven vines on the bodice. The label said Marchesa. The material was puffy and gathered at the bottom, and in the back was a two-foot train. The note said, “Thought this would be perfect for tonight. —B.” Along with the dress was an elegant black wool cape.

  Maddy tried on the dress and admired herself in the mirror, both thrilled and ashamed to be thrilled. It was beyond classy. There was a pair of designer velvet heels that no one would see because of the train. For a brief moment she recalled her conversation with Dan in the car in L.A. He had been so skeptical about the trip, and now there was this knockout dress. But she was among Steven Weller’s friends, and she was an Ostrow Productions client; she would have to be dressed appropriately. The phone rang. “Can I help you get ready?” Bridget asked.

  When Bridget saw Maddy in the dress, her fingers quivered. It wasn’t until you saw a girl properly costumed that you could imagine the potential. Her frame was hearty, but somehow Steven had picked a gown that worked for it. He’d had Marchesa send over a few samples and selected this one. Bridget had signed the card so as not to frighten her. They had to be delicate. Maddy needed to trust him in order to make the choice to collaborate.

  Steven would be floored when he saw her. What made a true star was less beauty than mutability. Newman, Brando, Streep, Clayburgh all had it: the liveliness, the ability to show the slightest shift in emotion on their faces.

  When Steven laid eyes on the dress, he would know she was right for the role, which required that Ellie be mousy at first but emerge into a sexually voracious adulteress with incredible will. “I knew it would be perfect,” Bridget said. “Turn around.”

  Maddy twirled in the dress, barely hiding her glee. Bridget had brought along a makeup kit, noticing that Maddy favored minimal cosmetics and thinking something more intense was in order for the evening. “May I?” she asked, indicating the case.

  “Of course,” Maddy said. “I hate doing makeup. That was my least favorite part of acting school.”

  “Well, you seem to have done well with the costume part. You know how to walk in a train.” Bridget had seen so many freshly arrived girls stumbling in their trains at the ceremonies, year after year, past the point when they could have hired someone to teach them. “I wasn’t always a manager, you know. When I was alive, I went to acting school.” She set up two chairs by the window.

  Maddy looked at her and laughed. When I was alive. “Where did you go?”

  “The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. That’s what brought me to L.A. This old hag had dreams.”

  “You’re not an old hag! I hope I look like you when I’m your age.”

  “Oh, stop it. I’ve lost my looks because I refuse to do anything. It’s not vanity. I just don’t like people touching my face.”

  “How did you go from actress to agent?”

  “After grad school, I was booking a handful of things, but it had been a couple years, and nothing was catching on. At the time, my agent was Jack Keil at Original Talent. One day Jack called me into his office. He said, ‘I know this may not be what you want to hear, but you don’t have the talent to be a star. You have two choices: Find another career you’re passionate about, or take a job in the mail room and work your way up to being an agent. I have a feeling you’d make a good one.’ That Monday I started in the mail room.”

  “It didn’t hurt you to hear that?” Maddy asked. She could hear the clacking of a room-service cart in the hallway.

  “Only at first. I went home and thought about it all weekend and realized I was too much of a control freak to be only an actress. I never liked the aspect that requires you to be given work.”

  Maddy wondered if Bridget had slept with Jack Keil. As if sensing the question, Bridget said, “Everyone thinks I fucked him. But he was a mentor. They’re very hard to find. An older man, with a young woman, who sees her as a person first, and wants to help her. There are two ways for women to move ahead in Hollywood: to mentor their way to the top or to be one of the guys. I chose the former. A lot of my friends chose the latter.”

  “What was it like, being one of the only women back then? Were you getting harassed all the time?”

  “The things said to me, you don’t want to know. All the men who mistook me for the secretary. I was always being asked to fetch coffee. I
had to sit under the desk to cry, this little embroidery pillow over my face so no one would hear me. They still haven’t figured out a good system for women crying at work. I’ve always felt there should be a special room. The newer girls, the ones rising up now, they have no idea what it was like. Maybe that’s good. It’s changed so much. The men in your generation aren’t threatened by female success.”

  “Some are,” Maddy said, thinking of Dan in the Prius.

