From the showcase my acting school class performed in New York after graduation, I finally scored an agent. But for a long time nothing came of the few auditions I got. So I taught SAT test prep, driving my rusty green Honda Accord out to places like Far Rockaway and Staten Island. I also worked for a catering company, demonstrated the Uno card game at the annual Toy Fair, and for one very long and clammy day wore a giant dog costume to play the mascot at a World Cup soccer convention. It took me half a day in the costume to realize there was no need for me to smile while taking photos with the attendees—they couldn’t see my face through the giant head I was wearing, and anyway my grin was already painted across my face in furry black whiskers. Also—in case you were wondering—no, it does not feel good when someone gleefully knocks on the side of your doggie head and asks “if it’s hot in there.” Yes, sir. Yes, it is. Also, while I understand that your friends find it funny, please stop scratching me behind the ears.
Finally, after about three years of booking only commercials and a few lines on soap operas here and there, I was cast in a supporting part in a play at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey—my first union job since my role as Blinky McDryEyes in summer stock! I promptly turned in my apron at the Mexican restaurant I’d been working at in Park Slope, Brooklyn. My boss, Joe, was very nice about it; he told me I was welcome back anytime, which not only was cool of him but also proved he didn’t know how many free margaritas I’d been giving away to all my friends. Would I be back? I wondered. Or was the day job portion of my career finally over?
I’d love to say that all those hours spent doing things I had to do in order to survive—in order to inch closer to the thing I very much wanted to do—also gave me usable skills that I carried forward with me in life. I’d like to tell you that thanks to that first real job and its resulting hideous haircut, Steven Spielberg stopped me on the street, demanding to know where I got my pointy sideburns and incredible acting ability. But that did not happen. The takeaway from my many jobs, as far as I can tell, is this:
1. Don’t throw away hideous pictures of yourself—you may need to use them in your book one day.
2. Demand more money when returning drugs to strangers.
3. Dog costumes are very hot.
4. Oh, and thanks to that one summer I spent working at Benetton, I am, to this day, the guy to ask if you need your sweater neatly folded. Dozens of jobs, one actual skill!
At the Labor Day party, we all bonded over our shared tales of “that really awful job I had.” Not all the stories were about terrible things that happened at work, but the best ones were. Maybe that’s why you seldom see actors on talk shows regaling the hosts with stories of “that time I was well compensated at an early job I very much enjoyed.” There’s more comedy in failure than in success, and it’s a much more universal language. At the party, the worst jobs also seemed to be the ones everyone felt most proud to have endured. It’s an accomplishment to do something well, but maybe even a bigger one to do something well when you’d really rather not be doing it at all.
A few years ago I was back in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and when I turned a corner, there was my former boss, Joe, standing out in front of the Mexican restaurant as if no time had passed at all.
“Hey! I used to work here!” I said.
“I know,” he said, like he’d just seen me bussing tables there yesterday.
“This was my last real job before I started working as an actor,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
“I gave away a lot of free margaritas,” I blurted out.
He rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said again, but he was smiling. I looked inside the restaurant and saw that almost nothing had changed, which was oddly comforting. It made it even easier to picture myself there as I was in 1995, when I was scrappily patched together by green Dep gel, scrunchies, and stirrup pants. I realized that even though that restaurant hadn’t been my dream job, I’d really liked working there. The rule I’d made for myself about keeping a day job until I could make a living acting was a good one. Wearing a dog costume was no fun, but I did it because it was more money than I usually made in a day, and I wasn’t too proud to hustle.
Maybe that’s why Professor Owen asked us to make those lists in the first place: to remember where we all started, and share stories of how far we’d come. To journey back to whatever each of our individual Brooklyns had been, and look in the window of the Mexican restaurant and remember ourselves as we were, young and hungry.
So, welcome to Chili’s, y’all. Whether you’re saying it for real or just trying to get the part, say it loud and say it proud.
My Life in Fashion
As you probably know, I am regularly featured on best-dressed lists, constantly praised for “owning it” and “killing it” on the red carpet, and have Zac Posen on speed dial. Wait. That’s not me, that’s Cate Blanchett! But obviously, in general, I’m a popular fixture on the fashion scene and can usually be spotted sporting free outfits sent to me by designers while sitting next to Anna Wintour in the front row of all the hottest runway shows during New York Fashion Week, before partying the night away with one to seven members of the Kardashian family. Wait. That’s not me, that’s Gigi Hadid! Wait. That’s not her either, because she’s a successful top model who is most likely to be walking in the show. Well, whoever’s next to Anna in the front row is probably pretty psyched to be sitting in this place of honor. They’re also probably hungry and their shoes are too tight. And whoever they are, they aren’t me. But for some reason, I always forget that I’m not really a fashion-type person, and every once in a while I attempt to be one anyway. Who am I? When it comes to fashion, I’m not entirely sure.
My dad is six foot three, thin, and athletic, so even without him trying very hard, clothes look great on him. He was voted best-dressed in high school, even though he went to a Catholic school where they all wore uniforms, so I’m not exactly sure how it was that he distinguished himself, or why the school even bothered to assign that superlative to one of hundreds of boys wearing identical navy blue blazers. But what that says to me is that my father was so innately fashionable he somehow managed to look better-dressed than his classmates, even though they were all wearing the exact same thing.
So I suppose my dad was my first fashion idol, which is troubling only in that when I was a preteen girl I learned everything I first knew about what to wear from a tall preppy lawyer in his thirties. This was the 1980s in Washington, D.C., which meant my key pieces included wide-wale corduroys, L. L. Bean boat shoes, and anywhere from one to forty-seven shirts layered on top of one another with collars of varied jauntiness. My turtleneck was up and scrunchy, or sometimes neatly folded down! My Izod collar was down sometimes, unless of course it was up! This made for lots of fun choices, which in any combination ensured you were both overheated and bulky—you really couldn’t go wrong.
After a while, rather than simply being influenced by my father’s law office fashions and continuing to reinterpret them as a teen girl, I began to just cut out the middleman and wear his clothes. Back then, I really didn’t like dresses. I remember having to buy a skirt for the eighth-grade band recital because I didn’t own a single one. Fine, I was a tomboy. But here I am in one of my dad’s starched white dress shirts, which he wore underneath his suits for work. So presumably all the extra length and bulk of a man’s dress shirt is tucked into my (probably boys’) Levi’s corduroys, thereby obscuring any girl shape struggling to emerge from beneath.