Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper
Also by Hilary Liftin
Candy and Me
Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Shiny Brass Lamp Productions, Inc. f/s/o Hilary Liftin
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Liftin, Hilary.
Movie star by Lizzie Pepper / Hilary Liftin.
pages cm
1. Actresses--Fiction. 2. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.I3385M68 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015001105
ISBN 978-0-698-13769-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Allison, whose struggles and gifts brought me here.
—
L.R.P.
For Chris, with lifelong love and gratitude.
—
H.L.
We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last . . .
CAPTAIN ROBERT FALCON SCOTT “MESSAGE TO THE PUBLIC,” MARCH 1911
W
hen I first told P. J., my longtime publicist, that I wanted to write a book, she just about hung up on me. (It wouldn’t have been the first time—P. J. has one way she likes to do things: P. J.’s way.) After she’d cooled down a bit, she reminded me that we’d spent the past year and a half trying to show the world that my life was completely boring and mundane in an attempt to get the press to relax its twenty-four-hour watch on me. Why would I want to stir things up again?
It was a good question, and it has a real answer, but it might not be what everyone expects.
I know that people want to hear my side of the story. I’ve been asked the same questions every time I’ve stepped out into daylight for more than seven years.
Lizzie! Lizzie! Why did you marry Rob Mars? Was it a career move or do you really love him? Is he gay? What’s it like inside the One Cell Studio? Have you learned to levitate? Is it a cult? Why did you leave Rob? Did he cheat on you? Seriously, is he gay? Where’s your wedding ring? Are you saving your sons from the Studio? Are you and Johnny getting back together?
And, of course,
Who are you wearing?
I am going to answer those questions (though I’m not going to dwell on fashion). In doing so, I have no choice but to violate my ex-husband’s cherished and embattled privacy. I don’t do so out of spite. In fact, I’m deeply conflicted about it. A marriage that fails has surrendered on multiple levels: the smallest intimacies; the day-to-day rituals; the fundamental principles. In my case, my issues with Rob’s involvement in One Cell are distinct from my issues with Rob, but it became, and is in these pages, very difficult to separate the two. What will forever be true is that I respect Rob, and I will always care for him, and I would rather not hurt him.
So why am I telling the story? Why expose Rob, and myself—and even, to some extent, our young sons, who didn’t choose a public life? It’s not revenge or bitterness or a desire for attention, that’s for sure. I’m not trying to make my ex-husband look bad, and I’m not trying to make myself look good. I’m not trying to rejuvenate my image or pay off debts. But for the last fifteen years the press has drawn me in crisp, simple, black-and-white lines. The Girl Next Door. America’s Sweetheart. Rob Mars’s wife. For all the paparazzi shots and legal briefs and features that have been written about the “news” of my every trip to Starbucks (venti soy latte, if you don’t know already), nobody ever writes or talks about the reasons or the reality. I feel like nobody really knows me, and, until very recently, there were some things even I didn’t understand about myself.
After this bizarre, otherworldly phase of my life in which the press tried to predict, expose, and analyze every slight movement I made, I was determined to reclaim those years, to describe what they were to me, regardless of what the truth might do to my image, dammit! The right to tell my own story, in my own words, became so important to me that I made sure it was part of my divorce agreement. (I achieved this in a rather unorthodox way, but more on that later.) Now that it has settled at last, I can finally break the first commandment of celebrity: I can tell the imperfect, unpolished truth.
I’m only thirty-two, but, as they say, my life so far has been quite a journey: growing up a straight-A student in Chicago; landing a lead role on a beloved TV series before I finished high school; making movies in Hollywood; marrying a megastar; giving birth to twins; getting a divorce under circumstances I never could have predicted; launching O Naturale, my organic cosmetics line (available at a department store near you). These are the Wikipedia trappings of a Hollywood life. I’m famous for what is completely obvious about me—that’s how it works—but behind the screen, behind the scenes, behind the behind the scenes, I’m human. I fell in love, as people do, and entered a marriage that I thought would last a lifetime. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve kept secrets. I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, and I’ve had my share of struggles. Through it all, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that there are no black-and-white lines. In my story, there is no he said/she said, no good and evil, no right and wrong. We are all human, complex and simple, great and small. This is a story about the choices that we each make every day, and how those choices make us who we are.
Lizzie Pepper
LOS ANGELES
I
wasn’t really interested in the part: another helpless girlfriend—too small a role for me—but my management told me to take the meeting. It was Rob Mars after all. You don’t say no to Rob Mars.
I’ve had a million meetings in my acting career, and I had no idea that this would be the one that would change my life forever. I walked into the room, and there was Rob. At this point I was past being dazzled by movie stars—or so I thought. But even at the Oscars, in that concentrated crowd of self-involved, hard-to-impress A-listers, Rob Mars turns heads. Celebrities gawk at him the way most people gawk at them.