  “But the fearful ones won’t get far with strong, self-assured women. When I was dating in the ’80s, it was very difficult. I would go out with high-powered guys and tell them about deals I’d closed or stars I had signed, and their faces would just cloud over. They wanted wives. Los Angeles is a very sexist city, much more so than New York. I tried dating down, like with Zack’s father, but that poses its own challenges.”

  “Who is Zack’s father, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “His name is Grant Mulaskey,” Bridget answered, lining Maddy’s eyes. “He was an actor, a client of OTA, though not my own. From Kentucky. Oh, so handsome. A goyishe. I was burned out on these movers and shakers. When I got pregnant, we tried to convince ourselves we had a future. But he was unhappy in L.A. and didn’t want to be tied down. He’s a general contractor in Arizona now. You know, Zack’s here. He’ll be coming with us tonight.”

  “He’s here?” Maddy asked, surprised. She hoped it wouldn’t be uncomfortable to see him. Before she left for Berlin, she had gone in to meet with Zack and his boss, George Zeger. The George guy, though complimentary about the film, didn’t seem that passionate about Maddy. On top of that, she couldn’t shake Bridget’s warning about Zack—that he wasn’t going to be agenting in a couple more years. Maddy emailed Zack to tell him she had signed with Ostrow Productions, and he wrote back a bland two-liner wishing her well.

  “He has some clients in the festival,” Bridget said, squinting at Maddy’s face to regard her handiwork.

  “How come he wasn’t on Steven’s plane?”

  “Bentley Howard paid for this trip because he has meetings. He was staying with me at Mile’s End because they wouldn’t pay, but he’s very practical. Only schnors when he has to.”

  She passed Maddy a hand mirror. Her eyes were smoky, sexy. “Wow,” Maddy said. “You’re really good at this.”

  “Now stand up and look in the mirror.”

  Maddy rose in her heels and moved toward the mirror on the wall. The makeup and the dress were perfect together. She felt like a princess, elegant, even regal. She had never been all that interested in clothing, beyond the way the right outfit could help her book a role, but now she was curious about the fabric, the cut, the way a dress could change the way you felt.

  When Maddy arrived in the lobby at seven, she found Zack waiting on a couch. “Nice dress,” he said. She had the cape on her arm, not sure whether to put it on at the hotel or at the theater.

  “Thanks. Your mother got it for me.”

  Zack rolled his eyes, and she wondered if he was feeling competitive with his mother for having signed Maddy. “She has impeccable taste. So I hear you have an audition coming up.”

  “Yes, Walter Juhasz will be here on Monday.” He nodded. “I don’t even think I have a serious chance at a Juhasz film, but they say I do, so . . .”

  “How’s Dan? He didn’t want to come to get publicity?”

  “That’s what I’m here for. He’s busy working out the contracts and stuff.” It was hard to read Zack’s tone. Was he implying there was something improper about the trip, just as Dan had? “So how’ve you been since Mile’s End?” she asked, sitting down beside him.

  “Really busy, actually. I signed three new clients. Did she tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “Kira. She signed with me just last week.”

  “Really?” asked Maddy. “That’s fantastic. She didn’t mention anything about . . . I didn’t even know you guys had met in Mile’s End. I mean after the opening-night party.” In the condo, Kira had mocked him. But maybe it was all a decoy. Maybe they’d already had a meeting by then, and she didn’t want Maddy to know.

  “Yeah, we had a coffee the afternoon of your first screening. I was so impressed with her performance. I knew I could help her, and luckily, she felt the same way.” The last Maddy had seen of Kira was a few days before, at Irina’s party. Cast and crew, plus Maddy and Dan’s circle of friends, all trekked out to fete them, but the night had been so hectic that she and Kira had barely spoken.

  Bridget, Weller, and Flora came off the elevators. Zack and Maddy stood to greet them. Weller examined her in the dress as though she were an expensive cut of steak. She blushed. “You are wondrous,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, self-conscious again. What kind of man said “wondrous” who wasn’t gay or eighty?

  Maddy and Weller were put inside a car. In the front passenger seat was an enormous bald man who Weller said was a bodyguard paid for by Apollo Classics. Maddy was amazed by all the ways the rich and famous really did live up to the clichés. It was like the bodyguard was part of the swag.

