My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (34 page)

After waiting so many years for just the right film projects, great parts came tumbling in one after another. I was finally portraying real, flesh-and-blood women in serious, thought-provoking roles. The day after I won the Academy Award for
Coal Miner’s Daughter
, I flew off to Mexico to film
Missing
with the director Costa-Gavras. It was another script based on a true story, this one set in 1973 during the military coup in Chile. I played the wife of a young journalist, Charlie Horman, played by John Shea, who disappeared in the violence following the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Jack Lemmon played Charlie’s father, Ed, who flew to Chile to search for his son.

I have to admit that I knew next to nothing about the political turmoil going on in South and Central America during the 1970s. But preparing for this film was a quick education. I was shocked and disillusioned when I learned of our government’s complicity in so much brutality and suffering. What really got to me was a short film I watched about the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara. He had been swept up by the military in the aftermath of the coup and was held prisoner with thousands of other Allende supporters at the National Stadium in Santiago. For days, Jara was tortured by his captors. They smashed his fingers then taunted him to play his guitar; instead he sang a song he had written for Allende. He kept on singing until they shot him dead. That was the kind of cold savagery the Horman family was up against.

Costa-Gavras was a fascinating director, full of surprises. Once he had someone fire a gun off camera while Jack Lemmon was doing a scene, without telling him beforehand. Jack’s startled reaction was real, and exactly what Costa was hoping for. Then there was an even bigger surprise—for all of us: Someone on the street fired back at us with a real machine gun. We dove for cover, then scrambled to get out of there. Sometimes Mexico City felt like the Wild West.

We were lucky that gunman wasn’t around when we were filming a huge outdoor night scene. The camera was shooting down a very long street and there were lots of extras and soldiers, along with the principal actors. In the scene it is supposed to be getting near the evening curfew in Santiago, and everyone is rushing home to get off the streets. Many, including my character, are afraid of being caught out after dark and are scrambling to find refuge. People are running, guns are firing, helicopters are flying overhead, and a beautiful white horse runs loose through the streets. It’s a very dramatic moment in the film, and many things had to be coordinated for everything to work. Finally we heard “Roll camera!” I was waiting to hear “Action,” when suddenly Costa called, “Cut!”

The director ran across the street to an old man, who had been on his hands and knees scrubbing the sidewalk. Costa leaned down and helped him to his feet, took away the scrub brush and handed him a broom so he would be standing upright in a more dignified position. Then Costa walked back to the camera and we began again. The AD shouted, “Horse in place again, actors ready, roll camera.” I was bowled over by Costa’s compassion; there are very few directors who would delay a major action scene to preserve the self-respect of one extra.

Costa was born in Greece but had lived in France for many years and spoke beautiful French, Spanish, and English, but still there was a slight language barrier between us. After one particularly harrowing scene, he came up to me to ask if I was okay. “I need a hug,” I said. He looked at me quizzically, then turned and walked away. I thought,
Uh-oh, maybe I’ve offended him.
But the next day when I saw him, he threw his arms around me, and every few minutes throughout the day he would walk over and give me a big hug. Sometime later a friend, an American costumer named Pam Wise, also working on the film, told me that Costa had walked up to her and said, “Please, could you tell me … what is a hug?”

I needed a lot of hugs during that film. It was emotionally exhausting, trying to imagine what these characters were feeling. I worried myself sick. I was amazed at how Jack Lemmon could turn his acting on and off at will. Jack would be telling us all a joke and stop in the middle when the director yelled “Action!” Then he would deliver an incredible, emotional performance. And as soon as he heard “Cut!” he would finish the joke. I, on the other hand, would stew all day long if I had an emotional scene coming up. If the scene was at five o’clock in the afternoon, I would start winding myself up hours before, getting ready, and by the time the scene finally rolled around, often I would already be spent. Jack sat me down one day and offered some advice. “You know, you’re really good, kid, but you should trust yourself more,” he said. “The scene will either work or it won’t, and no amount of thrashing and nailing around will help. Go easy on yourself. You know what to do. So just do it.” He was an inspiration to me, and living proof that all great acting doesn’t have to involve suffering.

