My mother tried her best to deal with me. I’ll grant her that. It’s just that her best consisted of simply throwing money at the problem. She did all the things rich parents try with troubled girls. Boarding school and rehab and therapy sessions in which I gnawed at my cuticles instead of talking about my feelings.
Then a miracle happened.
I got better.
Well, I got bored, which led to betterment. By the time I hit nineteen, I’d been making a mess of things for so long that it grew tiresome. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try not being a trainwreck. I quit the drugs, the clubs, the “friends” I’d made along the way. I even went to NYU for a semester.
While there, Step Three—another miracle—occurred.
I got into acting.
It was never my intention to follow in my mother’s footsteps. After growing up around showbiz, I wanted nothing to do with it. But here’s the thing: It was the only world I knew. So when a college friend introduced me to her movie-director father, who then asked me if I wanted to play a small part in his next feature, I said, “Why not?”
The movie was good. It made a lot of money, and I made a name for myself. Not Casey Greene, which is my real name. I insisted on being billed as Casey Fletcher because, honestly, if you’ve got the kind of heritage I do, you’d be foolish not to flaunt it.
I got another part in another movie. Then more after that. Much to my mother’s delight and my surprise, I became my worst fear: a working actress.
But here’s another thing: I’m pretty good at it.
Certainly not legendary, like my mother, who truly is great at her craft. But I take direction well, have decent presence, and can put a fresh spin on the most tired of dialogue. Because I’m not classically beautiful enough for leading lady status, I often play the supportive best friend, the no-nonsense sister, the sympathetic coworker. I’m never going to become the star my mother is, which isn’t my goal. But I am a name. People know me. Directors like me. Casting agents put me in big parts in small movies and small parts in big movies and as the lead in a sitcom that lasted only thirteen episodes.
It’s not the size of the role I care about. It’s the character itself. I want complicated, interesting parts into which I can disappear.
When I’m acting, I want to become someone else entirely.
That’s why my main love is theater. Ironic, I know. I guess growing up in the wings really did rub off on me. The parts are better, that’s for damn sure. The last movie offer I got was playing the mother of an actor six years younger than me in a Transformers reboot. The character had fourteen lines. The last theater offer was the lead role in a Broadway thriller, with dialogue on every page.
I said no to the movie, yes to the play. I prefer the palpable spark between performer and audience that exists only in theater. I feel it every time I step onstage. We share the same space, breathe the same air, share the same emotional journey. And then it’s gone. The whole experience as transitory as smoke.
Kind of like my career, which is all but over, no matter what Marnie says.
Speaking of things that don’t last, welcome to Step Four: Marry a screenwriter who is also a name but not one big enough to eclipse yours.
In my case, Len. Known professionally as Leonard Bradley, who helped pen a few movies you’ve definitely seen and quite a lot that you haven’t. We met at a party first, then on the set of a movie on which he did some uncredited script polishing. Both times, I thought he was cute and funny and maybe secretly sexy under his gray hoodie and Knicks cap. I didn’t think of him as boyfriend material until our third meeting, when we found ourselves boarding the same flight back to New York.
“We need to stop meeting like this,” he said.
“You’re right,” I replied. “You know how this town talks.”
We finagled our way into adjacent seats and spent the entire flight deep in conversation. By the time the plane touched down, we’d made plans to meet for dinner. Standing in JFK’s baggage claim area, both of us flushed from flirtation and reluctant to part, I said, “My car is waiting outside. I should go.”
“Of course.” Len paused, suddenly shy. “Can I get a kiss first?”
I obliged, my head spinning like one of the luggage carousels piled high with Samsonite suitcases.
Six months later, we got married at city hall, with Marnie and my mother as witnesses. Len didn’t have any family of his own. At least none that he wanted to invite to his impromptu wedding. His mother was thirty years younger than his father, pregnant and eighteen when they wed and twenty-three when she abandoned them. His father took it out on Len. Not long into our relationship, Len told me how his father broke his arm when he was six. He spent the next twelve years in foster care. The last time Len spoke to his father, now long dead, was right before he left for UCLA on a full scholarship.