I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (12 page)

Now, remember, this was before the Internet. I didn’t know Tom Cruise was starring in a movie called
Jerry Maguire
seconds after he was cast in it. To add to the equation, I was finishing college, so even if there was Internet, I totally had my head up my own ass and probably wouldn’t have used it anyway (someone recently told me there was Internet back then and a computer lab on campus too. Huh?). If you didn’t go to school with me or
live in the apartment complex I spied on across the street, I didn’t pay attention to you. After I saw that famous grin looking at me through my bedroom window, I felt at a loss. I didn’t want to be Judy McGuire anymore. I wanted something new, something different. I knew that the Jerry Maguire movement would have to eventually die down, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted my name to be new and exciting now; I wanted to be ahead of the curve! The only option, as I could see it in that moment, was to steal the identity of Big Judy, my aunt Judy Greer. She was the Big to my Baby. She was the woman I was named after. It immediately made so much sense that I was mad at myself for not thinking of it sooner.

My parents claimed that they knew several Judys and liked them all, so that’s why they chose that name. But, to me, Big Judy was the best, so I give her full credit for my first name. (Also, my dad dated a Judy before my mom, and I’ve always thought it was a little weird Judy was even a potential name for me in the first place but whatever, I guess my mom isn’t as needy and competitive as I am.) Judy Greer married her high school sweetheart, Jerry Hershman, and became Judy Hershman. But since she never moved from the town she grew up in, people knew her as both. Perhaps Judy Greer felt right because I had heard it my whole life, or maybe because I loved my aunt Judy so much and she was so special. Either way, I just knew it was the one, so that’s the name I finally decided on when I joined SAG.

By the way, if you’re reading this and you have any pull with the people at
IMDb.com
, could you do me a favor and tell them that there is not, nor has ever been, a Laura in my name? I don’t know how they got that information, but they are wrong. And I am prepared to show my birth certificate if that’s what it takes. It makes no sense: if I’m going to lie about anything at this point, it’s going to be my age, not my name.

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN WAS THE FIRST DIRECTOR TO
call me on the phone himself to offer me a role in his movie. The movie was called
The Village
. I auditioned on tape in L.A. and then flew to New York to meet him in person for the final callback. The next day he called my cell phone and asked me if he could send me the script and if I would play the role I auditioned for. I was in a taxicab when I got his call, and when I hung up, my driver was the first person I told; he didn’t understand what I was telling him, but I could tell he sensed it was good news and that if he acted excited, his tip would reflect that. I had just finished shooting
13 Going on 30
and was so excited to have another great project so soon after. M. Night Shyamalan directed huge-budget movies, and I was going to be in one! (Take that, everyone who made fun of me in high school!)

It was my first big role in a big-budget film that shot outside L.A. I’d been in some big movies before, but either they weren’t on location, or my roles were so small I was only there for a few days, and in both cases I was too nervous to pay attention to anything but not screwing up. I had yet to experience anything like
The Village
. I would be working on the same movie for three
months and living in the middle of the woods in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. My career was getting real.

One of the many things that made an impression on me from that movie was the size of the crew and how appreciative Night was of them—at least that’s how it seemed to me. He insisted that we were fed well, he hired the same people over and over again (meaning the crew; he hasn’t hired me since), and every Friday at lunch the names of all the crew members were put in a pot, someone would draw a name, and that person would win a trip for two to some fabulous destination—I remember Hawaii and London being two of the places. The actors weren’t eligible for Night’s trips, only the crew, and that’s when it occurred to me that they are the ones who really make a movie happen.

I couldn’t get over how many different jobs there were on a set! There are guys who have to put plywood boards all over base camp because when it rained there would be mud everywhere and we might slip and fall and break something important. There was the costume department, which had to tie us into our corsets every morning, untie us at lunch, tie us back in after lunch, and then out again at the end of the day. Our hair and makeup artists, who had to plaster our hair down to our skulls, put our wigs on, and then take them off at the end of the day, clean and prep them for the next day of work, and unplaster our hair. The camera department has to haul all the lights and camera equipment out of the trucks every day and load them back in every night. Sometimes hundreds of people are responsible for a movie. The actors, writers, director, cinematographers, designers, and producers are so outnumbered that I always wonder, if a director is being a total asshole, why isn’t there a coup?

I don’t know how many people were on the crew of
The Village
, but I just finished shooting
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
, and I asked someone on set how many people were working on
the movie. It seemed like for every one person on set, there were two somewhere else in the world working on it as well, in offices, doing special effects, etc. At one point thirteen hundred people were employed by
DOTPOTA
! (That’s what we called it due to the title length and verbal laziness.) That’s a lot of cast and crew on set, a lot of personalities spending fifteen-plus hours a day together, for several months, far away from all their homes and families. And in the case of
DOTPOTA
the weather was either cold and rainy every day in Vancouver or stiflingly hot and humid in New Orleans. There were guys on that movie who were paid to light stuff on fire and guys paid to make sure that the other stuff didn’t burn. There were trucks that were delivered by even bigger trucks, and different people to drive them both. At the bar after work you could have drinks with an actor, helicopter pilot, truck driver, and makeup artist, all working on the same job! It’s a small town of people all working together to make something that only exists at that moment in the minds of a few people. Yes, everyone is getting paid for their work, but still, I think it’s impressive. This really makes me realize the beauty of the movie and TV industry, and even though I’ve been doing it for years, I never tire of it. Well, except for one thing. I get really bummed when I’m in a movie with someone amazing and I don’t even get to meet that person. I’m thinking specifically of Meryl Streep. I mean, come on … it’s MERYL!!!

