We’re at the Santa Monica training facility where Brooks has been spending six hours a day, five days a week for the past few months, getting in fighting shape for her role as Roxie, a member of an all-female team of vigilantes in the upcoming action movie Sirens. Atkins, planted on the sidelines for moral support, had given in to the goading of Brooks’s trainer, Malcolm Davis, to test her skills in an impromptu sparring match.
“Not fair,” Brooks grumbles, disentangling herself from Atkins and leaping upright. “No tickling in the dojo!” But she’s smiling as she reaches down to help Atkins to his feet. He pulls her against his chest for a split-second squeeze before letting go. Over the course of my time with them, there’s no shortage of this kind of gesture: quick kisses, hands held beneath tables, inside jokes communicated by nothing more than a glance. The secret language of two people unequivocally delighted by each other.
Over a long lunch at a nearby café, I do my best to unravel the thorny beginnings of their current domestic bliss. They’re both evasive when pressed on details of how they met, other than that they were introduced by a mutual friend whom they seem reticent to identify.
“I was fascinated by her from the very beginning,” Atkins recalls over a burger and side salad. He’s eschewed the fries out of deference to Brooks, who’s eating her own protein-packed, nutritionist-approved meal out of a plastic container. (When I express my sympathy for her slightly sad-looking lunch, she just grins and offers an impressive bicep for me to feel.)
Atkins continues. “She made me realize how much work I had to do on myself before I was ready to be with her. With anyone, really.”
It’s clear he’s referring to his well-documented struggle with addiction over the past two decades. As Brooks glows with pride beside him, Atkins confirms that he’s just celebrated three years of sobriety. He resists the impulse to blame his substance use on the demands of the spotlight: “It’s something that’s followed me around my whole life, even before I was famous. At the end of the day, it’s an internal battle. Yes, there’s more pressure with what I do, but it didn’t make me an alcoholic.”
“But it sure can make it worse,” Brooks adds.
They should know. The early months of their relationship were a supernova of drama: first, steamy paparazzi photos of a romantic Palm Springs getaway were splashed all over the tabloids. Then, a visibly intoxicated Atkins stormed offstage during a panel discussion of Dirtbags, his breakout film. After that, the two weren’t seen together again for over a year. That is, until Atkins was spotted in New York City, slipping through the stage door after a performance of Uncle Vanya that just so happened to star Brooks. The rest, as they say, is history.
These days, the couple is bicoastal, splitting their time between Atkins’s home in Pacific Palisades, and Brooks’s newly purchased West Village townhouse. They both have roots in New York; Atkins was raised in Queens, while Brooks grew up just outside the city. And despite their rocky, publicity-filled start, over the last few years they’ve mostly stayed out of the press.
Unless, of course, they have something to promote.
It’s been nine years since Atkins last appeared on-screen, in the drama Saint Paul—his fourth and final collaboration with Sam Tanner, who passed away in a car accident shortly after the film’s release. But in two weeks, his mysterious new film One Night Only, cowritten with and costarring Brooks, will open in limited release. I was granted access to an early screening, under the condition that I not reveal any details. Without giving too much away, all I can say is it’s an enthralling, tightly scripted two-hander, featuring raw and galvanizing performances from both of them. Audiences who have missed seeing Atkins in action will not be disappointed, and his real-life chemistry with Brooks is even more scorching on-screen.
Though Atkins has done more than his fair share of directing, he surprisingly handed over the reins on One Night Only to Dee Lockhart—an alumnus of the Tanner Emerging Artists Program, Atkins’s recently launched initiative that provides grants and mentorship to up-and-coming filmmakers who lack resources and industry connections.
When I ask if they ever discussed having Atkins direct the film, they both shake their heads.
“She’d never listen to me,” Atkins says drily. Brooks laughs.
“I just wasn’t interested in that dynamic,” she explains, draining her water glass. “I wanted us to be on as equal footing as possible, especially since it was our first time working together.”
I ask Atkins about the status of Bitter Pill, the last project he and Tanner had been working on before Tanner’s death, which has languished in development hell ever since. Will it ever see the light of day? He shakes his head.
“I needed to let it go. It had turned into something bigger than a movie for me. Something it could never live up to. But what I’ve been doing now, with the [Tanner Emerging Artists] program—when Sam and I first moved out here, we were clueless. So much of our early success was plain dumb luck, meeting the right people at the right time. But for every story like ours, there are hundreds who never got those opportunities, who were just as deserving. Doing what I can now to even the playing field, help talented people get their foot in the door…that feels like the right thing. To, uh, remember him. Honor him. Whatever you want to call it. Trying to pay it forward, nurture the next generation, instead of fighting to keep the past alive.”
Brooks, in contrast, has kept busy. Last year, after arthouse thriller The Empty Chair sparked a Sundance bidding war, Brooks, along with director, cowriter, and costar Kamilah Ross, had a strong showing at the Independent Spirit Awards, taking home Best Director for Ross and Best Supporting Female for Brooks. The studios took notice, tapping Ross to direct Sirens in her major-studio directorial debut, and hiring the two of them to doctor the script, as well as star.
In what may seem surprising to newcomers to the Atkins-Brooks extended universe, Atkins’s ex-wife, Nora Lind, recently signed on for a supporting role in Sirens alongside Ross and Brooks. (Rounding out the cast are newcomer Simone Haley and Brooks’s former Poison Paradise costar Mia Pereira.) Considering the coverage of their ugly, extended divorce, this should be a sore spot, but this isn’t even Brooks and Lind’s first time working together: The Empty Chair was brought to the screen by Lind’s production company, First Dibs.
But how does Atkins really feel about his girlfriend working so closely with his ex-wife?
“He likes it a little too much,” Brooks says, rolling her eyes in good-natured annoyance. “He keeps calling it Ethan’s Angels.”
Indeed, the photos that surfaced several months ago of Atkins and Brooks on vacation in Cape May, New Jersey, with Lind, Lind’s husband (cameraman Jeff Hernandez), and Atkins and Lind’s two daughters, seem to indicate that the harmonious blended family routine isn’t just an act.
In Cape May, the six of them were photographed with an older couple that eagle-eyed fans immediately identified as Tanner’s parents. When I bring it up to Atkins, he smiles enigmatically and changes the subject. Brooks slips her hand into his, and they exchange an intimate glance. In that moment, it’s clear that no matter how many secrets are dug up about them and plastered on the front page, there’s something perfect and private between them that no one will ever be able to touch.
That united front only becomes more impenetrable when I try to prod into the future of their union beyond their professional collaboration—if marriage and children of their own are in the cards.
“I think we’ve both learned the value of taking things one day at a time. Also the value of keeping our personal lives personal, as much as we’re allowed to.” Atkins glances at Brooks, his glib tone revealing a glimpse of something more sincere underneath. “But I’m not going anywhere. Are you?”
Brooks sips her drink and shrugs. “Wasn’t planning on it.” She leans back in her seat and grins playfully at him. “Unless I get a better offer.”
FOR WALKER:
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS BOOK—AND MY LIFE—SO MUCH BETTER.