  She could see the Berlinale Palast rising high as they approached, the big red bear, the festival mascot, standing up on the side of the atrium. On one side of the car path, forming a T with the red carpet that led into the theater, hundreds of fans were packed tightly behind stanchions. A sea of people with no apparent end.

  When their car door opened, there was an intake of breath as the fans waited to see who would emerge. Maddy stepped out, and a few seconds later, Weller followed. That was when she heard the roar. Weller took it in stride, smiled, pivoted to wave. The cries were hysterical and continuous, and then Bridget was beside Maddy, whispering, “Come.” She ushered her to the foot of the red carpet, beside Zack. Todd Lewitt and Weller’s costar, Henry Berryman, had already arrived and were posing for pictures. Berryman was a gracious English actor pushing eighty-five, a known lifelong alcoholic.

  As Weller and the bodyguard headed straight to the stanchions, fans thrust things at Weller—festival programs, head shots of him—and he signed them with a Sharpie. Those lucky enough to receive autographs clutched them to their breasts like boys at baseball games who had caught foul balls. Others held up cell phone cameras. All the while, Weller indulged them, as if they were friends, equals. She wondered if he was speaking German; a guy like him probably spoke half a dozen languages. The German fans seemed more grateful and less hysterical than American fans, admiring but not cloying.

  After fifteen long minutes, Weller crossed to the red carpet. He embraced Berryman, clapping him on the back a few times, and the two men worked the press and photo lines, thrusting their arms around each other’s backs and posing with and without Lewitt. Then Weller turned and came toward them as though he had something to ask Bridget.

  “You enjoying yourself?” he asked in Maddy’s ear.

  “Very much,” she said, nodding enthusiastically.

  She felt him slip the cape off her shoulders. He handed it to Bridget and led her toward the press. Henry Berryman was facing the photographers on the opposite side.

  As Steven laced his fingers through hers, everything went into slow motion. She felt a combination of horror—that Dan’s prediction was coming true—and arousal. Steven had taken her hand, like she belonged to him. And yet the gesture didn’t feel smarmy or inappropriate. It felt correct, and his palm was big. She remembered the way it had felt that night at Bridget’s lodge, when he had greeted her.

  He was looking over Maddy’s shoulder, and when Maddy glanced in the same direction, she saw Bridget give a tiny nod. Maddy instantly understood. It was Bridget who had wanted this for Maddy, this moment. Bridget was managing even when she did not appear to be.

  The voices were deafening, the camera flashes like a strobe. “Turn this way, please!” and “Over here, Mr. Weller!”

  Maddy heard Steven say
ing, “This is Maddy Freed. M-A-D-D-Y F-R-E-E-D. She just won a Special Jury Prize at the Mile’s End Film Festival. Keep your eye on this one, she’ll be a lot more famous than I am soon. And she takes a much better picture.”

  She began to feel less intimidated, to relax. As her confidence grew, she turned her face this way and that. “Ms. Freed, Ms. Freed! Here, Ms. Freed!” She was high. It was different from her feeling when she’d won the Jury Prize. That had been about her work. This was about her.

  From the foot of the carpet, Zack stared at the V that Maddy and Steven’s hands formed. He didn’t like that V.

  Zack was familiar with a certain cynical type of girl. He met them at premiere parties or nightclubs, the models/actresses—anoractresses, he called them. At first glance, they would blow him off, but when they found out he was an agent, everything changed. His diminutiveness was no object. Suddenly, they were touching his arm, moving their lips near his. Shameless.

  In his first year as an agent, he had enjoyed the attention—it was a trip to walk into a Michelin restaurant with a knockout on his arm—but at the end of the night, it was just him and the girl in his loft. Because none of the girls was interested in talking, it felt a lot like bringing home dolls. Coke helped, but eventually that bored him, too.

  He didn’t know Maddy well, but he never would have put her in that category of girl. Now he wasn’t sure. She was vamping, hamming it up in that ridiculous dress, a dress you wore only if you had a movie in the festival, not if you were someone’s date. Berlin wasn’t the Academy Awards; there were different rules. He couldn’t reconcile the girl on the carpet with the girl he had seen in I Used to Know Her, the serious dramatic actress. Who could not only act but write. Maddy was smart. What was she thinking?

  “It seems like a lot of trouble to bring her to Berlin for one audition,” he murmured to his mother.