Читать книгу Babylon Confidential - Claudia Christian - Страница 14

BASTARDS AND BILLIONAIRES

I arrived in L.A. in 1982 ready to share my talent with the world. Start the drum roll, get that red carpet rolling, pol­ish those award statues until they gleam; Claudia’s in town.

But then Joan told me that she couldn’t get me paid work with the Screen Actors Guild until I turned eighteen. (I looked too old for the kids’ roles that suited my age.) In the short term, that meant no income for almost three months. In the longer term, I’d be out of contention for the coming year’s Oscars and Emmys. You think that way when you’re seventeen. Still, I was upbeat. This was a small hitch. I could wait it out.

The new apartment was another unwelcome surprise. My bedroom window was right next to the building’s cluster of garbage cans. In summer it stank like hell. To add to the ambiance, Michael was a chain-smoker extraordinaire, using the last ember on one cigarette to start up the next. He’d have a cigarette going in the shower, on the toilet, in bed, and sometimes there was so much smoke in the apartment that I considered camping out by the 405 freeway because there would have been less pollution.

I knew Michael was gay before I moved in with him, but I didn’t know he had a bondage fetish. Our couches were wrapped in thick black leather belts, and a creepy studded leather mask was the central feature of the coffee table. It was like the S&M Mona Lisa; its hollow eyes followed you wherever you sat.

My room was like a different dimension. You opened the door from the smoke-filled bondage universe and stepped through the portal into Teen Girl World. I couldn’t afford new things, so I’d decorated with various odds and ends brought from home: a frilly pink duvet with ’70s rainbow sheets, a boom box, an oversize Led Zeppelin poster with the hermit from the tarot deck on it, and a small shelf with my favorite books. The only things I had that were definitively adult were the clothes that my mom had bought me—classy, expensive items—and the beginnings of an edged-weapon collection that my dad had encouraged.

Michael was a young, handsome guy, so he developed a thriving social life in no time at all, but I didn’t know anyone in L.A. I’d sit in my room trying to ignore the smell of garbage and the sound of the guys in the next room slapping the crap out of each other in the throes of passion and wonder what on earth I’d gotten myself into. Then I started getting sick in the mornings. When I took a home pregnancy test, the strip turned blue.

The pregnancy came as a shock. I’d been on the pill. My mom always insisted that every time she’d been knocked up, three boys and one girl, she’d been using birth control. My mom is given to hyperbole, so I’d taken that with a pinch of salt. Now I knew better. I also knew I had to get an abortion. I was far too young to have a child, and at that time I felt as though Charles Manson would have been a better candidate for fatherhood than Tre. I went to a clinic in downtown L.A. and found myself sitting silently with a half-dozen miserable women, waiting for a bed. It was like a production line. They put me under for six minutes, scraped me out, and gave me a glass of orange juice when I woke up. A nurse took the empty glass from my hand and tapped her clipboard impatiently.

“You’re all done. We need the bed for the next girl.”

I walked out of there feeling miserable and alone, but I was determined to hold it all together. I went back to the apartment, sat down, and worked out my expenses. The abortion had eaten into my already meager savings; I couldn’t make next month’s rent. What if I lost my room? Where the hell do you go when you can’t afford to live in a smoke-filled bondage den? If they’d given me an Academy Award right then and there, I’d have hocked it for fifty bucks.

I needed to stave off homelessness long enough to keep my dream alive, so I went down to a Mexican restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard and told the manager that I was a twenty-one-year-old Canadian (to explain why I didn’t have any ID). I don’t know if he believed me, but I got a job as a cocktail waitress. I had to wear this black leotard with fishnet stockings, high heels, and a little black bow tie. At the end of the shift I collected my tips—a grand total of twelve dollars. I went back to the apartment, locked myself in my room, and burst into tears. Stop the fucking world, I want to get off.

I was down to two choices: endure that shitty job or run back home with my tail between my legs. I convinced myself that something was going to happen. It just had to, because those two options were no options at all.

