I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (16 page)

But I survived, as I knew I would, and I walked inside hoping to put it all behind me and have a great time. Commence the next terrible moment. Have you ever gone to a party alone? Have you ever worked up enough courage to go somewhere where you knew you wouldn’t know anyone but the host, only to realize upon walking into said party that you’d made a horrible mistake, and you immediately get a drink and stand alone at a cocktail table for what seems like an hour and no one talks to you or even smiles your way? In fact, you are so alone that you want to talk to the guy passing champagne or consider causing him to spill just so you will have something to occupy yourself with for a few minutes. Well, that’s phase two of my Oscar experience. I was deposited, by the publicist, at a lonely cocktail table upstairs and told to “have fun,” even though I’m still trying not to cry. Really? Have fun? I’m standing by myself at the be-all and end-all of parties. And I know
no one
. There were celebrities all over the red carpet, but where did they go? Where is the rest of my cast? I have been in over forty fucking movies, shouldn’t I be at least one degree from everyone here? Where is fucking anyone who looks familiar to me??!!! I grabbed two glasses of champagne hoping to make it look like someone was coming back to the table but planning to drink them both. Thank sweet Jesus and Steve Jobs for the iPhone. I started texting Janet, my best friend.
I generally try not to rely on technology to get me through low-self-esteem moments, but I was desperate. She asked me what Tina Fey would do, and I said that Tina Fey would leave. (This was later confirmed by a director who works with Tina Fey a lot. I felt validated.) Janet felt that Tina would have another glass of champagne (that would have been my fourth) and try to make the best of it. I tweeted too: “At the Oscars!! Holy Shit!!!! (Still standing by myself drinking, like most parties I go to, but, hey, it’s the Oscars!)” That made me feel a little better. I was really trying to be positive, even though my dress had fallen apart and I was drinking alone. Still, I was at the
Oscars
wearing a dress that was falling apart and drinking alone, right? A while later I saw my friend Arianne Phillips (nominated that night for costume design for
W.E
.) walking toward me with her boyfriend and parents. I
was so happy to see a familiar face I almost cried. And, of course, the first thing that Ari said was, “Don’t you love coming up to the seat-filler bar? It’s so amazing up here.” It suddenly made sense. I was in the wrong bar. That’s why I didn’t recognize anyone. Great. I asked Arianne where people I would know were drinking, and she told me, “Downstairs. Downstairs is the main bar. Everybody’s downstairs.” Well, glass half-full (er, more like four empty), at least I was buzzed and I got to see Ari.

Selfie at seat-filler bar

Terrible moment number three: I decided it was time to go to the bathroom to throw out my Spanx. Yes, I know that is wasteful, but I have to tell you in case you don’t wear Spanx, they fucking suck, and if you do wear them, then you totally know what I mean. However, they are a necessary evil;
everyone
wears them. My friend Natalya said once, at an event, “If everyone in this room right now took off their clothes, no one would be naked.” She’s right. They are so uncomfortable that I wear them for the red carpet only—it’s a little deal I made with myself—and if I ever get to carry a handbag that is larger than my fist, I will roll them in a small ball, save them, and not be so wasteful. But until that day, I toss them in the garbage after photos are taken and hope that they get rescued and worn by a woman who, like me, has some dimples on the other two cheeks she’d like to hide. Once in my stall, I started to pull my dress up from the bottom, only to realize that it wouldn’t fit over my hips. The dress had been too well tailored, and I couldn’t pull it up at all.

This was the moment I realized that for the entire evening every time I have to go to the bathroom, I have to take off my dress, completely. This is the reason I don’t like jumpsuits or one-piece bathing suits. It’s not that I have a fear of being naked. I have a fear of being naked in a bathroom at the moment we get “the big one,” and I get mortally crushed by the building falling in on me. And weeks later, when a rescue team uncovers my body,
I will be naked, and the story (if there is one … there better be one) in the news will be “recognizable actress whose name we can’t place is found naked in the rubble that was once the bathroom of the Kodak Theatre.” I mean, would anyone understand that I
had
to take off my dress completely in order to pee? Perhaps the seamstress who tailored it for me would. But could she be trusted to spread the word after my death? Doubtful.

