Brave Read online

  I became quite thin again after that. It stuck in my brain that I was fat. It reactivated my eating disorder. It fucked me up. Constantly “hearing” about how ugly you are, and then seeing that every photo of you has been retouched or photoshopped, you lose sight completely of what you look like. I just thought at one point, I must look like Quasimodo.

  It went beyond skin deep. I was starting to lose all sense of who I was and what I was.

  The trolling continued. When a loser named Perez Hilton started putting me on his (at the time) hugely popular website, he was merciless. He’d draw me with penises coming out of my mouth and semen all over my face. He said horrible things about everyone, but particularly women. He’s definitely a woman hater. He would call Jennifer Aniston “Maniston” and think that he was deep with wit. Wow, sir, you are the next Oscar Wilde. Look at you go.

  I always wonder if these dirtbags, after they’re done for the day tearing other humans down, do they go home and go, “Woo, that was a hard day at work drawing dicks on someone’s face; I feel really good about myself”?

  There’s a saying, a loose statistic, that one fan letter equals five thousand actual fans, because only one out of that many is going to take the trouble to actually sit down and write a fan letter. So then when there are one thousand vicious comments, you really start wondering about society. To the creeps out there in the public, the ones who take the time to write these nasty things: rest assured knowing that you contribute to the breaking down of a person. Congratulations. Go, you. Your contribution to the world is duly noted. Reverse course.

  More recently, I was on NPR, and I was curious whether the comments on their website would be more highbrow, more articulate. Nope. It was mostly a bunch of white dudes freaking out because I called them on their male privilege. It is so obvious, it’s amazing when they refuse to acknowledge it. It is indefensible and true. And even on NPR’s website, the trolls incorrectly taunt “your a whore.”

  People say that well-known people are worshipped, but I don’t really see that. I see the horrible tearing down. You take these hits just for daring to exist on a larger stage than others. But why is that my fault? I’m not asking for deification. I’m just asking for simple respect for being someone whose only crime is being visible. All we are doing is being of service to you. There is also this conflated belief that if someone is perceived to have money, that person must have no problems and therefore it’s okay to tear the person down. Almost all well-known people, minus those who are there through nepotism, come from humble backgrounds and we worked our asses off to get to where we are. So back the fuck up.

  Fame is like you’ve suddenly moved into the tiniest town in the world with all the small-town gossips doing their best to shame the local girl they deem “loose.” Just like in tiny towns, the gossips sit in their homes and peer out their curtains and track your every move, flaunting their precious bits of intel, exchanging it with others like shaming is a valuable currency: “She didn’t go to church on Sunday. She must be a whore.” Being a well-known person is the same kind of thing, it’s just on a very big scale. If you yearn to be famous, think on it long and hard because it is most definitely not all that and a bag of chips. It is a hard life for the mind. It is about so much more than you can possibly know, and it’s all meaningless at the same time. A natural-born mind fuck. Remember what I was telling you about cults? Well, small-town cult mentality is the same as Hollywood’s—the only difference is that Hollywood is filling the minds of the small-town gossips, giving them their belief systems.

  Back to Manson times: In April 1999, the first mass shooting at an American school had just happened, a violent tragedy at a school called Columbine. Two murderers in the first televised high school shooting went on a rampage. When it was going down and those poor kids were being held hostage by the killers, all anyone knew was that the bad guys were wearing black clothing. CNN and other news networks immediately started putting out pictures of Manson, saying the shooters were Satan worshippers and fans of Marilyn Manson. All while a hostage situation was in play.

  In their manifesto, the killers actually wrote about how much they hated Manson. They thought he was weak. But in the media, the damage was done. CNN, Fox, all those places, trying to throw any garbage on the screen in absence of coverage because they couldn’t get inside the school building, put Manson’s face on-screen and he became deeply intertwined with that horribly tragic day.

  After Columbine, Manson started to receive death threats and bomb threats, and by association so did I. Manson’s part-time security became full-time. The public at large was something scary and to be kept away from. The blame wore on him. All this enmity, and hatred and rage.

