Love Life (5 page)

I
kissed a man recently,
and with romantic intent.

I liked and admired him very much, and professionally he is as good as anyone in his field, but truth be told he isn’t conventionally attractive. In fact, he is not tall, lacks any hair whatsoever and is a bit older than anyone I would likely be interested in kissing, regardless of gender.

But I did it anyway, and not without the apprehension you would expect from someone completely new to that sort of thing. I wondered what my wife would think. Since I was being paid for it, I figured she’d be okay with it. And considering the circumstances, I took solace in knowing she wouldn’t be asking me, “How long has this been going on?” or “Do you love him?”

Before you start wondering if I’m having one of those sexual identity crises you hear about on daytime chat shows, relax. There are moments that arise in my profession that put you in unexpected and
uncharted waters. For me, kissing Evan Handler as Eddie Nero on
Californication
was one of them.

Evan and I had worked together before, on
The West Wing
. I think he played a campaign strategist for Bartlet’s reelection. He too has written books, and we bonded over our appreciation for a good memoir and said our traditional actor’s good-byes: “Loved working with you. Let’s do it again soon!”

I never imagined that when we did, we would be doing a big kiss that would make
A Place in the Sun
’s Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift proud (Clift more so, probably).

Californication
, the brilliant David Duchovny vehicle for Showtime, is the perfect example of a great actor (David) getting a part that is right in his wheelhouse. Like him, the show is subversive and smart as hell. And, like all cable shows, unrelentingly provocative. Hence my first screen kiss with a man. The fact that neither of our characters is gay makes it more so.

I play a delusional, drug-addled, pretentious, sexually carnivorous, Academy Award–winning movie star. I am not unfamiliar with the type. Although I bear a passing resemblance to at least two well-known (and fantastic) actors in my Eddie Nero “look” whom I will not name for fear of reprisal, I based the character on a mix of people. I was able to send up every pretentious contrivance of the archetypal “Method movie star.”

It’s written to be a show-stopping part, the kind that steals a movie with four scenes or pumps excitement into a series in midrun. Eddie has a number of great speeches, the kind actors kill for.

At a certain point, if you want to make a name for yourself in this business you gotta figure out your “Monkey Trick,” as a fellow actor once told me. Some actors specialize in shooting weapons and punching people. Some have the market on playing buffoons cornered, others specialize in roles that require heavy makeup or outrageous
wardrobe. Some trade exclusively in a post-ironic blasé attitude. Others choose the opposite tack, taking big (and oftentimes over-the-top) swings. Everyone who is anyone has a Monkey Trick. Among mine is playing people who can speak in large blocks of dialogue and being unafraid of “going for it” in character parts.

Actors are like horses; some of us are better over long distances, some in a sprint, some for kiddie rides and some for dangerous stunt work. Like horses, there are probably some of us who should not leave the barn and probably some who should be “put down.”

I was working on two other TV series (
Brothers & Sisters
and
Parks and Recreation
) at the same time when the part came my way. Arnold Schwarzenegger once told me, “My agents never get me parts. I get them for myself or they come some other way.” True to the movie legend’s word, this part came to me from the guy who cuts my hair.

Duchovny and I share the same hairdresser; they were talking about who could play this bizarre role and my name came up. “I’ll call him now,” said my guy, Daniel Erdman. On another track, the show’s producers called my agents, who said I was unavailable. And in the end, it did take my agents to get both ABC and NBC to let me go work for Showtime. But the lesson here is never leave everything to the experts. Everyone needs oversight.

It’s funny what actors take issue with. Some won’t do parts where animals are in jeopardy; some won’t ever play anyone remotely unlikable—heroes only, please. Some won’t do violence. I have no such qualms. This part had man-on-man kissing, but what really made it stand out was some of the most jaw-droppingly explicit language I had ever read.