The next day I got a call. Joan had booked me for a five-line-or-under job on Dallas, which was enough to get me my union card. The clouds parted, and within a week I went from failed cocktail waitress to working actress on one of the most popular TV series of all time. It totally blew my mind to see Victoria Principal and Linda Grey walking around in person. It was only a small part, but it meant the world to me. I was an actress—a proper, working, Hollywood actress—and that little taste was all I needed to whet my appetite for success and dispel all doubt.

The episode was called “Some Do . . . Some Don’t,” and I was performing with Christopher Atkins (of The Blue Lagoon fame) in a storyline in which he was having an affair with Linda Grey’s character. Larry Hagman was directing, and he showed up on set wearing lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat with a feather. He was a very nice, very funny guy. I learned later that he was drinking up to four bottles of champagne a day while working on Dallas. That didn’t surprise me. It was a crazy successful show, and everything was laid on for the cast and crew. They put on steak and lobster for lunch. Everyone had his or her own private trailer. It felt very sexy.

Before I knew it I had another job, this time on Falcon Crest. Jane Wyman was a hard-ass pro, so all my scenes with her were very short and to the point. She was an old-school actress who commanded respect. Cliff Robertson was also in that series, and he was a complete asshole. I was running lines with Cliff when one of the assistant directors asked me if I could see my mark. I turned away for a second and told the assistant director that yes, thank you, I could see the mark just fine. Next thing I knew Robertson grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against a wall.

“If you ever turn away from me when we’re running lines, I will fucking destroy you!”

I thought he was out of his mind. It was my first experience working with someone who was so volatile, and no one came to help me out or put a leash on Cliff.

Next I worked on T.J. Hooker with Heather Locklear and William Shatner. Shatner was hitting on anything with two legs. He invited me into his dressing room at lunch to run lines and started turning on the charm while finishing up a plate of Thai food. I wasn’t interested, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He moved in for a kiss, and a wave of garlic breath hit me in the face. He couldn’t have repelled a vampire any more effectively.

I began to wonder if this was how women were treated in the industry, if Robertson and Shatner were only the tip of a great, misogynistic iceberg.

I thank God to this day that I booked Dallas first, because that job bolstered my confidence just enough to allow me to shrug off those negative experiences. If I’d worked on those other shows first, faced with the idea of enduring a whole career of men like that, I might have considered donning the black leotard and heading back to the Mexican joint.

That year I went on to appear in The Calendar Girl Murders with Sharon Stone and Tom Skerrit and the action series Riptide. Joan got me so much work that by the end of 1983 my tax return showed $200,000 in income. I sent it home to my parents. I like to think of it as my “fuck you W2.”

I went on to book my first regular role on a series in Berrenger’s, playing Melody Hughes. Berrenger’s was exciting, because we were on a big stage, the Lorimar NBC set, and we had a lot of stars in the show, including Cesar Romero, Jack Scalia, and Yvette Mimieux. And for the first time in my career, I was cast in a role that was much older than my actual age (in this case thirty at eighteen). This would become a recurring event.

When I knew we’d been picked up for thirteen episodes I fled my room in the S&M den and moved into a beautiful, spacious apartment on Hayworth Avenue where the Golden Age gossip columnist Sheilah Graham had once lived with her lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The great novelist had been in poor health, in part due to alcoholism. After he suffered a heart attack, his doctor advised him to avoid exertion, so he moved in with Graham to avoid climbing the two flights of stairs at his Laurel Avenue apartment. Fitzgerald died in Graham’s apartment soon after.

Jeff Conaway, who I’d later star with in Babylon 5, played my lover on Berrenger’s, and Anita Morris, who was a big-name Broadway star, played my southern mother. She was a very sexy redhead with an incredible body, and in the show we were both having a relationship with Jeff’s character. For the first time in my life, if someone asked me what I did for work, I could honestly proclaim, “I’m an actress. I’m on NBC every Wednesday night at nine.” I started buying beautiful things to furnish my apartment. No more leather straps and masks! I was living alone, I had a career, I was making money. It was heaven. Now I felt that I’d arrived in Hollywood. I was living the life I’d always dreamed of.