  I’m so protective of people I’m with, and it became almost a full-time job being with him. It didn’t leave me time to think about myself, which was both a positive and negative. Looking at the past, I can see why I did what I did. It was the programming that is given to us girls from the first, the programming that says men’s careers are more important than ours. I tended to go out with powerful men who treated my career like a hobby whereas theirs was the real deal. I think a lot of women do this, too. I hope you look at your own life and recognize whether you are minimizing it, because I did. I hope you don’t. Know that your work is equal even if your pay is not. I wish I’d been able to see my strengths earlier, but . . . I wasn’t aware enough yet.

  Eventually, I grew exhausted. The circus that saved me was now burning me out. I was really in love with Manson, I just couldn’t do the lifestyle anymore. I was too tired.

  I didn’t ask Manson for any money. I didn’t take anything, other than the furniture I’d already owned.

  After we broke up in 2001, Manson went on Howard Stern and trashed me badly. I was so shocked. This was a man I’d nicknamed “Doctor,” because if I even looked like I had a headache, he’d say, “Do you need aspirin, Tylenol, are you okay, can I help you?” He was so considerate of me, so gentle, but he became someone who had this vendetta, and it was nasty, hurting me badly. He always acted like he was so different, but in the end behaved like a typical cisgendered male, that is, harassing the defenseless woman because his man ego is hurt. Waaaaah. Poor wittle baby.

  How about you grow up, boys? That attitude leads to our death. We can die in many ways, it’s not just the body.

  After the breakup I resurfaced in Hollywood. Because I had to make money, I felt as if I had to go on a campaign of “See, America? I’m not that scary!” I had to do that just to survive, because what other kind of job was I going to get at this point? I was infamously famous. I was stuck. And I knew I was being blacklisted in the film community by my assaulter. So what were my options?

  ON SET

  I wake up Monday, at 4:15 a.m. Is it the morning or the night? I’m not sure, I only know being up this late/early makes me nauseated. The night before, I memorized all my lines, around ten pages of dense dialogue. It is tedious going; the words on top of words on top of words—all varying just slightly from the day before—make it difficult for me to remember. I have dreams that I forget all my lines and everyone just stares at me in silent expectation. I am continually stressed I won’t remember my lines; each day that I don’t forget them feels like a huge victory. Time is definitely money on film sets, and anytime I mess up I can feel the stress of the assistant director and producers, which makes me more nervous; everything hinges on us actors not fucking up.

  I drive in the dark to the set and arrive. I’m immediately followed by a production assistant with a walkie who radios out that I’ve arrived. He follows me to the hair and makeup trailer. They follow me everywhere all the time—these guys with the headsets and walkies—as if I’m not capable of walking from point A to point B. I step into the trailer and my eyes adjust to the bright lights. The blow-dryers are already going, but even so I can still hear my costar screech-talking in her baby-talk voice. I put my earplugs in to block the cringe-inducing sound, but I can still hear her squaw
k. I hate baby talk unless there is a baby involved. My makeup artist remarks that I must’ve slept well because the skin under my eyes is puffy. She tells me every day how much better I look when I don’t sleep. I stare at myself and my under-eye bags look not too hideous, but if she says they’re bad, it must be true, I guess. I hate sitting and looking at myself in the mirror. I think it’s unnatural to have to constantly stare at your own face with a critical eye. I stare trying to recognize the person staring back, because this is where I morph into another woman, not myself. The fucking baby talk is still screeching and I shudder. I get sent over to the hair chair and the blow-dryer begins its forty-five-minute job. I have a lot of hair. The hairstyle I’m being given has to match the picture of what was filmed the day before. I read over my lines on my miniscript; yep, they’re just as banal as I remembered. I’m finally done with my transformation. I survey the finished work. I’ll get to be myself again in twelve hours; until then I have to be someone else, a passenger in my own body.