Nevertheless, I still relied on some of my time-worn tools to get myself into character. One time I was flummoxed by a scene that called for me to face down a table filled with American diplomats who weren’t doing enough to find my husband. I was supposed to be in control of the scene, but I felt like I didn’t have anything to draw from. I sat there for a while, feeling intimidated by all these men in dark suits.
Suits
, I thought, wracking my brain,
dark suits, dark suits.
Then it dawned on me.
Of course! Suits! These guys look like agents.
After that, I thought,
Okay! You’re working for me! This is what’s going to happen now!

I became friends with the Horman family while we filmed
Missing
, and I’ve kept in touch with Charlie’s widow, Joyce, the model for my character. She has never given up her quest to bring his killers to justice. Joyce credits our film with helping to keep his case in the spotlight. New evidence keeps turning up, including once-classified State Department documents indicating the possible complicity of the U.S. government in Charlie Horman’s death. A judge in Santiago ordered the arrest of a Chilean intelligence officer in connection with Charlie’s execution, and in 2011, a former U.S. naval officer was indicted for his alleged role in the killing. But nearly forty years after his death, the full story of what happened to Charlie Horman is still unknown.

Another reason the shoot was so difficult was that my mother had become seriously ill. In fact, she was undergoing treatments in Texas for a malignancy while I was accepting my Academy Award. As soon as we wrapped
Missing
, I flew back home to spend as much time with her as I could. I had no illusions anymore about finding miracle cures. I understood now that for all of us here on this earth, our days are numbered, and I didn’t want to waste a moment. I wanted to be as close to my mother as possible, for as long as possible. So I would crawl onto her bed and curl up next to her, like I had done as a child, when she read me to sleep for my afternoon naps.

Jack and I were traveling in early November 1981, when we got a call that we’d better come quickly. She had taken a turn for the worse.

When we arrived at her bedside, Mother had already begun the journey. I don’t know if she could always understand what we were saying, but she knew we were there. One of the last things she said was “Where’s Jack?”

“Oh, I’m right here, Gin,” Jack said, and Mother smiled.

Daddy told us about the morning he took her to the hospital, when it was clear that was where she needed to be. My father was saying, “C’mon, Gin. It’s time to go, sweetie.” But she kept walking around the house, looking at everything. This was the place she’d loved best. This was where so much had happened. All those chickens she’d fried and the scrapes she’d bandaged. Susan and Peggy and Imogene at the kitchen table drinking coffee, hearing the morning school bell and rushing us into the car and off to school. The laundry she’d hung out while the marching band played … and all those sugar sandwiches. I’ll bet that’s what was flooding through her mind that morning, all those sweet memories. She stood in the living room for a long time, Daddy said, just taking it all in. Then she took a breath and turned to go.

All her life, my mother had believed that our minds are the builders of the universe. She never put it in those exact words, but she believed that we are responsible for our every thought, word, and action, both good and bad, and all that it sets into motion. She encouraged us to be positive and loving, and to find the good in all things. And if we believed deeply enough, we would see all those we’d loved, who had gone before us, again. She’d say, “Oh, I’ll see Mama, and Robbie, and the babies I lost.” While she lay dying, she could see, although she wasn’t seeing what was in the room. Instead she’d look up and say, “Ahhh,” with a big smile, and then reach out as if to hug someone. I sat beside her, and I knew what she was seeing. It was a beautiful transitional state. She was starting her new life. I hope that’s the way it is for me. I’m going to believe deeply that I’ll see her and all my loved ones again, and maybe that will make it so.

I found out I was pregnant the week my mother died, but she never knew. She was already on her way, and I didn’t want to risk doing anything that would make it more difficult for her to leave this world. I just wanted her to be surrounded with love and to go peacefully.