Here he was. Rob Mars, in the flesh. Seeing him spun me back to my teen years, before I took the role of Lucy McAlister on
American Dream
, before all the press, the red carpets, the award ceremonies, the movies and TV appearances. Back to the days when Rob Mars was a life-size poster on my best friend Aurora’s bedroom door, and we had no idea that I would ever lead a life that would have me meeting him in person, much less as a potential colleague. I would say I never dreamed of it . . . but isn’t this what everyone dreams of?
Rob rose to greet me, tall and debonair, his familiar face sharper in three dimensions, as if he’d always been slightly blurry onscreen and now
he was in high-def. His brow and chin were strong, elegantly framed by salt-and-pepper hair. But you know that. What I really mean is that in person his features were breathtaking, his face chiseled by destiny. And I had never noticed before how his eyebrows slanted down toward his ears. It made him look a little vulnerable in spite of the ridiculous bone structure.
“Hi, I’m Lizzie,” I said, and stuck out my hand to shake his. A worry flitted through my head. Was he one of those germophobes? I hadn’t done my research. Had I blown it already? But he took my hand and at the same time leaned in to kiss my cheek. Phew.
“Can I call you Elizabeth?” he asked. “You’re too sophisticated for Lizzie.”
I nodded dumbly. My father was the only person who called me Elizabeth. Elizabeth felt premature, but also intimate coming from Rob—as if he’d already found something in me that he’d been looking for.
“Elizabeth,” he said, and smiled. That famous megawatt smile, but now it was for me.
We took our chairs, and I noticed that he was one of those people with a disproportionately long torso because sitting down he was a good foot taller than I was, and I’m five foot seven.
There were other people in the room. Six, maybe? Hard to say, I never pay much attention to entourages of agents and managers, and I was transfixed by that smile. Anyway, Rob was the one who led the conversation from the start. He talked about how much he’d admired my work, not just on
American Dream
, but in
Underground
and
The
Last Hurrah
. I ate up the praise.
American Dream
was formative for me—I grew up on that show—but I didn’t want it to define me as an actor for the rest of my life. Plus, these compliments were coming from one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Maybe
the
biggest movie star. Rob Mars isn’t just a moviegoer’s idol. He’s an actor’s actor. He’s played good guys, bad guys,
teen heartthrobs, Jesus himself, and an immortal god who rules over an unbelievably distant planet. He even sang in some musical where he played a sensitive cowboy. Anyway, my point is completely obvious to anyone who has ever stepped into a movie theater. Nothing Rob Mars ever does feels small, and it never is. All his movies over-perform. He over-performs. Whatever you think of that movie, he was a completely believable Son of God. Somehow even the cowboy musical, which was generally considered to be a flop, made millions of dollars. Meanwhile, all my movies so far had been small, offbeat indies with good reviews and mediocre-to-nonexistent box offices, and all my parts had been awkward girls with glasses and names like Ruby who just needed to accept their quirkiness before realizing that the cute lead guys loved them in spite of themselves. And now Rob Mars himself knew who I was. By name. He knew and said he loved my last film, which, as far as I could tell, had been seen by about twelve people. If nothing else came out of this meeting, at least I had that.
We chatted. He never broke eye contact. He might not even have blinked. Even stranger, he also didn’t say a word about the part in his new movie, which was ostensibly the reason we were there. Where was this going? I was flattered and a little confused. But fine, if he was one of those people who liked some long, semi-personal “get-to-know-you” conversation to see if I had a brain before getting to the point, I could play that game.
“Okay, this is off topic,” I said, “but I read this amazing book last week:
The Birthday Boys
. It’s a fictionalization of Captain Robert Scott’s failed expedition to the South Pole. He and three other men froze to death in a tent, waiting out a blizzard that they knew would never end.”
“Tell me more,” Rob said. A good sign. I had a morbid interest in survival stories (they could take place at either Pole, in the Andes, or in outer space so long as they involved intrepid people in inhumane
circumstances fighting for their lives), and as my go-to topic of conversation they tended to separate the wheat from the chaff. Approximately half the time, my audience took the first chance to excuse themselves to get another drink. But I had Rob’s full attention.
“One of the characters says it was so cold their teeth splintered. Do you think the author made up that detail—or do you think their teeth actually froze and cracked? I mean, they’re
teeth
.”
Rob seemed to ponder this.
Then he said, “Guys, could you . . . ?” and before he finished the sentence, the room emptied.
Now it was just the two of us. Rob sat calmly in his armchair, but I could feel his intensity radiating toward me.
“So, Elizabeth, I hear you had a poster of me on your wall?”
I cringed. He’d seen the profile in
Glam
, the one where I said he was my childhood crush. It wasn’t true—the poster I had in mind was the one on my best friend Aurora’s bedroom door—sometimes in an interview I panic under the pressure to come up with an answer. My real childhood crush was Alec Dumall, but since he’d just been busted for downloading child porn (hey, perhaps we’d both had crushes on each other!)—I’d had to think fast.
