After the screen test, he let a day go by and then called me to say they were going to offer me the part, but he wanted me to have an agent, and he’d taken the liberty of phoning three of them on my behalf. His advice was to go with a woman, which I did. Edwina was young then, too, barely twenty-five, but she was connected to one of the best agencies in the business, and she showed herself to have barracuda instincts when it came to negotiating terms. Thanks to Edwina, I escaped some of the traps that befall young actors, and started making real money with that first movie.
Everything about my life took on a Cinderella glitter. The work was extremely difficult, and I was in nearly every frame of the film. My inexperience showed, which caused delays and trouble on set, but mostly everyone was patient with me, and I had great chemistry with my costar, Jason Tremaine, who’d been a child star and knew a lot about that world.
We filmed for five months, on location in a Proven?al town, another staggering delight to me, who’d never traveled anywhere. It thrilled me to be on an airplane, to hear people speaking another language, to eat new and unusual food. I was game for everything, anything, and drank it all in so that if it all dried up the next year, I’d at least have had this experience. I sent Phoebe letters, trying to write in ways that would give her the experience.
Dear Phoebe,
The days are long on set. We have to be in place at 5 am, which means I get up at 3 in order to have time to eat and get to the set. Whoever is in charge sends croissants and coffee and fruit to my room, and someone else calls, always twice, to make sure I’m actually up and moving. They do my hair and face when I get to the chateau so all I really have to do is take a shower and pour myself in the car that takes a crowd of us to the set. Jason and Annalise are almost always in the car with me, since we’re in so many scenes together, and we don’t talk very much. Honestly, Annalise seems hungover most of the time, and she has cold compresses over her eyes. (Just between us, obviously.)
We work on scenes at the chateau and in the local village we’ve taken over. It’s so beautiful, Pheebs, seriously. It’s exactly like the book, the little alleyways and the old gray stone, and the smell of bread baking and horses clattering on the cobblestone streets. It’s magical.
And honestly, even though I am dead tired every night when we get back to the hotel, I am so happy. This is the happiest I have ever been in my life. I love acting, love inhabiting this character, imagining myself in the time. Most days, I start working without a solid sense of connection and then there’s a click, almost audible, and I’m not me anymore. I’m not pretending to be Sarah, I am her. It’s like reading in a way, except with more props. I know you get what I mean.
The only thing that would make it better is if you were here. Xoxoxoxox
Suze
She wrote me back with just as much energy, telling me about art school and the projects she was trying to birth, and Derek.
Right at the start, Edwina said, “It might be difficult, but try not to get involved with anyone while you make this picture. It will distract you.” And I saw how true it could be in Phoebe’s focus on Derek. I got it, totally. He had that lost bad-boy vibe and a way of walking that made you think he’d know what he was doing in bed, and they shared the art thing, a passion and love of it that bonded them.
But I also noticed that more of her energy was going to the boy than to the work. I didn’t say anything because—
—because I was afraid I might lose her through all this. It was a lot, this big dream falling in my lap, not just a part, but the part of the year. It was always going to go to an ingenue, and I happened to be her.
I also wrote letters to Beryl, full of the details of nature and the environment I knew she’d like.
The chateau is over 400 years old, and it sits next to a thick forest that’s almost like something out of Hansel and Gretel, a place where you’d find the witch’s cottage if you went far enough down the path. I’ve noticed some birds I’ve never seen, one that is like a robin and close to it in size, but has muted blue feathers on its chest instead of red. Lavender grows wild, and I’ve sent you some to smell. It’s kind of amazing to walk along and suddenly smell perfume.
I’m very tired today. We worked five 16-hour days in a row to get “the emotional intensity” Jonathan wanted, and it was effective. When I had to cry over the loss of my friend, I was able to get going very easily! Everyone said I did a great job. I hope they didn’t know I was actually crying (if I think about that awful time in Portland I can cry like nobody’s business). But maybe it doesn’t matter.
When we wrap, I’ll be back in Oregon for a couple of weeks, to rest. I already have two more movies lined up. My agent said I need to buy a house in LA, and I might ask your advice about that. I have no idea what to do, but I see that she’s right. I think there’s going to be a lot I have to learn about the business side of my life and how to manage money and what to do. You’re a businesswoman, and I hope you can guide me.
I found some feathers and leaves I thought you’d like. Write soon!
Love you so so so so much!
Suze
When the movie wrapped and all the plans were made for releasing it, appearances at talk shows and media training sessions and how to conduct myself on the red carpet and how to answer hard questions from an interviewer and a million other things that seemed slightly ridiculous but proved themselves necessary, I called her to express some of my terror. “What if I’m terrible?” I cried.
“You will not be terrible,” she said with a cluck. “You know that. Say it out loud.”
I took a breath. “I will not be terrible. In fact, I’m going to be very, very good.”
She laughed. “There’s my girl.” I heard clanking in the background, the faint sound of the Rolling Stones. “You are about to lose something you don’t even know you have, however, and you should spend a little time appreciating it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The minute that movie comes out, you’re going to be famous. Very famous. Everyone will know your face, and it’s going to change your life in ways that you can’t imagine right now.”
My stomach flipped, both in anticipation and fear. I wanted to dissemble, protest, be modest, but I also knew it was true. The production company and everyone around me were counting on it. The picture was slated to be the biggest movie of the year. “Yeah,” I said, quietly.
“Take some time, sweetheart, to be anonymous. Walk around busy places. Go to the grocery store. Go see Phoebe and eat out.”
Standing in the kitchen of my new house with the phone pressed to my ear, the turquoise line curling away to the wall, I looked out at my swimming pool and thought of how lonely I was, all the time. If I got famous, maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely anymore. “I will.” I closed my eyes. “Thank you. I love you so much, Beryl. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“You’re a great light, sweetie. I love you.”
Sitting with Jasmine so many years later, I realize that she will carry Beryl’s memory forward in time. It comforts me to think of her going to the end of her long life (may she live to 150, never mind one hundred), carrying the face of a woman who has shaped all of us so much.
She will carry memories of me, too, and Phoebe. All of us a background swirl to Jasmine’s life, which will hold big loves and hates and broken hearts and dreams and losses and all the other things. For a moment, I try to imagine her at forty, a marine biologist professor with oversize glasses, maybe, or an athletic treasure hunter with a gorgeous partner who loves her. Or maybe she’ll be an artist like her grandmother, and her grandmother before her, and living at the flower farm with a tumble of children.
All good possibilities.