My mother died when I was thirty-one and she was sixty-two. That is my age now, as I write this. When I think of her, I remember the words of wisdom she left for me, and her favorite verses of scripture, which she wrote down in a little notebook. “Fix your thoughts on what is good and true and right,” she wrote. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” And best of all: “And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Once I learned I was pregnant, I researched the subject as if I was preparing for a major film role. I read every book and article I could get my hands on. I wanted to change my diet to add more protein, so I started eating chicken and fish. I had been running every day for years; everything I read said I could continue whatever I had been doing, but not to start new sports. I assumed they were referring to show jumping and skydiving. I figured that jogging would be fine. My doctor, a handsome Beverly Hills obstetrician named Mark Surrey, had other ideas. He told me all the typical reasons I shouldn’t jog while pregnant. But after I showed him my research on the subject, he started jogging with me. I loved being pregnant—or maybe I just decided I was going to love it. I was lucky because I didn’t have morning sickness or any unhealthy cravings. I decided I was going to crave pineapple and watermelon, and so I did. For years after that, we’d go into any grocery store in the area, even in the winter, and the stock clerks would sidle up to me and whisper, “Ms. Spacek, we have watermelon in today!”

The
Coal Miner’s Daughter
soundtrack had done well, with me and Beverly D’Angelo, who played Patsy Cline, doing the singing. Now I was offered the chance to make my own album. I recorded
Hangin’ Up My Heart
in Nashville with the amazing Rodney Crowell as producer. Rodney was a Texas boy from the rough side of the tracks in Houston, who made it big in Nashville as a singer-songwriter and a member of Emmylou Harris’s band. He felt like family the instant we met. Rodney brought in his wife at the time, Roseanne Cash, and his friend Vince Gill to sing on a few tracks. It was like a fantasy from my younger years come true. We even got a hit single on the country charts with a cover of “Lonely But Only For You.” Three decades later, if you search for my music on a website like CD Baby, you’re apt come up with an obscure electronic band that calls itself Sissy Spacek—ironically I’m sure—best known for a catchy number titled “Remote Whale Control.” (Could this be the new measure of immortality?) But making my record with Rodney Crowell was a high point in my career. While we were recording, he laid his hands on my pregnant belly and blessed my growing baby, hoping the sound waves she was receiving would make her a musician.

“Okay, Rodney, we’ve marked this baby,” I said. And boy, was I right. Schuyler has grown up to be a fabulous singer-songwriter (if I may say so, myself!), and I can somehow picture her floating around, moving her tiny translucent fingers in time with Rodney’s guitar licks.

Jack and I had decided on our baby’s name long before she was born. There is a town called Schuyler—pronounced “Skyler”—in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with a rock quarry where local artists get their stone for sculpting. We always loved the way the name sounded, and thought it would be a good name for a boy or a girl. We didn’t know of any other Schuylers then, so we may have started a trend.

When I was eight months pregnant, in May of 1982, the producers of
Missing
asked me to appear at the Cannes Film Festival for the film’s debut. “I can’t go, I’m too far along,” I told them. But I agreed to check with my doctor. “You can go!” said Mark Surrey. “But only with your doctor. And that would be me!” We flew over on the Concorde, which had narrow seats and rattled like crazy when it broke the sound barrier, but we got there fast. As soon as we arrived in the South of France, we checked out all the hospitals near Cannes, just in case. Mark kept a close eye on me. When we arrived on the red carpet, I was with two gorgeous men, Jack Fisk and Mark Surrey, one on each arm. Mark was so handsome, he looked more like a movie star playing a doctor than an actual doctor. And since he was a bachelor, every night he would bring a different European model or actress to dinner, none of whom spoke any English. There was a lot of nodding and sign language going on.

We stayed at the famous Hotel du Cap, which was always surrounded by hundreds of paparazzi. One morning I came out with Mark to go for a jog. We started running, and all the photographers thought they could easily keep up with a pregnant woman. They sprinted around us and then ran backward, snapping pictures, but I was too fast for them and they tumbled like dominoes over a hedge. We hopped over them, laughing like crazy, and continued on our run.