Beads were still falling on tile, but I didn’t care anymore. Photos were over, my Spanx were in the garbage, and I was moments from sitting in my seat and watching the Oscars! I finally got really excited. I mean, what else could go wrong? I shall tell you, terrible moment number four: I was ushered in with my cast (I finally found them in the correct bar). And, of course, I had to walk past the front row and all the biggest and skinniest celebrities
of the moment. I pass George Clooney, who is the star of the movie I was there for, Brad, Angie, Meryl—they’re all there and I’m there too and it was really starting to hit me how so supercool this is, when I saw my friend Suzan about five rows back waving at me, with a shadow of concern starting to appear in her eyes. I waved and went back to chatting up Stacy Keibler, when I saw Suzan again holding up her cell phone and pointing to it. Uh-oh. I hurry to my seat and get out my phone to read, “Your lingerie straps are hanging out of your dress.” Of course they are! You have got to be fucking kidding me forever. Can I die? Can I just have a do over? After everything else, I have this? Was I feeling sorry for myself? Yeah, probably. But come
on
! Beads falling off, drinking solo for a half hour, having to strip down completely to pee, and now my straps were hanging out? In front of Meryl?!

I was completely naked when I took this photo.

You may be wondering what I did with the dress, did I at least get to keep it? Nope. Months later, I got a box with a scented candle and one of those jars of oil with sticks in it. That was my thank you. I know it’s not the designer’s fault, but still, I’d like to put the woman who actually made that dress on a red carpet, surround her with celebrities, and slowly unravel the beads on
her dress, while three tiers of photographers snap her picture and scream her name at the top of their lungs. I should just wear Puma from now on. I’ve run marathons in their stuff and it holds up just fine. Way to go, Puma!

I sound bitter. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who lets one silly little thing (or four) ruin her big night. And ultimately it didn’t. I got to go to the Oscars and the Governors Ball, then I got to meet up with my Prince Charming and take him with me to the
Vanity Fair
party, we ate and drank for free all night (not including fourth meal at the Taco Bell drive-thru), I met loads of people (who will never remember meeting me), and I held an Oscar statue (not mine)! I mean, jeez, Cinderella went to a ball all by herself, had a crazy-early curfew, and lost a shoe, but she still managed to have the best time of her life. At least I didn’t lose my shoe!

I DON
’
T USUALLY GET MY PHOTO TAKEN BY PAPARAZZI
, but if I do, I assume all the other celebrities are in foreign lands at film festivals I wasn’t invited to or that the shutterbugs are mistaking me for someone else, Kathy Griffin perhaps. Last fall I did my first Broadway play starring Norbert Leo Butz and Katie Holmes (she’s so cool, by the way, in case you were wondering). Needless to say, there were always loads of paparazzi waiting outside the stage door to get a shot of Katie as she walked from her car door to the door of the theater—it’s about a ten-foot distance, who knows what could happen in that ten feet. In the beginning of rehearsal and previews, I tried to dress cute every day, just in case they got a shot of me behind Katie, or if they happened to be whipping their cameras around to catch Al Pacino getting out of his town car across the street at the theater where he was working. Who knows, there might be a flash of my navy beret or a glimpse of my leopard-print jeans I bought in a shopping spree at Target. After a few weeks I ran out of cute outfits and realized it didn’t matter anyway, so I stopped trying so hard to look cute as I walked to the theater. Don’t get me wrong, I still wore my navy beret à la Mary Richards from
The Mary Tyler
Moore Show
because I
was
going to make it after all and some sunglasses because I did my makeup once I was backstage, and without makeup on I look slightly anemic and like I’ve been crying for a while (I am not anemic and probably hadn’t been crying for
that
long; that’s just the no-makeup look I was blessed with). I’d hate to get stuck behind Katie with no makeup on and no sunglasses while they were snapping away at her. If those photos were sold to a magazine, it would probably be for a story about how Katie Holmes was donating her time to a fancy charity and taking a clinically depressed, anemic woman to work with her for the day (again, not depressed and not anemic).