Another movie I did called
Jeff, Who Lives at Home
was a much smaller film. The crew was about forty to fifty people, but they were no less impressive to me on set. There was no budget for lobster and steak at lunch, like some of the giant sets I’ve been on (although we did have a crawfish boil one night after work, which was awesome because I got to hold a baby alligator), and people were doing several jobs at once, but I could really feel how excited everyone was to be working on our little movie. And
Jay and Mark Duplass, our co-directors, knew everyone’s name and always smiled and said good morning and thank you. They were great bosses, and I could tell they were genuinely grateful to everyone who came to work every day ready to work hard, have fun, and help them tell their story. One thing I appreciate about the crew is that, like the mailman/woman, they are there every day. Rain, shine, freezing cold, sweltering heat, 5:00 a.m. call times, no matter what. They don’t get to call in sick. They don’t get to take breaks in trailers like we actors do. They are the village that it takes to make a movie—no job is too big, no job is too small, and all of them are the filmmakers.

MY MANAGER CALLED ME ONE DAY AND ASKED IF I
wanted to play a bearded lady for a week on the television show
My Name Is Earl
. Naturally, like any forward-thinking woman of the twenty-first century, I wanted to do this. I mean, how many times in a lifetime does a lady get to wear a full beard? Well, except for actual bearded ladies. Those women would probably jump at the chance to play a role that
didn’t
have a beard (note to self: don’t take non-bearded roles for granted anymore). Anyway, I was excited. It would be a fun new challenge! And that’s what I’m always trying to do with my career.

The show brought in a special makeup artist just for me and my beard. She was lovely and awesome and I forget her name because I’m the worst, but we got really close that week. It’s personal work to apply a beard, and it took her a few hours to do it. She created four beard pieces that were glued on my face, and following that she would add individual hairs to connect the pieces. While she did it, I couldn’t move or talk or eat. It even took a while to remove my beard at the end of each day. She had
to be really careful not to ruin the four original pieces and not to burn my face off with remover chemicals in the process. Some of my face burned off anyway, which I don’t blame her for, it’s just an occupational hazard. And at least it wasn’t razor burn. In theory this all sounded really cool, but in reality it was one of the weirdest weeks of my life.

Having a full beard made me feel really sad. Mostly because, with all that hair glued to my face, I couldn’t smile! So, for an entire week of work, I had to try not to see/hear/think of anything that made me laugh or smile. It was also very hard to talk or eat with my beard on. I couldn’t open my mouth that wide, so sandwiches were out, and anything drippy like pasta or soup was majorly problematic because it would get all over my beard and that was super gross. And the truth is I love a breakfast burrito—it’s one of the treats I allow myself when I’m working on a short job—but that was not even close to an option. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t yawn. And I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror at all. I had longish hair at the time, and if I parted it down the middle and wore aviator sunglasses, I looked exactly like Chris Robinson from the Black Crowes. It was kind of mesmerizing, but for the most part it was sad. I would just sit and stare at myself. It was like I was staring at another person. I felt like I was in an eighties movie where people swapped bodies, but my movie swap was way more indie, on account of the fact that I couldn’t make any wacky faces during the discovery process or injure myself trying to swap back. I just stared at myself while sipping hot tea through a straw that was melting. Very indie indeed.

Because the character I was playing was the bearded lady in a circus of human freaks, the props department made a poster of me for set decoration. It was pretty big, four feet by two feet-ish. When the episode wrapped, props gave me the sign to keep. I put it in the trunk of my car, facing up, and forgot about it until my
car got searched when driving on the CBS lot several weeks later. The security guard gave me a really weird look after checking my trunk for explosives or kidnapped celebrities, but I had totally forgotten that the sign was still in it. It wasn’t until I got groceries later that day and popped my trunk that I saw my bearded face staring back at me. And seeing my solemn expression brought back all those melancholy bearded emotions. I felt bad for my bearded self, that she never got the chance to find happiness with her beard, that she never figured out how to smile. Which is why, if there’s a next time, I’m going to insist she can smile, even if it adds two hours to the beard-laying process. I feel she deserves at least that.

A PRESS JUNKET IS A WEEKEND-LONG EVENT WHERE
the main people involved in a film sit in a fancy hotel room and members of the press come in one at a time, for two minutes each, and ask you about the project you’re there to promote. But here’s the weird thing: I can’t tell them anything juicy or potentially damaging about the people involved or the production. I would lose my acting license, and no one would ever hire me again. OK, there’s no such thing as an acting license, and I’m not famous enough for my interviews to damage my career. But I’m no tattletale, although maybe sharing some dirt could potentially work to my advantage … Nah, it’s not worth it. Besides, I don’t really have any dirt. When you’re a co-star, you’re not really around long enough to get any good dirt. Basically, at a press junket, I’m there to sit in a chair, look pretty, and say that all the actors were great, that the director was great, that making the movie was fun/important/life changing/great, talk about why I wanted the role (so I can pay my bills), and tell a moving story about shooting or a practical joke that someone played on set. This last question gets asked a lot when you work with a known practical joker like George Clooney. So, why do we do junkets if everyone is just
going to say everything was great? To get people excited about the movie! And it is exciting. It takes about a year from the time you shoot the movie for it to be ready to be released in the theaters. So it’s been a year since I’ve seen the other actors, the director, and the producer. And I get to go to a screening of the film so I know what I’m talking about (and if I was edited out). After that first screening I always wonder if it’s going to be a huge hit. Will it change the way people view movies forever? Will everyone be a better person after seeing it? Will America be a better place once this movie is released? Usually, in my experience, the answer to all those questions is not really, but talking about it for two days before the release does get everyone all fired up, just in case.