In my last book I quoted verbatim my favorite speech from
The West Wing
. I won’t be doing that here for
Californication
. Kids may be reading this. But trust me when I tell you it was outrageous and not for the faint of heart. Which is why I was interested. You see, I
don’t confuse who I play with who I am. The minute you start making calculations about what people will think of you as a person based on your work as an actor, you’re on the road to becoming a bad one. It is the death of diversity, range and surprise—all of the things I value in someone’s body of work. If you are worried about what people think of you, you should go into politics. Real actors take chances.

When Steven Soderbergh asked me to do
Behind the Candelabra
, I hadn’t yet read the script but I knew enough to know the things I needed to know: Michael Douglas was playing Liberace, Matt Damon his doe-eyed, innocent boy toy; it was being directed by a master and written by Richard LaGravenese, one of the great screenwriters. So sight-unseen, I was inclined to say yes, unless of course I read the script and my character was blowing a donkey. And given the subject matter, I suppose that may have been a possibility!

As I suspected, the role was terrific. While not huge in screen time, I could see it having a big impact if done in an original, outrageous way. When you are the lead in a picture (as the old-timers would say), you have the luxury of time on camera to inexorably make your mark. In a supporting role or particularly in a cameo, you have to shorten the field. You need to swing at the first pitch and try to crush it, pronto. But you mustn’t be showy or unduly attention seeking. It’s not your movie. You are a guest and you need to fit in seamlessly. If you can pull off both of these competing techniques, you might just steal a movie or two. I believe all great actors should be able to do both, and my personal favorites have. They are memorable in parts of all sizes; they’ve been number one on the “call sheet” (where they list the actors according to the size of their role) and number twelve or thirteen.

After a lot of thought, and with the help of an extraordinary team, I had a very special “look” designed for my character, a seventies-era LA Dr. Feelgood. I based it on some of the guys I used to see at Lakers
games, back in the day. When I walked on set the first time, both Matt Damon and Michael Douglas burst out laughing. Later, when shooting, Damon was often unable to look me in the eye.

Their extraordinary work made
Behind the Candelabra
the most critically acclaimed and highest-rated movie in the history of HBO. It was nominated for every possible award and it earned me my fifth Golden Globe nomination. And although I had only five or six scenes, I truly had never gotten that kind of obsessed, positive feedback from anything I had done before. My face, as Dr. Jack Startz, was everywhere, and people still ask me about that role.

I followed that performance with JFK in
Killing Kennedy
, which broke ratings records and earned me a Screen Actors Guild best actor nomination, and along with my work that year on
Parks and Rec
, I am happily able to say that I am an actor working at both edges of my range, in comedy and drama, as a leading man and as a character actor. To do that is every actor’s dream. Or should be.

My father-in-law, Norm, and I were very close. I was fond of him for so many reasons, not the least of which being that he said okay when I asked if I could marry his daughter. With the reputation I had at the time, and his penchant for gambling, I’m sure he was betting the over-under. But as Sheryl and I grew stronger and the years went by, he became an important part of our married life. He was like a character from
Guys and Dolls
, a lovable semi-wiseguy, part hustler and all heart. He had a unique and an adventurous past and had fantastic stories to show for it. He loved his daughter and he loved the grandsons she gave him.

When he had a massive and sudden heart attack, he was only sixty years old. I was in line in Starbucks when I got the call from Sheryl,
who was distraught. We had to try to get to the hospital right away; the prognosis was grave.

I rushed home and collected Sheryl, who, in shock, was picking out the right shoes to wear for the occasion. Looking at her, pale and shaking, standing in a pile of footwear, I thought, “I need to remember this.” I pulled her out of her trance and into the car.

At the hospital, we rushed to the emergency room. A doctor who looked disturbingly young barred the door. “You can’t go in. We are fighting to save him,” he said, closing it in our faces.

I led Sheryl to a quiet corner where we could watch the ER door. Time expanded and contracted, as it seems to do when crisis surrounds you. Minutes felt like hours and yet everything happened at once. I held my wife’s hand but I didn’t dare meet her eyes.

Eventually the ER door opened. The young doctor began to walk toward us.