  Funny thing, actors, a lot of them; we spend a lot more time living in trailer homes than most people would imagine. The lifestyle is not as glamorous as you might think. The tedium can be oppressive.

  Take filming, for example. Imagine the scene is you having coffee with a friend, just the two of you sitting there in a coffee shop. That two-person scene will take about four hours to shoot, if not more. You need the master shot of the entire scenario. Then you go in closer. That’s a medium shot, and then we find our heroes. Now, there’s a medium close-up of the hero and then a tighter close-up. After that side is complete, the camera turns around to the other side and repeats. It’s a lot of work. You say the words over and over and over again from every possible angle and that’s just one take. You have to do many more takes on top of that. I’m not complaining, I’m explaining.

  You start getting very, very tired around 4:00 p.m. because you’ve been up since around 4:30 a.m. You cram in memorization for the next day’s work. The day wraps up and you go home at 7:00 p.m. if it’s a good day. Often it’s around 9:00 p.m. The 9:00 p.m. means you have what’s called a turnaround. You have to have twelve hours in between shooting times legally, but there’s something called forced calls where they can make you come in after a ten-hour turnaround. That’s what usually happens. Now you have about an hour or so to be awake and be yourself. You look at your lines again before bed, wash your face, pass out, get up, start the whole thing over again.

  TELEVISED LIFE

  I was in Romania when I got a phone call from Aaron Spelling, a legendary TV producer, famous for a slew of wildly successful if cheesy shows like The Love Boat and Dynasty and 90210. He told me about a show called Charmed that had been on for three seasons; it was about good witches who helped protect the world from evil. There had been a major cast shake-up. Shannen Doherty, the show’s main star, was leaving the show and they were writing in a new character. Would I consider playing a role on television? I didn’t know what Charmed was, but I was curious. On the flight home from Romania, the pilot episode of Charmed was available to watch. I have never seen Charmed offered on a plane since then, just that one flight. It felt like kismet. I’d been looking for a sign, and there it was. I thought the pilot episode was pretty cool so I agreed to meet and talk. It felt nice to be wanted after so much rejection and knowing I was blacklisted by my omnipresent Monster.

  The bigwig’s office on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles was like a football field of deep white shag rug. So deep I couldn’t see my high heels. A tiny little man, probably about five feet tall, was sitting behind a big desk, attended by his butler in tails. This was the legendary Aaron Spelling. It was wild because I used to love watching Dynasty with my mother when I was little and here I was now with the head honcho. The butler brought Mr. Spelling this big crystal goblet of blue Gatorade with a bent straw on a silver tray. I’ll always remember that. I imagined the conversation with Spelling: I like a bent straw. I just love that.

  He was a sweet man. I didn’t dislike him; in fact, I thought he was kind of cute. The whole time I was in the meeting, I was imagining him with blue troll doll hair. That’s what I often did so I wouldn’t be nervous.

  I started to speak and noticed Mr. Spelling looking at me like I was part alien, and so did the couple of other executives who were in the meeting. That always happened everywhere I went in Hollywood. I think it was because the way I looked and the way I spoke were two very different things. Meaning I looked like a stylized bombshell, but definitely did not speak like one. People in Hollywood and the media world really did not know what to make of me. Instead of seeing me as an artist and mind, they put me in the “bad girl” category. They couldn’t seem to hear a fucking word that came out of my mouth because they were too fucking stupid. Tedious. I’m like the most patient impatient person in the world.

  I was fine with being known as a rebel, but worldwide condemnation of you for being a bad girl will seep into your head. Plus, the “you’re bad” thing triggered a lot of my father’s earlier words and made them echo in my head. The old fear of being homeless, being helpless, began to creep back. I was scared of television because I’d heard that hours were brutal, and I didn’t know anything about that world. I barely watched TV. But it was a job. There was about to be an actors’ strike in Hollywood. I knew there might not be work for the next two years.

  I started to think seriously about doing the show.