“Do you always read
Glam
, or do you mostly just tear out the pictures and tape them inside your locker?” I teased.
He laughed. “I like you, Elizabeth Pepper.” There was an awkward pause. Or, rather, I felt awkward. Rob sat there watching me squirm, a beatific smile on his face.
“Look,” he said, “I have to go. But I want to spend more time with you. Can I take you out?”
Take me out.
A date? Either a date or a mob hit. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Rob Mars was the most eligible bachelor in the world. Aurora was going to keel over and die. But I wasn’t making any assumptions.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Excellent!” he said, and pumped his fist in the air. Yup, a fist pump. But it was somehow okay on him, as if he’d invented it and everyone else who followed had turned it fratty and overused. “Hold on,” he continued. “Let me walk you to your car.” He picked up the landline and pushed a button. “I’m heading down to the lobby,” he said.
He walked me out into the office hallway. One of the suits who’d been in our meeting came up to us. “All clear,” he said, and vanished. Rob and I headed to the elevator bank, and it struck me that the cubicles, which had been bustling when I entered, were quiet now. The halls were empty. Even the front reception desk wasn’t monitored. This was ACE, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood. Incoming calls were always answered immediately. Yet, as we exited, multiple phone lines rang and rang.
The elevator was waiting when we got there. The lobby button was already lit. And when the doors opened and I saw that the lobby, like the offices above, was completely deserted, I finally understood what “all clear” meant. Rob walked me to the front door as if it were perfectly normal that an entire office building would shut down operations to let him pass. Because, as I would soon learn, it
was
perfectly normal to him.
“Shut up.” Aurora, who had just served herself some of our take-out sushi, sat up straight.
“Well, it’s not necessarily a date. He just said—”
“It is totally a date and, holy crap, we have to figure out what you’re going to wear. When is this date happening?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d call.”
“You have to be ready!” Aurora exclaimed. “I know how this goes down. He’s going to call the day of. A limo will whisk you to a restaurant, where you’ll be the only people because he’s reserved the whole place for
the two of you. You won’t have time to think. The only solution is to be fully made-up and wearing a black cocktail dress every waking moment of your life. Do you own the right dress for a date with Rob Mars? This is major.” Aurora sprang up. She flew to the closet, her unruly mane of blond hair bouncing. In a blur of wiry limbs, she started pulling out dresses.
“Trying too hard,” she said, rejecting a dark red silk. “Slutty . . . this could be good.” She held up a graphite sparkling mini-dress. “Hel-
lo
, Lizzie!”
“He calls me Elizabeth.”
Aurora tossed the dress aside. “Oh, forget this one, then.”
“Can you
please
stop this makeover montage?” I begged.
Aurora threw three dresses into my arms. “Try these ridiculous little handkerchiefs.”
“He might not call, you know.” I dropped the dresses on the bed.
Aurora paced impatiently. “Pepper, you are impossible.” She paused and closed her eyes. I waited. More was coming.
“You know that he’s gay.”
“Aurora . . .”
“I’m serious. I have it on good authority. My power yoga teacher is best friends with his lover.”
Aurora was visiting from Chicago, where her power yoga teacher, an L.A. transplant, was her best and only source for all celebrity rumors, including plenty about me that we both knew were lies. Mostly. Okay, exaggerations. The one with the tequila shots and the Segway on the 405 is true, but I was young and I’m not proud.
“Fine. He’s gay. He’s also twenty years older than I am. I’m just going out with him. If he ever actually calls. And even if he does, it might not be a date—certainly not if he’s gay—so who cares?”
“It is a date. I’m just saying be careful. You don’t want to be a beard
like his last wife.” Rob had been married to Lexy Hartfield for fifteen years. Lexy Hartfield! How could I compete with her? The long, dark hair, full lips, almond eyes, and curves that made me look like a schoolboy. If Lexy was Rob’s type, then I certainly wasn’t. She was drop-dead gorgeous, famous for never wearing makeup or styling her hair except on set. Without the fancy dresses and professional makeup, I’m a plain Jane. (See, for evidence, any paparazzi shot of me from the past year, along with the accompanying snarky, derogatory caption.) And, if anything, I’ve been encouraged to play up my plainness and sensibility. Because, as my publicist never fails to remind me, I am famous for my girl-next-door character, my girl-next-door upbringing, and my girl-next-door looks. Apparently I’m famous for how undeserving of fame I am. Furthermore, Lexy was a daredevil, said to have performed all her own stunts in the action movies that made her a star. She could have any man in the world. There was no way she was a beard. Yeah, now that I thought about Lexy, I realized there was no way Rob would go for me. Easy come, easy go.
I lit a cigarette and leaned out the window to exhale. My parents were visiting the next day, and my mother had a nose like a bloodhound.