Baby Steps (12 page)

I was in a relationship with Dan Abrams at the time. Our relationship was sensible. Dan and I were both born in Westchester. We both had fathers who were attorneys. We were cut from the same cloth. We were great friends and we loved each other, but my relationship with Dan was like my relationship with
Law & Order.
Structured, impressive, existing within boundaries we'd set for ourselves, but lacking that sense of precariousness I suddenly realized I missed. It was safe, and I was looking for danger. And I think he was, too. When we hit a rocky patch and one of his big trials had just ended, I decided to leave
Law & Order,
and Dan and I called it quits in the most sensible and friendly way. We were both looking for a new horizon.

When I told Sam I was leaving after the first half of the season, he was shocked. I explained that I had a longing to express myself outside the procedural format of the show. I understood now that
this
was the golden cage. We had fame and money and a regular job, but in many ways, we weren't free to express ourselves as artists. At least, that's how I felt. I wanted to play more character-driven roles, as opposed to the plot-driven format of
Law & Order.
After years, it was time to move on.

Sam understood. He said to me, “You know what, Lis? I came to this show as an older man who had already done movies and traveled and really lived my life. You're just beginning. This is why so many of the young women leave this show. They have bigger dreams. Get out there and do what you want to do. Explore, travel, do movies, have a family. This is your time.”

This was exactly my plan, and to have Sam confirm its wisdom made me feel more sure of myself. Together, we decided I would make my last thirteen episodes the best episodes I'd ever done, and they were. It was my best work on the show. But it was time to go. Jerry Orbach had recently retired and the face of
Law & Order
was changing. I was ready for a new beginning.

Sam Waterston always used to say, “Elisabeth wants to be everything. I just want to be an actor.” When I look back on that time, I see that I was never satisfied. I always wanted to be something or somewhere else. I was filled with the restlessness of youth, and the folly that the grass is always greener somewhere else. I remember asking Sam if he would write me a letter of recommendation to go to graduate school in psychology, or to help me get into a writing program. I'd say I wanted to quit acting to get married and have a family, or that I wanted to quit
Law & Order
to finally do arty intellectual films, like the Woody Allen films Sam had done, of the Merchant Ivory films I'd always dreamed of doing. My head was always somewhere other than where my body was, and I could never stay still. I loved being part of a TV family, but I was impetuous and unfocused in my ambitions.

When I came out of the golden cage, I realized that like Sam, I did “just want to be an actor.” And that was progress. Today, there are a million reasons to love acting, but maybe the biggest one of all is that it opened my heart in a way nothing else ever had, until I became a mother.

On my last day, I was nervous. Good-byes have never been easy for me. I was dreading what the cast might do, I was scared about the future, and I just wanted to get on with it. I couldn't stand the idea of dragging it out, or worse, leaving with a bad taste in my mouth, the way I always did when my mother and I would argue just before I went off to summer camp. That was always so disappointing.

When I walked into the courtroom to film the last scene, I was filled with conflicting emotions. Would they be glad to see me go? Would they miss me at all? Would they be relieved? No woman up to that point had ever stayed on
Law & Order
for as long as I had. Were they sick of me? But as soon as I was inside the room, I did a double take. Every single cast and crew member was wearing a long blond wig and holding a Diet-Coke. I almost turned around and walked back out. That lump I'd had in my throat on my first week was back, and it was all I could do not to burst into tears. I loved every one of the people in that room, and when I saw that room full of blond wigs, I realized that they loved me, too. Sam and Fred and Diane and all of the other wonderful actors on that show and every crewmember, too.

I remember thinking,
I'm never going to walk into this room again. I'm never going to have my vegan cupcake again. I'm never going to annoy Sam with my neediness again, and he's never going to have to pretend he doesn't like it. I've got to pack up my Ralph Lauren dressing room and go home. But at least I know they love me.

My life was about to change dramatically. Would I end up aimless and wandering, or would I find something even better and more meaningful in my life? I didn't know. I was terrified and excited and overwhelmed, but I kept it together, even when they rolled out a cake, even when they brought out a drawing of Sam, Fred, Dick Wolf, and me. I held it together until Sam gave a toast.