  My movie blacklisting was still hanging over me. It felt violating that so many industry people knew of my trauma, but sided with my perpetrator. Years had passed since I had last had regular work in Hollywood, and I was only twenty-eight. I remember being embarrassed on my birthday because Entertainment Tonight announced my age. I felt ashamed. That’s how fucked up my brain was. The messaging that you get from society, media, and Hollywood skews age-related thinking. Back then I thought it was just because young women were more beautiful, but now I realize that it’s because a young woman is typically more docile, often easily manipulated, and too easily tricked into doing what the man wants, both societally and individually. Fuck that. Funny how when we come into our own power as women, that’s exactly when we are considered unattractive. It is they who are unattractive.

  So I said yes to Charmed. I was told that it wouldn’t run for more than two seasons, so I may as well sign a standard five-year contract. I should’ve realized that it was in other people’s moneymaking interest to do this, but not necessarily mine. Everyone was hoping I’d keep the show on the air and get them to their ultimate moneymaking goal, the Holy Grail known as syndication. That’s a hell of a lot of pressure for someone who had only been in indie films. I now had 150 crew members’ jobs to think about. Believe me, it factored into a lot of my decisions. For the next five years I was my character, Paige Matthews, more than I got to be myself.

  Paige Matthews was half sister to the Halliwells, Phoebe, played by Alyssa Milano, and Piper, played by Holly Marie Combs. Alyssa Milano I’d known about because of her show Who’s the Boss?, which I was a fan of when I was small. I was somewhat surprised to find myself in a world where we were together, we were so totally different. Her, raised as a wealthy child actress, and me, the scrappy weirdo. There definitely could have been drama on the set, but I refused to take part in it. The press was salivating at the idea of juicy tabloid stories coming from our set, but I refused to oblige. My interest in the job was purely mercenary, so I opted out of infighting. I refused to play games that were beneath me, but it didn’t stop the constant watching of our set. I cannot tell you how many times I was asked if we the Charmed Ones hung out after work. The answer was no. The one free hour I had when I went home for the night I tried to spend with myself.

  I channeled my efforts into playing Paige, a lovely character, but very much a character. A girl who grew up into a woman on the show. Meanwhile, my own growth as a woman was stunted because of it.

  I had so many life milestones on camera instead of in real life. My “first” we
dding was a very meta experience. I walked down the aisle with a fake dad, with fake friends, fake sisters, a fake husband-to-be, a fake pastor: it was all fake fake fake. I went through the emotions as if it was really happening to me, because that’s what acting is after all. It was particularly weird faking a life event that has been sold to all of us as some monumental moment—“the most important day of a girl’s life.” I don’t necessarily agree that your wedding day should be the single greatest event in your life, but having it happen on-screen for the first time robbed something from me. All told I was fake married three times on film before my “real” marriage. By then, I was repeating an emotional scene I’d already played. Your entertainment comes at a cost to us performers. You should know this and acknowledge.

  When I started the show, I thought a lot about audience psychology. I, in all my infamy and not-girl-next-doorness, was supposed to step in after Shannen Doherty’s beloved character was unceremoniously killed off. I wasn’t going to be playing Shannen’s role, but it was still someone new for the fans to bond with. I had been told that many shows don’t survive a major cast change. I knew that I had a slim chance at success here. People had to fall in love with my character as quickly as possible or Charmed would die. I thought about how big the crew was and how they would all be out of a job if I failed. So I made myself look super nonthreatening. I gained weight, about ten pounds, for the role. I wanted to look as soft and approachable as possible. Boring.

  There was an edict from the studio that none of us was allowed to cut or color her hair without permission from the studio president. I thought that was some serious bullshit. As I was about to return for my second season on the show, I dyed my hair red without asking permission. Oooh. The studio got wind of it and flipped out, of course. They were furious and demanded to know how I expected them to explain this. I told them: “It’s a show about magic. You simply say I was mixing a potion and it exploded in my face! My hair turned red! I liked it, so I kept it.” That became the very first dialogue of the season, almost verbatim, between me and the character Leo. All it takes is a little creative thought, but the studios rarely have that working for them.