20 Room 23
TWENTY
I was also convinced I didn’t need Mom’s help.
My relationship with Mom had been strained in the months since Dad’s arrest. I tried not to be involved with the drama between them, but she leaned on me, just like she had when Dad confessed to his affair.
Mom and I had been so enmeshed in each other’s lives for so long that the boundaries between us had blurred, sometimes in an ugly, damaging way.
For instance, Mom had managed my earnings up to that point, yet I never felt we communicated enough about them.
That made me resent her. Recently she and I had been pitching movies together, and I’d decided to tell her that the cleavage-bearing boho tops she wore to meetings were too risqué.
No parent wants to be told how to dress by her child, so it made her resent me.
She got upset when I didn’t invite her to certain industry parties, and I got upset when she wanted to stay too long at these same parties.
For nineteen years, Mom and I had been living each other’s lives.
Now I’d grown up, and it was time for me to be in the driver’s seat of my own life.
I asked Mom to come to my trailer on the Heroes set one day, and that’s where I broke the news.
“Mom, I can’t work with you anymore,” I said.
“I just want you to be my mom now.” I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I didn’t mention anything that had helped build the wall of resentment between us.
All I wanted was to discover what it was like to have a “normal” mother–daughter relationship, and that dynamic didn’t involve contracts, producers, boho tops, or drinking wine at industry parties.
Mom picked up her purse, clenched her jaw, and looked straight at me.
“You owe me,” she answered. Then she turned around and walked out of my trailer.
When I heard the click of the door, I took a deep breath, then burst into tears.
I knew I’d done the right thing, but I sensed something in me had died.
It was the part of me that still felt like my mom’s baby girl.
For my entire life, Mom had defined and driven me.
Her persistence, her determination, and her belief in my potential pushed me forward.
Because she was passionate that I had to know a script backward and forward, I never once showed up on set less than perfectly rehearsed.
Mom had shaped my approach to every audition, television show, movie, commercial, and interview, and not a day had passed when she hadn’t been there, watching me struggle, learn, grow, fall apart, and triumph.
Her dream had become mine, and mine had become hers.
Mom was fully responsible for the trajectory of my career, and even though it hadn’t been my choice, I loved what I did.
Without Mom, I wouldn’t be sitting in an NBC trailer, my cheeks soaked in tears.
I owed her everything, and now I was on my own.
In March 2008, I purchased a house on Curson Terrace, a stone’s throw from Runyon Canyon and even closer to the NBC set than my condo.
It was a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house spread over two stories and 3,100 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking down a hill toward downtown LA on one side and the coast on the other.
You could stand in every room and take in gorgeous views, and trust me, I did.
After two years of living in a condo with fighting parents and a brother doing backflips above me, I needed space and freedom. I got that in my new house.
My house was secluded, on a dead-end road with only one set of neighbors.
I could also hear coyotes howling in Runyon Canyon, which is one of the creepiest, loneliest sounds in the world.
I’ve always been a people person, and—living alone for the first time in my life—I craved company.
Thankfully, my neighbors were young, and we became fast friends.
I also had Milo, the rest of the Heroes cast, and a group of friends that included a makeup artist named Annie, who I’d met when I was filming Bring It On.
Annie did my makeup as a favor sometimes.
One night I received a last-minute invitation to an industry party, so I called her up.
“I hate springing this on you,” I begged, “but can you do my makeup for a party? Pretty please…?”
Annie sighed. “Oh, honey, I can’t. I’m doing all the makeup for a photography book right now. I’m at the apartment where they’re shooting.”
“What’s the book?” I asked.
“Well, it’s called Room 23, and it’s a coffee table book that features photographs of a hundred celebrities in the fancy apartment I’m in now.
Not all the celebrities will be in the room at the same time, of course.
All the proceeds go to charity.” Annie paused.
“Some of the photos are really provocative, but they’re gorgeous. ”
I heard voices in the background, then Annie speaking to someone.
“Sorry about that,” Annie said when she returned to the phone. “That was Diana Jenkins, the brains behind Room 23. Hey, why don’t you just come here, I’ll do your makeup, and maybe you can take a few photos? Then you can leave for your party.”
I thought about it and said yes. Even if my photos didn’t end up in the book, I’d get my hair and makeup done and see my best friend.
A few hours later, I walked into a high-rise penthouse in Beverly Hills, where someone dressed me in a gold sequined gown that was so heavy I could hardly walk in it.
I stood in a massive bathroom and gazed into a mirror as the photographer snapped photos.
Diana Jenkins stood next to her, peppering her with orders.
“We need one more shot,” Diana said in a heavy Eastern European accent. “But try to seem dramatic. Look fierce.”
I did as I was told, and the camera snapped.
“Thank you so much for coming, my dear,” Diana said to me when the shoot was over. “We can definitely get your photos in the book.”
I smiled and thanked her too. Then I relaxed and took in this woman who’d pulled me into a project I hadn’t been expecting the day before.
Diana was tall, blond, and striking, with warm brown eyes and the kind of gravity-defying breasts that wealthy women in LA pay good money to get.
I’d only just met her, but her charisma and command of the room pulled me right into her orbit.
Annie had told me about her background: Diana was from Bosnia but had fled to London during the siege of Sarajevo.
There, she married a banker and later moved to LA.
She was now a fixture on the social circuit and had just launched a line of beverages called Neuro.