I’d hang out at Spago and Nipper’s in Beverly Hills and Helena’s in Silver Lake. One night I went out to a club called Tramp at the Beverly Center and found myself at a table drinking with Rod Stewart and nightclub entrepreneur Victor Drai, who would come in and out of my life. I met his wife when I was coming out of the bathroom that night. I recognized her immediately as Kelly LeBrock, one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was on the cover of Vogue, had starred in The Woman in Red with Gene Wilder, and was about to start shooting Weird Science. She pushed me back into the bathroom stall as I was exiting, locked the door, pinned me up against the wall, and kissed me on the mouth. It was the first time I’d been kissed by a woman, and it was one of the sexiest moments of my life. We went back and sat with Victor and Rod and carried on as if nothing had happened. It was our little secret. My heart was pounding as Kelly smiled seductively at me across the table.

Kelly and I are still friends to this day. I made pot brownies for her brother when he was dying of lung cancer and went to his memorial service at her home. Kelly is a strong, beautiful woman and a survivor.

We’ve both had the misfortune to star in a movie with her ex-husband, Steven Seagal. I played the part of a federal agent in Half Past Dead and discovered firsthand why Kelly had filed for divorce.

It turned out that my teenage fears of an industry filled with misogynistic bastards were unfounded. I’ve worked with only a few assholes over the course of my career, and Steven Seagal was one of them. He was convinced I was a lesbian, because I wouldn’t sleep with him. Instead of reading his line, “Let’s get in the helicopter and kick some ass!” he’d say to me, “Do you like it up the ass?” His other inspired reinterpretations of the script involved wanting to know if I liked pussy, if I fucked my brother, and if I was into threesomes. The definitive action star, Seagal would sit in his trailer, chowing down on pizza and fried chicken. He refused to jog or do stunts or even be around a running fan for the helicopter scenes. His close-ups had to be tightly framed to crop out his double chin and the “hairline” of his obvious toupée.

It was 1984 and I was nearing my nineteenth birthday when Berrenger’s came to an end, and I had the idea that I would do some classical theater in between television jobs. I won the role of Lady Percy in Henry IV at the adorable little Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood, but the instant I went into rehearsals my agent called to tell me I’d been cast as the ingénue in a Bob Hope movie that also starred Don Ameche, Frank Gorshin, and Yvonne De Carlo. I was conflicted. I wanted to do the movie, but I’d already agreed to do the Shakespeare, and I didn’t want to break my word. To my relief, the director of the play, Louis Fantasia, told me, “Take the bloody film. The stage will always be here for you.”

The original title for the movie was A Nice, Quiet, Deadly Weekend in Palm Springs, even though it was entirely shot in Vancouver. Thank God, they changed the title to Masterpiece of Murder. It was Bob Hope’s last movie, and I guess he didn’t want a ridiculous title at the top of his list of screen credits.

I ended up becoming friends with the location manager, Christine, because we were about the same age, and I was the only actor on the set who was under forty. After the movie was finished we decided to use the money we’d made to go to Europe over the summer. People in L.A. were telling us, “You’ve got to call Roman when you get to Paris, you’ve got to call Roman.”

We could only afford to stay in a dumpy little hotel in Neuilly, a suburb just outside the most expensive part of Paris, but we did make the call. On our second day we sat for four hours with Roman Polanski at a fancy restaurant on the Champs-Élysées while he ate pricey shellfish and sipped fine champagne. He finished the bottle, announced that he had to go back to editing, and then hurried out the front door. When the restaurant manager presented us with the bill I told him what Polanski had told me, to put the meal on his tab.

“Mr. Polanski does not have an account here,” the manager replied.

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!

Roman Polanski stiffed us for the bill and wiped out our entire summer budget in one fell swoop.

