As I turned onto my street, I couldn’t help but wonder: What had come over me? As an actor, part of the process of preparing for a role is understanding what makes a character tick. We don’t just read plays and watch movies, we also study psychology. In Psych 101, we learned that irrational behavior is usually driven by fear. My career was uncertain. My finances were dire. I’d lost my father. Jordan had a great job and could take care of me. Was I afraid I would never be able to make it on my own? Was I hearing the terrifying tick of my biological clock? Was I drawn to Jordan after that scary episode （losing my dog, getting shot at!） because he made me feel safe? Because now that I had confidence in my future, the thought of marrying him felt absurd.
Jordan wasn’t home when I got there. I thought about texting him, but good news and apologies were best given in person, so I decided to wait. It was Sunday afternoon. Any other Sunday I would have probably felt sorry for myself that everybody either had something to do, or someone to do nothing with, but I was in the club now （“Consider it done!”）; it was only a matter of time before my phone was ringing off the hook. As I sat down on my bed, Brando hopped up beside me and stuck his snout in my armpit, trying to force a snuggle. “Things are looking up,” I said as I smoothed back his ears. His little tail thumped on the bed, and my heart swelled with gratitude for his unconditional love. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in success and in failure, my dog had always been there for me. So I decided to reward him. “You want to go for a run?” I asked. And his tail thumped harder.
Rather than jog on busy sidewalks, I decided to take Brando up the hill to run on the fire road at the top of Mulholland Drive. It was closed to cars, and on a breezy Sunday like this, hikers and bikers from all over the city would be up there to get their workout on. On a clear day, you could see the whole world from the top of that hill, and—given that my whole world was about to change—I was eager to take it all in.
I drove up the steep paved road until it turned to dirt, then parked between two brand-new BMW SUVs. There were regular reminders of how so many people were doing better than me in my upwardly mobile Valley neighborhood, and it had been a constant battle to not let them get me down. I didn’t dare fantasize what kind of car I would get once my career took off, but it was the first time in a long time seeing my aging MINI Cooper parked between two luxury cars didn’t bum me out.
I put Brando on the leash, then launched into a slow jog. Once I got off the main road and into the trails, I would let him off—there were no driveways for him to wander down or bird feeders to pillage way up here. As I jogged, I turned my fortuitous encounter with Louisa over in my mind. I had thought my angels had betrayed me when they lured Brando down that creepy driveway. But of course they had an agenda. She was a casting director—a casting director!—who knew of a role that needed to be filled. There’s no way that’s a coincidence!
I always thought I would break through because I worked harder than everyone else. When you get called for an audition, they never give you a whole script, just the scene they want you to read. Sometimes it isn’t even the whole scene, just a scene fragment. They call these partial scripts “sides.” The term dates back to Shakespeare, when scripts were all handwritten and actors only got their “side” of a scene （because it was too much work to write out everybody’s part）。 But I always wanted more than just my “side.” I wanted to know the context, so I could build the moment, shape the character. So whenever I got an audition, I would call my friend who worked in the mail room at CAA, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies, and ask him to get me a copy of the full script . . . and any other scripts that were casting and might have a part for me, so I would be ready for any audition that might come my way. In the beginning I read a dozen scripts per week. But then my savings ran out, and I had to get a “real” job. And it got harder and harder to keep my edge.
I don’t know if I was stubborn or stupid, but I kept going. I cut out inspirational quotes and taped them above my bed—“I have not failed, I’ve just found ten thousand ways that don’t work.” （Thomas Edison）; “You can win a lot in life just by being the last one to give up.” （James Clear）; “Failure is success in progress.” （Albert Einstein）。 No matter how many setbacks I suffered, the dream wouldn’t die. Maybe I was lucky to meet Louisa seven years into my quest to become an actor. Or maybe, after picking myself up after countless falls, I’d finally earned it.