“Universal Pictures or TV? Are there sides?” I’d asked. Sides are the pages of script that casting directors send actors to learn for their auditions.
“Ha. Sides! They won’t even tell me what the project is let alone the role. It’s a film, that’s all I know at this stage. And they just want ‘a chat’—no audition. Which could mean a number of things. But they love you, they seemed very concerned about who else you’d be meeting over in LA and for what. It’s Kathryn Mayer you’ll be meeting, she’s a new division president at Universal, she’s building a production slate for next year. I don’t want you to feel any pressure obviously, but this is a big deal, Mayer hardly ever meets actors. Apparently she adored Eyre, she got hold of a screener. Have a Google of her.”
Although I’ve never braved LA before, I know that right now actors from all over the globe are migrating here for the three-month period of pilot season. Every television network in America will be hustling to grab the best, or cheapest, or most in-demand actors they can to fill their roster of new shows for that year. And all those actors end up auditioning for the same roles. It’s a fire sale. Contracts are offered, careers are launched, dreams get made…and some get broken. Not everyone who flies over can get what they came for, not everyone can get what they deserve. Luckily I just need to get away from my life, a distraction, and I’m guessing I’m going to get that in spades.
She talked me through some of the selected shows and roles she’s scheduled for me during the three-week trip. And the American agent she’s arranged to represent me.
“Michael Spector at United. He’s good. I’ve got a couple of US clients with him and he’s really on it. Very savvy. Let me know how he is and we can shop around if it’s not a fit.”
Handheld name signs pepper the LAX arrivals barrier, and I’m surprised to spot the familiar swirl of my own name held by a woman in a sharp trouser suit. She catches my eye, gives me a bright smile of recognition, and makes her way over, smoothly, her hand extended.
“Mia? I recognized you from the press pack they sent me. It’s Leandra from Audi. It’s so great to meet you. How was your flight?”
Her hand is cool and strong in mine. Her freshly blown-out hair and crisp business suit putting my comfy travel wear and puffy eyes to shame.
“Sorry, Leandra. Did you say you’re from Audi? The car company, Audi?”
“Yeah.” She lets out a breezy laugh. “I guess someone must have dropped the ball on this one. We reached out to your agent. Let me show you to your vehicle.”
A quick call to Cynthia confirms the matter. Audi is loaning me a sports car for the duration of my stay. All I have to do is Instagram it. My stomach flips at the thought of it. I explain to Cynthia that while I theoretically have an Instagram account, I have never actually posted anything and have absolutely no followers. At which stage Cynthia informs me that I now have a new verified Instagram account set up in my name to get posting on.
Leandra keeps the conversation easy and light as she leads me out of LAX into the daylight. A shiver of excitement jolts the sadness out of me as the sun hits my bare arms again, warming my air-con-chilled skin. Gone is the airport smell of chlorine; in its place recently cut grass carries on the Los Angeles breeze. Fresh beginnings.
I devour the scenery hungrily. A flurry of new information, palm trees, yellow cabs, signs for companies I’ve never heard of, even the people here look different, less tired than back home.
“First time in LA?” she asks.
“Yeah, it is. But I’ve heard great things!” I turn on a smile.
“My only advice,” she confides cheerily. “Make sure you’re wherever you need to be in LA before five-thirty p.m. and then stay there until after seven. You do not want to be caught in an LA traffic jam. Trust me. There’s nothing else in the world like one.”
“So, always leave early in LA?…Like Cinderella!” I offer jokingly.
She considers for a second before laughing. “Yeah, actually. Exactly like Cinderella. Got to keep those wits about you. But I can guarantee you that this car will never turn into a pumpkin. Even if everything else turns to rags.” She gives an odd little chuckle. I’m certain she’s joking but in spite of myself I shiver at the cold pessimism of the comment. There’s a bright beep tone as she depresses the key fob in her hand and my attention flies to the sleek black car in front of us as its whole roof slowly peels back, folding in on itself with balletic precision. I’m definitely not a car person but even I have to admit it’s bloody sexy. I think of my own basic four-year-old Ford Ka, covered in snow, back home, with its fabric seats as standard and its sliding sunroof, and I have to stifle a giggle.
Twenty minutes later, suitcase stored away in the trunk, I slide my leather seat forward, take a deep breath, and pull the $200,000 car out onto the correct side of the road. Making sure to keep my wits, very much, about me.
4
It’s a Sign
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7
The view from the thirty-first floor of my building is dizzying. It’s the first thing that hits you as you enter the apartment: it’s on the corner of the building so more than half the room is sheer glass, floor-to-ceiling, suspended more than three hundred feet above bustling Downtown LA. Up here we’re slightly higher than the Statue of Liberty. Or so Miguel, the Ellis Building’s porter, tells me as he lays my bags down with a smile. George never liked heights, he would have been nervous up here but he would have tried to hide it. Luckily, I’m not scared of heights; I’m not sure how much sleep I’d be getting up here if I were. But the view is nothing short of mesmerizing.
Beyond pristine glass Los Angeles stretches out, from up here a world in miniature, its sprawling smog and heat haze spellbinding if somehow not quite real. From the crisp cool of my luxury accommodation, I can make out LA proper for the first time in all its monstrous glory.
An arid industrial hub strung together by highways, thick clogged arteries pumping out to the vast studio lots along the horizon and their sticky-tarred multistory parking garages. Closer inland the low makeshift wooden skyline intermittently gives way to the odd gleaming glass tower like mine, while out toward the hills glittering crystalline pools sparkle in the sunshine in random configurations like scattered jewels. It’s beautiful in its way. But then it would be nothing without the story that comes with it. It would be just another California city without the borrowed magic of those that pass through. Then as if on cue, I see it, hazy on the far horizon, emblazoned on the lush green rise of the Hollywood Hills, instantly recognizable. Nine white letters writ forty-five feet high. The whitewashed sign that launched a thousand ships and the rocks they ran aground on. The siren song.
“It used to light up, you know?” Miguel chirps following my gaze. Weirdly, I had read a bit about the Hollywood sign in the in-flight magazine on the journey over. I know that originally it was just an advertising banner for a housing development called Hollywoodland, but I didn’t know about the lights.
“Really?” I ask and try to imagine the two-story-high letters glowing out across the city.
Miguel nods energetically as he struggles to retract the extendable handle on my suitcase.
“Yeah, it was completely covered in lights, over four thousand twenty-watt bulbs, it used to light up the hills in the 1920s. Used to flash, pulse, you know, like a heartbeat. HOLLY—WOOD—LAND.” He puffs, finally releasing the bag’s temperamental handle, narrowly avoiding trapping a finger.
“You’re an actor, right?” he asks cheerfully as he offers me my new apartment keycard.
“I am.”