When I got back from Paris, I booked the TV series Blacke’s Magic, with Hal Linden and Henry Morgan. Still nineteen, I was cast as a character in her late twenties with two stepchildren. Around the same time I started dating John Davis. John’s dad, Marvin Davis, had owned 20th Century Fox before he sold the studio to Rupert Murdoch.

One time I was at a lunch at the Davis mansion. It was the day after Barbara Davis’s annual Carousel Ball. John sat on my left, Henry Kissinger on my right. Opposite Kissinger was Gerald Ford. Kissinger was a funny guy. We were joking around in German, and he was very gracious, considering my German wasn’t really up to scratch. After the meal, Barbara gave the signal for all of the women to adjourn to the other room so that the men could talk about important things that apparently could only be comprehended if you owned a penis. Barbara stood in the doorway and looked my way expectantly. I turned to John and whispered, “Forget it, I’m not leaving.” I mean, when was I ever going to be in a room with Kissinger and Gerald Ford again? It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I wanted to stay and listen, and I’m glad I did. They discussed the Greek-Turkish crisis—Greece had reported that one of their warships had been fired on by five Turkish destroyers in the Aegean Sea. Greece had responded by placing its armed forces on alert. Although at nineteen I didn’t have my finger on the pulse of global politics, I did appreciate that these were people who had real power and that the conversation that was taking place in my boyfriend’s dining room could very well have a direct effect on the world events they discussed. It was exhilarating.

Not long after that I suggested to John that we go to Paris for a romantic weekend.

“I don’t wanna go to France. I don’t like the food.”

“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.” I couldn’t believe him.

“It all tastes like stew. How many types of cheese do you need, anyway?”

When I’d go to John’s parents’ house in Palm Springs, I’d sit down to dinner and the servants would lift the lids of giant silver chafing dishes to reveal miniature hamburgers and French fries; that was their idea of fine cuisine. I was beginning to feel a little culturally starved.

One night we went to Playboy model and former Hugh Hefner girlfriend Barbi Benton’s birthday party at Spago. Sitting across from me was a sweet Egyptian billionaire named Dodi Fayed. He was twenty-nine, ten years older than I, though we were both relatively new to Hollywood. He’d just finished working as a producer on Chariots of Fire, which had won four Oscars including best picture, as well as winning awards at Cannes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Dodi was suave, spoke several languages, and loved travel and fine dining. Before the night was over I gave him my number. He called the next day—from Monte Carlo.

“It’s for tax reasons. I can’t spend more than thirty days in any country.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I enjoyed meeting you at the party. Give me a call next time you’re in L.A.”

“Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to join me aboard Nabila. I’m going to sail her to the South of France. I’ve already booked your plane ticket.”

How do you say no to a private cruise on the world’s largest luxury yacht? The whole thing sounded so exciting—a life of international jet-setting. This was just the kind of guy I wanted to be with.

Dodi insisted that I bring some girlfriends, so I’d feel safe, and I invited Tracy Smith, who’d starred in Bachelor Pad and Hot Dog, and arranged to meet a second friend, Lana Clarkson, in the South of France. Lana later starred in Roger Corman’s Barbarian Queen films and was shot dead by record producer Phil Spector in 2003.

Monte Carlo was exciting, an absolute blast. Then we went to Saint-Tropez where Lana and I were to shoot a promo for a movie called Starlets with John Hurt and Tony Curtis. Tony was a friend of Dodi’s, and he joined us aboard the yacht with Highlander star Christopher Lambert. Nabila had been built for Dodi’s uncle, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who was at the time one of the world’s richest men, at a cost of $100 million. It was named for his daughter. The ship was 281 feet long, as tall as a three-story building, and carried crew and staff of fifty-two, including armed security. It had a helipad, a Jacuzzi, three elevators, a movie theater, two saunas, a pool, a disco, a billiard room, and eleven suites with hand-carved onyx fixtures and gold-plated doorknobs. The suite I shared with Dodi had a solid gold sink. When you spat out your toothpaste, you knew you were doing it in style.

I met the girl the yacht was named for at a birthday party that Dodi threw for me in conjunction with an Elle magazine event. They gave away a white Rolls Royce, and I got to wine and dine with movie stars. There were even fireworks. Definitely my best birthday ever.

