Baby Steps (10 page)

Hmm, that sounded familiar. And what I found, when I played Dorothy working out her issues, was that it was like I was actually working out my own issues right there on camera. Dorothy's truth was like my truth.

I had never imagined myself on a soap opera. I had bigger aspirations, but to get a job like this so quickly after college felt like a major victory. At first, working on a soap opera was nerve-wracking. It's not like a movie, where you do every scene five thousand times at every single angle—from the air, from the side, from underneath, from the right, and from the left. We were lucky if we got to rehearse a scene twice before the cameras were rolling, and then we were filming, one shot, all the way to the end of the scene. It was similar to theater, where you have to keep going even if you make a mistake. It reminds me of that Martha Graham quote: “Artists take leap after leap in the dark.” That's what it felt like. Whenever I reached the end of a scene, I would have this feeling of elation: “I did it! I didn't crash and burn! Maybe I could do better next time, but at least I didn't screw it up!”

We would do an entire episode every day, sometimes more. It all moved very quickly and we had to learn a lot of material, so it was great training. It also felt structured. I liked that. There were unwritten laws governing the running of a soap opera. We did the same thing every day, and I loved that I could be the free-spirited artist but also work within the structure of the show. There was no time for endless rehearsal or waiting for “inspiration.” On a production schedule like that, everybody has to get the job done. I worked hard, I learned fast, and I got paid. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

But six months later, the story line wasn't popular enough in the ratings. Claire got sacked and so did everyone associated with the
new story line. It was my first big professional failure, and I was stunned. Fired? How could I be fired? I had a three-year contract!

But it was over. I remember walking down the hallway, weeping openly. How could they do this to me? How could they cut Dorothy loose? Was my dream of being an actor dead already, after such a promising beginning?

One of the divas on the show saw me and pulled me into her dressing room.

“I don't know why you're crying,” she said sternly. “Everyone who gets fired from this place becomes a huge star. Judith Light was fired from here. Tommy Lee Jones was fired from here. You should consider yourself fortunate.”

I didn't know if what she said was true or not, but misery loves company, and it did make me feel better. Judith Light? Tommy Lee Jones? I swallowed. Maybe she was right. I wallowed in self-pity for about five minutes. Then I shook it off and decided that I would become as famous as Tommy Lee Jones.

After that little setback, I decided to treat acting like a business. I didn't like the randomness of my dismissal, so I decided to impose a structure on my pursuit of acting. I would follow certain rules. I would audition religiously. I would learn everything I could about the industry. And every Saturday night, I would write letters to producers, directors, actors, everyone who really inspired me to be an actor. Based on those letters, I got meetings with Kevin Costner, Paula Wagner, who produced
Mission Impossible
with Tom Cruise, and Jim Sheridan, who directed
My Left Foot.
I felt like I was making progress. Even my mother began to recant her doubts.

“You're really taking this acting seriously,” she said. “I'm impressed with how organized you are. And ambitious. You might really get somewhere with this.”

My stepmother Jessica, who is a brilliant businesswoman, was a great cheerleader for me, too, and totally saw my vision.

I decided to spend more time in Los Angeles, because that's where it was all happening. As much as I loved New York, I realized this was a necessary transition, so I relocated, and nobody could dampen my confidence. As soon as I arrived in LA, I made an appointment with an entertainment lawyer, marched into his office with a portfolio filled with all the clips of interviews I'd done while on
One Life to Live,
and dropped them on his desk. I said, “Here's my scrapbook of interviews. I'm going to be a big star, so get ready.”

He just looked at me, probably wondering who the hell I thought I was. “Sure, kid,” he said. Five days later, I auditioned for a pilot for
The Invisible Man,
starring Kyle MacLachlan, produced by Dick Wolf, and I got the part! I called my entertainment lawyer, and with more than a little attitude, I told him, “Negotiate my pilot. Told ya so.”

I was ecstatic. Five days in LA, and already, a TV pilot? We filmed the pilot and I felt so important being involved in the project. Then Dick Wolf called me.

“Well, kiddo, it's just not going to work out.” He was telling me the pilot didn't get picked up and wouldn't be produced as a TV show. I was devastated. “Unfortunately, it was an expensive project, but it just wasn't all there,” he said.

My next thought was about Dick Wolf.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I'm nobody, but everybody knows you. Is this a big deal for your career? Are you going to be okay?”

I'll never forget what he said to me.

“Next.”

“What?” I said.

“Next. That's my philosophy about failures. ‘Next.'”

I got it. I don't think I've ever internalized a loss or a failure for very long, no matter how big or small, because of that conversation. I hear his voice in my head saying,
Next.
He made the loss of that pilot seem so unimportant, when he was the one who had risked so much. I've always admired him for being able to have that kind of perspective.

Back then, it was harder for me. I saw this as a step backward, and I began to reconsider my choices, and my move to LA. I even toyed with the idea of quitting acting altogether, but until I knew for sure, I decided to keep auditioning. Then I got a screen test for Barry Levinson, and an audition for Michael Apted, who was casting for the James Bond film
The World Is Not Enough.
Better yet, I was flown to London for a screen test.

In London, I met casting directors Roz and John Hubbard. They told me that if I didn't get the Bond film, they wanted to cast me in a BBC miniseries they were doing. Despite my high hopes, I didn't get the film. They cast Denise Richards instead. But I did get the BBC miniseries. It was called
Eureka Street.
And off I went to Ireland for five months.

