Let's not forget that actresses are people too, people who happen to be really beautiful and really crazy.
This week, a sane, talented actress threw her hands up and moved back home to marry her high school sweetheart. I don't know who it was, but I know it happened. It happens all the time, and I consider it one of the great tragedies of this city. It's compounded by the fact that few people notice or care, particularly in the entertainment industry. Just once I'd like to see in Daily Variety a headline something like, "Jane Doe Nixes H'Wood for Beantown Bean-Counter."
Meanwhile, a crazy one moved here and has no intention of leaving. She'll spend years spreading insanity, bad cheer, and her legs. Then she'll reproduce.
You've probably heard plenty about actresses. They're bitches. They're pill-poppers. They're materialistic. They're superficial. They're masochistic. They're slutty. They're dumb as bread. And so on. All I can say to such charges is, you left out, "They're nuts."
But don't take my word for it.
***
"Thirty percent."
I had asked Russ what percentage of actresses, in his estimation, were not nuts. I was surprised he thought it was even that high.
"Then there are the ones that don't have time for you," he added.
Me: "So you combine the self-important ones with the seventy percent that are nuts and you're left with a really small percentage of actresses. Like what, ten or twenty percent?"
Russ: "Around there."
I mentioned to my friend Max that I was pondering a column about crazy actresses. He groaned. "I could go on all night."
Said my friend Juli, L.A. native and non-actress, "Don't forget self-centered. I don't think there's any good actress that's not self-centered." Her answer neglected to account for the excuse of the non-good actresses.
I asked my friend Amy if she thought actresses are nuts. She answered, "It's a well-known fact." Amy, incidentally, is an actress.
A divorced screenwriter acquaintance of mine told me that he considered dating an A-list actress (he didn't say who) until a friend said, "You realize that she's just as crazy as your ex-wife but with lots more money, right?"
The meanest woman I ever worked with in the entertainment industry was, I found out months later, an ex-actress. I don't consider that a coincidence. I'm at that age where friends of mine have gotten divorced. In all the cases, the wives are actresses. I don't consider that a coincidence, either.
You just don't hear that kind of talk about any other profession. Then again, actresses labor under stresses that other professions don't have. They come out here from some town where they were voted Most Talented by their graduating class, only to be surrounded by others who earned the same honors from their high schools. They're practically hit over the head with the message that thin is in, so the ones that aren't blessed with high metabolism are obligated to adopt a long-term practice of malnutrition as part of their career strategy. They show up to auditions and sit in rooms with other actresses competing for the same job, all of whom are just as thin and made-up as they are, then wonder why they don't feel a stronger sense of individuality. The ninety-five percent of them who can't make a living at acting are forced to not make a living waiting tables in the meantime. And since the industry places such a premium on youth—a standard to which it does not hold men nearly as stringently—they can practically hear their dreams sputtering like a Fiat every month they don't land a job. (In an industry where the money flow can stop as arbitrarily as it can begin, this dread also applies to the five percent who can make a living at it.) And we wonder why they're such stress fractures exhibiting all the attendant symptoms.
What intensifies the perception that all actresses in this town are nuts is the attrition factor. One thing that induces people to give up and move back to Missouri or Illinois or wherever they came from is that they have a loving family waiting for them after they've had enough of the entertainment industry. The actresses that are more inclined to stay are the ones that don't have a loving family waiting for them back home, which is, in part, what made them so unstable in the first place.
In general, actresses are considered so difficult that men actually have a rule about dating them: Don't. When you say "no-actress rule" in this town, everyone knows what you're talking about, so wide and deep runs the reputation of the actress. Rules for teachers, nurses, cops, doctors, librarians—if such rules even exist—aren't applied remotely as often. I don't even know anyone with a no-singer rule.
However, God, having a keen sense of humor, has also made actresses among the most beautiful women in the world. Take the following exchanges.
Me (to my now-married friend Matt): "Did you ever have a no-actress rule?"
Matt: "I probably did at one point, but broke that rule many times."
Me: "Why?"
Matt: "In retrospect, it was probably for hormonal reasons."
Me (to another friend): "Did you have a no-actress rule before you got married?"
Another friend: "Even after I got married, I didn't have one."
I'd like to add that the above observations are merely generalizations, and that actresses generally get along with everyone else just fine. Some of my best friends are actresses—and it's likely going to stay that way. For whatever reason, actresses have never been very interested in me. Furthermore, I'm not without integrity. I have a no-actress rule of my own, and I gave up trying to violate it when I found out Joan Allen doesn't live here.
With some actresses, the whole insanity thing is no joke. Consider the following tale. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel just helpless.
Years ago, this actress—a person I know casually—allegedly checked herself into a room on the top floor of a high-rise hotel with the full intention of jumping. Word is that such behavior was a not-uncommon practice of hers, signified by her phone calls for attention during this and similar episodes. Ultimately, she didn't jump. Instead, she did what so many actresses do, what seems to come naturally for them. She wrote her insanity into a one-woman stage show.
Which got her into a comedy festival.
Which got her an agent.
Who got her a network TV development deal.
L.A. Nuts is a weekly look at the cast of characters that make up this city.