“I need to remember this,” I thought. His face betrayed no hint of the outcome. There was no “tell,” which Norm, the inveterate poker player, would have been looking for in this ultimate moment of truth.

“This is just like you see in the movies,” I thought as he opened his mouth to speak, yet in fact, it was nothing like the movies.

“I’m sorry. We did all we could.” His eyes were sympathetic yet businesslike. He was appropriate and decent, but there was nothing more to say and so he didn’t.

I held Sheryl as her knees gave way. Norm was the moon to her, bigger than life and always somewhere on the horizon. She was a little girl who had just lost her daddy. I held her as she cried.

I hope I was a good enough husband to her on that terrible day. I’m sure I could have been better somehow, maybe stronger or perhaps comforting in ways I didn’t think of then. We got through it as well as could be expected and now, years later, I realize why my inner
voice had split me off from the unfolding reality and had urged me to remember the awful details.

It’s because I’m an actor. And actors play real life. Actors play doctors who give bad news and actors play daughters who lose their fathers and we play shock and horror and dismay and we can’t do any of it, not honestly, unless we have been paying close attention to those moments in our own lives.

It can make you feel like a cipher, standing outside observing, taking mental notes. Or worse, like some vacant pretender, feeling and participating in the moment only partway, while you file away the details into the ever-expanding emotional toolbox you must fill to successfully ply your trade.

It is the details of human experience that matter. And as always, what even the most talented screenwriter could write pales in comparison.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger defied the skeptics and odds by running for governor of California, I was among the first and, as it turned out, somewhat shockingly, few members of our industry to actually work for his election. Arnold and I crisscrossed the state campaigning, raising money and doing the day-to-day grunt work necessary to get to the finish. In the end it was his not-so-secret weapon, Maria Shriver, who closed the deal, convincing Californians to buy into a postpartisan candidacy.

It was a tough fight and certainly no “gimme.” California is a blue state and Arnold was going up against an incumbent Democrat. Having worked exclusively for that party all my life previously, I was putting my money where my mouth was for the first time as a newly
converted independent voter. My days of being a knee-jerk supporter of
any
party were over for good. I now choose my candidates on any number of criteria, but never by party affiliation. Like “recreational” drug use, the idea of slavish party loyalty seems like an outdated and unhealthy concept. Certainly no one could think that the word “partisan” is anything other than pejorative.

At any rate, as the campaign drew to a close it had captured the attention of the world. Part of it was California’s standing as the world’s eleventh-biggest economy, and part of it was the attention that always follows Arnold, one of the great characters of our time. On election night every news outlet in the world was waiting in the ballroom at the Century Plaza Hotel. As with Ronald Reagan over three decades earlier, everyone wanted to know: could an actor become governor of the most important state of the most important country in the world?

Sheryl and I worked our way through presidential-level security up to the floor that had been secured for the campaign brain trust and members of the sprawling Shriver/Kennedy/Schwarzenegger clan. The hallway was thick with staffers, volunteers and huge men with Secret Service–style earpieces.

The drone of CNN and Fox News spilled from every room we passed as we made our way to the hotel’s presidential suite.

I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. After a moment I saw that it was unlocked, so I opened it for Sheryl and I followed her in.

It was a huge suite, with a living room and hallways leading to additional seating areas and bedrooms. Few lights were on, so the giant glass windows glowed with a breathtaking panorama of the Los Angeles skyline. Unlike the crackling energy of the hallway outside, the room was as quiet as a tomb. A huge flat-screen TV was dormant,
probably the only one in the hotel and probably one of the few in the country not in use at that moment, as the votes were almost in.

Sheryl and I looked at each other, wondering if maybe somehow we were in the wrong place. Then I saw a woman whom I hadn’t noticed, sitting alone in the shadows. Although she was frail and old, her posture was ramrod straight. She had likewise not noticed our entrance. I moved closer and recognized her steel-blue eyes, which were gazing into the cityscape outside the suite’s windows. Her eyes were afire, blazing with a passion and a sort of emotion I couldn’t name. It was Eunice Kennedy Shriver.