A few weeks prior, my husband (Dean Johnsen) had borrowed a guitar from Norbert Leo Butz (two-time Tony Award winner just in case you’re not familiar with his awesomeness) in order to learn a song to perform at the Johnsen family talent show that Christmas. Norbert needed the guitar back so
he
could learn a song for an actual New Year’s Eve show he was performing in, for money. Since Dean Johnsen was just trying to impress his siblings and wasn’t actually furthering his career or earning money to feed his family or pay his mortgage, his guitar time was quickly up, and I had to lug the thing back to work that evening. My husband asked if I felt comfortable carrying the guitar to work and if I thought that the photographers waiting outside the stage door for Katie would get a photo of me carrying a guitar. “Wouldn’t that be funny?” he said. No. As it turns out, my husband is smarter than I gave him credit for, and just as he predicted, the second I approached the stage door, the paparazzi, who
never
take my photo, started taking my photo. The worst part was that they were yelling, “Judy, can we get one with your guitar? Can you hold your guitar up?!” The horror. They asked me to lift “my” guitar higher so it could be in the shot. I would just like to say, for the record, I do
not
play the guitar. I do not own a guitar. I am in no way a
musician, I can’t sing, I am musically challenged. I took piano lessons for six years, once a week, and cannot play a note. I was just carrying the guitar as a favor for my husband.

For me, the few times I’ve been papped, it’s like running into an ex: it only happens when I look like shit, have pinkeye, or post-yoga crotch sweat. Every fucking time. I could walk to Starbucks seven times a day looking like a normal human American girl, but the one day I am dressed like an extra from
The Hunger Games
, I get snapped.

I clearly have not come very far with my emotional development, because just as I am completely outraged at the photographers’ presence, I am later equally hurt when the photos are never printed. My brain is saying I want to be left alone, but my delicate actor ego is wondering why they don’t care about me? The photos must be worth so little my mom would probably pay more for a current picture of me than any magazine. She’s always asking what color my hair is now, and it’s so hard to describe the nuances of my highlights as they grow out.

I’m getting worse too. When my publicist/agents/manager first told me to start tweeting, Instagramming, and Facebooking, I became temporarily obsessed. I remember this feeling from when I was in high school and I would go to class and everyone would be talking about a party I wasn’t invited to the night before. It really sucked, and as soon as I started playing on Twitter, years and years later, those feelings came flooding back. I became obsessed with watching my number of Twitter followers grow, with who is following who, who posts what, how many followers he/she has, especially in comparison to me. It’s kind of a ridiculous time suck, isn’t it? I’m working on moderation in all areas of my life, but I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl, and I needed to back off. My friends tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen. I should have known. I was just as bad as my teenage stepkids—the three of
us would sit on the sofa for hours thumbing our way through the Twittersphere and Instagramland. I am going to try not to judge other people for doing it, but I needed to get it under control. I liked not knowing what I was missing, but now we know everything all the time. We know where our friends are, what they are doing, who they are with, and when they are doing something that they didn’t invite us to. We also know when we are dumped for something better. I get canceled on a lot (to be fair, I cancel a lot too), and now I can see/read what the canceler is doing that was better than having dinner with me. Also, I am very sensitive, and I obsessively read my followers’ tweets and got really insecure when they said bad things. I needed to learn to either (a) not read anything, (b) not care (ding ding ding), or (c) quit everything and buy a lavender farm in Oregon. My mom told me when I was little that I needed to toughen up, but I didn’t think I would have to rely on that advice as an adult. Shouldn’t I be tough by now? I want to be beef jerky, not whipped cream. Hollywood, for me, has always felt like a popularity contest. Shouldn’t this town have made my skin at least a little thicker by now? I liked it when I was living in my little bubble where the only jobs I really knew about were the ones I auditioned for or watched once they were released. I was way less insecure before I could read tweets from all of the people I was following and see how busy they were as I sat on my sofa eating an entire pizza and watching
Road House
on a Tuesday afternoon.