He held up his glass of champagne, the room grew quiet, and this is what he said:

    
I've never met anybody as determined about happy endings as Elisabeth Röhm. When Elisabeth arrived, it was getting to be a pretty workaday world around here. A lot of people had come and gone already, and I for one, after so many years of shows and movies and getting close and saying good-bye, had developed a pretty thick skin. This show is tough, tough hours, I'm proud that it's tough minded about tough things, and show business is tough. It's so full of rejection and leaving. But Lis would not have it . . . She insisted on energy and laughter as often as possible. Like one person with a blow torch going to work on an iceberg, it didn't look like she had a chance, but she did it. She insisted that there be ‘up' in every day. She wasn't one for dogged perseverance, except about melting things. She brought kindness with her . . . she added fun and friendship to all of our work, and it worked, at least on me. . . . I raise my glass to thank her for her fresh spirit, her optimism, for her wanting the best, and not the least for the extraordinary grace in her leaving . . . She's made this a happy ending, too.

That's when I lost it.

That speech stuck with me for a long time because I didn't always see myself that way. I didn't know where I was going and I was scared. But to Sam Waterston, I was an optimist—perhaps a hopeless romantic, but a dogged dissolver of darkness and an eternal believer in the happy ending. I loved him dearly for thinking of me like this. I decided I would think of myself like that: a woman on an eternal quest for a happy ending.

I realized on that last day that I had gotten exactly what I came for. I learned how to love others by working in an ensemble cast. I learned the power of teamwork. I learned that a family isn't just about blood. Family is bigger. It was my first inkling that I could define family as something larger, and that there are many versions of love. That lesson would serve me well very soon, when I would learn that my body
was already failing me by launching me into early menopause and wrecking my fertility. All I knew was that I was ready for whatever was going to happen next. Living under the law had finally helped me get back to that place where I was ready for freedom.

It was time to face the disorder that would characterize the next chapter of my life.

Whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking.
I consider chaos a gift.

—Septima Poinsette Clark

 

I
'd never seen such an opulent waiting room. Tasteful lighting, gilded
marble countertops, all gold and cream. I didn't like it here. This doctor's office, on Rodeo Drive, was obviously for high rollers. It oozed money. All the major stars came here, or so I'd heard, but we weren't there to be impressed, and we certainly weren't there to see and be seen. We were there to investigate why, after almost two years without birth control, we weren't pregnant.

I looked at Ron. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt, but we were going to do this, no matter what. I'd given a blood sample a week before, and now it was time to hear the verdict. I took his hand and squeezed. Ron had come with me to both appointments, and I realized that of all the men I'd loved, Ron was the one who would always show up. He could have said he had to work at his store today, but he came with me instead.

As we sat there in the doctor's office, Ron and I barely spoke, each consumed by our thoughts. I'm not sure what he was thinking, but I know what I was thinking. I was thinking about the last two years, and how much my life had changed since I had decided to leave
Law & Order.
Things had become surprisingly difficult on a career level: Hollywood had typecast me as the “lawyer girl.” People had grown accustomed to seeing me as Serena Southerlyn, and it had become much more difficult than I ever imagined, trying to break out of that expectation. I had a hard time finding the kind of work I really wanted. And now this? Now, my plans to start a family might be derailed, too?

The longer I live, the more I recognize that life is governed by the law that there is no such thing as order. When you want freedom, you get law. When you want order, you get chaos. When you stop thinking and open your heart, God will take you by the hand and lead you
exactly where you need to go, even if it isn't toward anything you'd planned. At that moment in that waiting room, this is what I hoped. I sent up a silent prayer:
God, make me a mother. Somehow. Someway. I'm ready.
It was a million miles from where I'd been two years ago, the day I walked off the
Law & Order
set for good, ready to embrace my freedom and conquer the world.

As I sat there in that waiting room, I thought back over the last two years. I had been so ready to do feature films, work with great actors and directors who made brave choices, and really distinguish myself as an actor. Maybe I would do European films, or art films, and maybe a blockbuster or two. It was the one direction I imagined for my career. I thought that when everyone heard Elisabeth Röhm was now available for feature films, I would get exactly the kind of jobs I'd imagined. I was ready to scale mountains. I didn't realize I would have to climb them step by painful step.

“Oh, she's good, but she's that lawyer girl on
Law & Order.
She can't scream, she can't cry, I'm sure she can't dance or sing. She has no depth. She's obviously smart, but I bet she can't be funny, or a tragic heroine. She didn't make me laugh on
Law & Order.”

These are the kinds of comments that dogged me after I left the show, and the stereotype followed me like the Bond girl stereotype follows the women who play one. I learned a really important lesson during this time in my life: sometimes it's harder to sustain a career than to start one. Reinvention became my new priority. I had to work three times as hard as other actresses to prove I could do something different than what I'd been doing for the past five years. It would take an additional five years for me to outrun that legacy. Even now, I'm most frequently recognized for having played “the blond ADA on
Law & Order.
”