On
Eureka Street,
I played a young woman named Max who grew up in Ireland, and whose father was the American ambassador who had just been killed. Like my character on
One Life to Live,
this character had a lot of father issues. She was a rich American girl who was suddenly on her own. I could totally relate to this part. My father was very much alive, but I still felt the sting of his absence. Playing Max helped me to understand even more about how abandoned I felt. Max and I had similar trust issues and intimacy issues, and at the end of the show, when she marries the person she loves and finally opens her heart and feels love again, I felt hope that maybe this would happen for me, too. I found myself in Max, and I hoped I could find some of Max in me.

As I was navigating the early years of my career, I was also always looking for love, hoping with every new role and every new move that I might meet someone right for me. Yet somehow, the relationships never worked out. During
Eureka Street,
I dated an actor on the show named Vincent, but after the filming was over, I went back to the States to audition for a new spin-off of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
called
Angel,
and we quickly realized a long-distance relationship wasn't going to work. I wasn't going to go back to Ireland, and he wasn't going to come to LA. As much as I wanted love, in reality, I was still too career driven to make any sacrifices for it. Vincent and I parted ways. Sometimes I dreamed about the perfect man, the perfect family, becoming a mother, but it all seemed theoretical and far away. It wouldn't be Vincent.

My audition for
Angel
in front of Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt was a good one (I even threw a chair!). I think they liked that I was a little bit off-kilter. I liked how dark the character was, but when they offered me the part, I had second thoughts. I'd just done a BBC miniseries and I'd been screen testing for movies—did I really want to do a
Buffy
spinoff? Was that the direction for me? I remember getting on the phone with Joss Whedon and talking about the importance of exploring the themes of good and evil and the power they have in our lives. I wanted to do serious work, not a vampire show, but the more we talked, the more Joss convinced me that although the show seemed campy, there were serious undertones and messages in every episode. I said yes to
Angel
and to playing the part of Detective Kate Lockley.

Kate also had intimacy issues. Her father was the chief of police and he treated her like one of the boys. She longed for a more meaningful relationship with him. I began to wonder why I kept getting roles with daddy issues! Was I wearing some psychic sign that revealed how much I knew about this subject? There must have been a
reason why I was finding myself over and over again in every character I played.

Kate and her father had some scenes that helped me understand how I blamed my father for not giving me love in exactly the way I wanted. I realized that a child's view of the parent isn't necessarily based in reality. It is heightened and sensitive and vulnerable, and things are bigger to a child than they are to an adult. I began to see all that through Kate. As Kate, I had to listen to my father's feelings and deal with them, and it was like hearing my own father talking to me. It changed me. I began to wonder if I could forgive him. Maybe he could forgive me, too. I'm sure having me for a daughter wasn't easy.

I was on
Angel
for two seasons, and I loved being on the show, but ever since filming the pilot for
The Invisible Man,
I had stayed in touch with Dick Wolf in hopes of getting involved with one of his projects. I think he's brilliant and I wanted to audition for everything he ever did. When I found out there was an available part on
Law & Order,
I jumped at it. This was one of the most successful television series of all time. And my father was a lawyer! I was
made
for that show! I showed up for the audition full of confidence.

I didn't count on Angie Harmon. I'll never forget seeing her in the parking lot for the first time. She wore a white silk blouse and she had a much fuller, more grown-up figure than I did. Her long black hair glistened. I remember noticing her breasts, then looking down at mine unhappily. There was no comparison. She was a goddess. I had big hips and no boobs and I definitely didn't have cheekbones like hers, but I sucked it up and went inside and gave it all I could. Never mind that I still looked like a round-cheeked little cherub compared to Angie. When she got the part instead of me, I was devastated. I couldn't understand it. Didn't they realize my father was an attorney? What did they care about chiseled cheekbones! I actually know about the law! And wasn't she
too
beautiful for that part? She's
the kind of woman who could cause a car crash just walking down the street. I was cute, but not hot. Isn't that more appropriate for a lawyer?

No matter how many reasons I concocted for why they should have hired me for the role, the fact remained that I was out and Angie was in. I was disappointed, but I persevered. A few months later, I got a role on
Bull,
a new series about stockbrokers and their lives. I played Alison Jeffers, opposite Stanley Tucci, with a wonderful cast of actors and a staff of excellent writers.

This was one of the most exciting times in my career because I was double dipping—running from the set of
Angel
to the set of
Bull
and back again. Unfortunately,
Bull
didn't last. This was before the stock market crash and Enron and Martha Stewart and all of that. If it had come a little later, I think it would have lasted longer. It was cancelled in the middle of the first season, which crushed all of us in the cast because we knew what a great show it was.

Every time something in my career fell apart, I considered quitting acting. Every time, I told myself that I never really wanted to be an actor anyway, so this was my chance to go do something else. I almost changed career course after
Bull
was cancelled. Then Angie Harmon decided to quit
Law & Order.
I found out about this from a publicist friend of mine named Karen Tencer. She told me to call Dick Wolf and ask for an audition. My ego was still bruised and I didn't want to call him, but she talked me into it. When he said no, that I wasn't right for the part, I told Karen what he said, and she told me to argue with him, to keep calling, to insist on an audition. “Your agents are never going to fight for you as much as you will fight for yourself,” she said. I called him back. Finally, he agreed to let me audition.

This time, I wasn't sure at all that I would get the part, and as I auditioned, I felt like they weren't leaning toward me for the role at all. Still, I gave it everything I had.

I was driving along the Pacific Coast Highway the day I got the call from Dick Wolf.

“You got it, Lis.”

“What?”

I got it. I got it? All I could hear was the crashing of the Pacific Ocean in my right ear, and the good news echoing in my left ear. I'd done it! I'd gotten a part on
Law & Order,
one of the most well-known and widely watched television dramas of all time, and the legendary Dick Wolf was calling me personally to tell me that I was going to play Assistant DA Serena Southerlyn.