You can see Nabila the yacht any time you want. She starred as Maximilian Largo’s mobile headquarters in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again, along with Sean Connery. She was well cast. The sun deck was surrounded by bulletproof glass. She contained secret passageways, push-button doors and windows, two luxury speedboats in case a fast getaway were required, and even a three-room hospital. I suppose arms dealers and Bond villains have a lot in common.

I came to love Dodi, but I never felt the kind of attraction that makes you want to stop traffic and do it in the street. As a lover he was courteous, polite, and even a little shy. That uncertainty and hesitation surprised me when I was nineteen, but in the years to come I’d find that quality in a lot of rich men with powerful fathers. The super-rich, luxurious lifestyle Dodi lived took the edge off, too. In certain ways his was an exceptionally passive lifestyle. Everything was done for him. There were men to drive his cars, fly his plane, cook his meals, and fold his clothes. It might have been enviable for most people, but I found it oddly unappealing.

Aboard Nabila I was exposed to the European way of drinking. We’d have long lunches with exquisite wine and food and then go on to restaurants and parties until dawn. The champagne was always flowing, and Dodi paid for everything: the flights, boat trips, clothes, meals. I realized that this was par for the course for Dodi. He would romance beautiful women, shower them with gifts, and fly them around the world. It was dazzling and exciting, but something made me pull back. I insisted that I buy my own clothes and ticket home. No matter how spectacular Dodi’s lifestyle was, I wasn’t ready to swap my newly won independence for it. I wanted to have my own career, my own money, and my own home. Before she had her own career my mother was always looking to the man who controlled the checkbook, and she never wanted me to be a housewife. She wanted me to be powerful, so that no man could control me, and that’s now ingrained in my character. I saw other women around Dodi desperately clinging to his wealth and decided that they were the antithesis of the person I wanted to be.

Around the time that I discovered my need for independence, things started going wrong with Starlets. Tony Curtis was fighting a cocaine habit, and John Hurt was battling alcoholism. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone struggle with alcohol abuse. He was a far cry from the composed, charismatic actor I’d admired on screen. He looked haggard and run down, like a knight on the wrong side of a dragon fight.

Starlets was supposed to be a French farce taking place during the Cannes Film Festival. They got a bunch of beautiful girls from all over the world and put us up in a gorgeous mansion, and they’d drive us down to the festival to shoot scenes. The problem was that there was no script and they had no permits to shoot at Cannes, so when they ran out of money we had to go in and steal shots.

They told me to put on a beautiful, red-carpet-worthy gown and sent me onto the central stage where Clint Eastwood was receiving an award. I sneaked up behind Clint and pretended that I was there with him while one of the crew hid in the audience and filmed with a camera hidden between someone’s legs. That was the final straw for me. I was having fun on the Riviera, and there are few things cooler than hanging out on the yacht of a James Bond supervillain, but I had to get back to L.A. and get some real work. I had a career to build and I couldn’t afford to lose momentum.

Dodi didn’t quite know what to make of my wish to leave or my insistence on buying my own fare back to America. He was a jealous man, very insecure, but something in him touched me. Dodi had a childlike quality and I was very maternal in those days. I attracted men who wanted to be looked after. We talked intimately after we made love, and we decided that we would stay in touch and stay friends, but for now I needed to be my own person.

It was the last time I’d sail aboard Nabila. By the time I saw Dodi again she had been sold to Donald Trump and renamed the Trump Princess.

I’ll always be grateful to Dodi. He got me out of L.A. and took me around the world, which was just what I needed at that time. He gave me confidence in my ability to speak foreign languages, saying, “Your French is beautiful,” or “Come on, speak Italian, you can do it.” He never put me down, and he always told me I was smart and beautiful. He treated me as a princess and, because I refused to take anything from him, he also treated me as an equal. I didn’t know it then, but we would remain friends and occasional lovers until his death, more than fourteen years later, beside Princess Diana in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.