Read Online By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There: A Memoir by Tom Sizemore - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tom Sizemore
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willing to go to L.A. as much as I needed to—I didn’t care where my acting career happened as long as it happened—but Edie was dead set against leaving New York. And that’s when Edie and I began having problems. We were young and I was away a lot. And even though I ultimately fell in love with her, I was never all the way in emotionally. I just don’t think I had fully recovered from Michelle.
But suddenly the work was coming, and it was coming fast. I did a movie called Rude Awakening and then Lock Up, which introduced me to both Stallone and Mickey Rourke. Mickey’s talent just blew me away. When I had seen him in Diner I realized there was someone in movies who was doing things that had never been done before.And when we met I think we bonded over the fact that neither of us was quite right. There was also something very charismatic about him; he was Marlon Brando and didn’t know it. Everything about him was interesting: the way he walked—he had that pigeon-toed walk—and the way he looked and the sweetness he had underneath it all. Mickey and I are both weird. He’s had four dogs, all named Loki, and when each one dies, he names the next one that. I think we both want to talk to each other more, but we’re both chickens. He likes to talk to whichever Loki is around, and I like to talk to books.
Anyway, I made seventy-five thousand dollars on Lock Up, and I took the money I was supposed to use for a hotel stay and instead moved into the Oakwood—a furnished-apartment complex between Burbank and Hollywood, which is usually filled with child actors who are trying to get their big break—because it only cost eight hundred dollars a month. That meant I pocketed another forty thousand in per diem. I was very conscious back then about how much I needed to get by—I think I was still paranoid after hearing that you could never get another apartment once you got evicted in New York. I did not want to go back to waiting tables.
Stallone really liked me. He was the first big star I ever met, and I have to say I’ve still never met anyone better adjusted to stardom. He’s a good father, has been with the same woman, his wife, Jennifer Flavin, for nearly twenty-five years, and is simply the nicest guy you could meet. He basically decided I was a good actor and took me over to Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he introduced me to Ron Meyer, who was one of the founders. Ron then took me over to meet with Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane. At the time, they were just kids my age but they ended up becoming the “Young Turks” along with Richard Lovett, who sort of ran that group, and Jay Maloney, who,tragically, ended up killing himself. I could tell that they were brutally ambitious—like me.
I’d always known I was ambitious, but this was around when I realized just how competitive I was. My attitude about auditioning became: If you beat me today, I’m going to come back tomorrow and beat you. The fact of the matter is that if you can imagine yourself being anything else but an actor, then you should be doing that other thing. Acting has to be your calling because regardless of how successful you are or how soon you get that success, you’re going to have times when there’s something you want that you’re not going to get, no matter who you are. And that hurts. Because you’re not selling Girl Scout cookies. You’re selling you. So if you don’t get the job—well, you can obfuscate it with all kinds of bullshit if you want to, but it’s a personal rejection. It’s the most personal kind of rejection. So you have to have a very thick skin and a very deep belief in yourself to get through that. I developed a system around this time, which was to let myself grieve for the twenty-four hours after I didn’t get something, then say, “Fuck it” and move on.
One of the starring roles I got early on was in a movie called A Matter of Degrees, written by Randy Poster, whose sister, Meryl Poster, was
But suddenly the work was coming, and it was coming fast. I did a movie called Rude Awakening and then Lock Up, which introduced me to both Stallone and Mickey Rourke. Mickey’s talent just blew me away. When I had seen him in Diner I realized there was someone in movies who was doing things that had never been done before.And when we met I think we bonded over the fact that neither of us was quite right. There was also something very charismatic about him; he was Marlon Brando and didn’t know it. Everything about him was interesting: the way he walked—he had that pigeon-toed walk—and the way he looked and the sweetness he had underneath it all. Mickey and I are both weird. He’s had four dogs, all named Loki, and when each one dies, he names the next one that. I think we both want to talk to each other more, but we’re both chickens. He likes to talk to whichever Loki is around, and I like to talk to books.
Anyway, I made seventy-five thousand dollars on Lock Up, and I took the money I was supposed to use for a hotel stay and instead moved into the Oakwood—a furnished-apartment complex between Burbank and Hollywood, which is usually filled with child actors who are trying to get their big break—because it only cost eight hundred dollars a month. That meant I pocketed another forty thousand in per diem. I was very conscious back then about how much I needed to get by—I think I was still paranoid after hearing that you could never get another apartment once you got evicted in New York. I did not want to go back to waiting tables.
Stallone really liked me. He was the first big star I ever met, and I have to say I’ve still never met anyone better adjusted to stardom. He’s a good father, has been with the same woman, his wife, Jennifer Flavin, for nearly twenty-five years, and is simply the nicest guy you could meet. He basically decided I was a good actor and took me over to Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he introduced me to Ron Meyer, who was one of the founders. Ron then took me over to meet with Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane. At the time, they were just kids my age but they ended up becoming the “Young Turks” along with Richard Lovett, who sort of ran that group, and Jay Maloney, who,tragically, ended up killing himself. I could tell that they were brutally ambitious—like me.
I’d always known I was ambitious, but this was around when I realized just how competitive I was. My attitude about auditioning became: If you beat me today, I’m going to come back tomorrow and beat you. The fact of the matter is that if you can imagine yourself being anything else but an actor, then you should be doing that other thing. Acting has to be your calling because regardless of how successful you are or how soon you get that success, you’re going to have times when there’s something you want that you’re not going to get, no matter who you are. And that hurts. Because you’re not selling Girl Scout cookies. You’re selling you. So if you don’t get the job—well, you can obfuscate it with all kinds of bullshit if you want to, but it’s a personal rejection. It’s the most personal kind of rejection. So you have to have a very thick skin and a very deep belief in yourself to get through that. I developed a system around this time, which was to let myself grieve for the twenty-four hours after I didn’t get something, then say, “Fuck it” and move on.
One of the starring roles I got early on was in a movie called A Matter of Degrees, written by Randy Poster, whose sister, Meryl Poster, was
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