Read Online Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper by Hilary Liftin - Free Book Online
Authors: Hilary Liftin
Tags: Fiction
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image in the gap before
Man of Her Dreams
was released in November.
The part wasn’t hysterically funny, but at least it had some depth. I was playing Benji’s long-lost high school girlfriend—his first love—so I essentially got to play two characters: a hopelessly-in-love teenager in his flashbacks to high school, and a current-day woman who’d outgrown puppy love. I was psyched to work with Colin Anthony (who played Benji). He carried that show, as far as I was concerned.
The first day of rehearsals went well, when we played our googly-eyed high school selves. But the next day we were working on the second act, when he tracked me down at my law firm and I had to spurn him. For some reason I wasn’t nailing the character. The director kept telling me to warm her up. “How can I ‘warm up’ rejecting him?!” I wanted to shout back, but instead I just smiled and thanked him for the thought and then kept doing it the only way that made sense to me.
That Thursday night we started shooting before a live audience, andI still had no plan for how to fix my performance in the second act. Then, after the first-act break, I heard a buzz on the set. Rob had appeared to surprise me, a huge grin on his face. We slipped into my dressing room, and I wolfed down some craft services mac and cheese.
Rob asked me how it was going. I told him I couldn’t find the balance between outgrowing my relationship with Benji and being a cold bitch.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“Totally,” I said.
“But what about Justin?” My
American Dream
boyfriend, both in the show and off camera, as everyone knows.
“What about him?”
“Don’t you still love him?”
“No!”
“Of course not,” he said. “You love me. But doesn’t the twenty-year-old you still love him, in some bittersweet, wistful way?”
I thought about Justin. My first kiss—first onscreen, then off—my first love. On
American Dream
we worked sixteen-hour days, but there were awkward chunks of downtime between takes, when they reset lights and we were at loose ends. Justin had been my salvation.
“Let’s explore!” he’d say. I’d resist, afraid to stray too far from the set. But he’d drag me away, into the rolling Tennessee hills if we were shooting outside, off into a corner of the former city hall that served as the family mansion, and, once, on the soundstage, up a series of ladders to a nosebleed catwalk the lighting crew used only while in safety harnesses. We smoked cigarettes until we set off the smoke alarms, then hid up in our aerie, undiscovered, until the excitement died down.
Our adventures inevitably turned romantic, and there was nothing better than sneaking off to make out in a former courtroom or coming back from a “nature walk” with leaves in my hair and a blush on my cheeks.
I thought about who I’d been with Justin: not just Lizzie Pepper, but the first-time-in-love Lizzie Pepper. A once-in-a-lifetime version of myself, glowing with the new feeling of connecting with another person. In the middle of getting notes from the director, a glance from him spread warmth through my body. His hand on the small of my back was everything to me. When I walked, my fingers twitched in the air, remembering the sensation of his skin.
Years had passed since then. I was over Justin, rationally and emotionally, as much as I ever would be, but I would always feel nostalgia for the heights of romance I had discovered with him.
“There!” Rob interrupted my reverie. “That was it. I saw it on your face. First love ends but never dies. Go there.”
When I returned to the set, we shot the scene on the first take.
That night, back home, I thanked Rob for helping me. “Is that how you connect with each of your characters? Find something from your life?”
“It’s not quite that simple. Mostly I have to credit One Cell. What practicing at the Studio has done for my acting is incredible.”
There it was.
It was so casual, so thrown
Man of Her Dreams
was released in November.
The part wasn’t hysterically funny, but at least it had some depth. I was playing Benji’s long-lost high school girlfriend—his first love—so I essentially got to play two characters: a hopelessly-in-love teenager in his flashbacks to high school, and a current-day woman who’d outgrown puppy love. I was psyched to work with Colin Anthony (who played Benji). He carried that show, as far as I was concerned.
The first day of rehearsals went well, when we played our googly-eyed high school selves. But the next day we were working on the second act, when he tracked me down at my law firm and I had to spurn him. For some reason I wasn’t nailing the character. The director kept telling me to warm her up. “How can I ‘warm up’ rejecting him?!” I wanted to shout back, but instead I just smiled and thanked him for the thought and then kept doing it the only way that made sense to me.
That Thursday night we started shooting before a live audience, andI still had no plan for how to fix my performance in the second act. Then, after the first-act break, I heard a buzz on the set. Rob had appeared to surprise me, a huge grin on his face. We slipped into my dressing room, and I wolfed down some craft services mac and cheese.
Rob asked me how it was going. I told him I couldn’t find the balance between outgrowing my relationship with Benji and being a cold bitch.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“Totally,” I said.
“But what about Justin?” My
American Dream
boyfriend, both in the show and off camera, as everyone knows.
“What about him?”
“Don’t you still love him?”
“No!”
“Of course not,” he said. “You love me. But doesn’t the twenty-year-old you still love him, in some bittersweet, wistful way?”
I thought about Justin. My first kiss—first onscreen, then off—my first love. On
American Dream
we worked sixteen-hour days, but there were awkward chunks of downtime between takes, when they reset lights and we were at loose ends. Justin had been my salvation.
“Let’s explore!” he’d say. I’d resist, afraid to stray too far from the set. But he’d drag me away, into the rolling Tennessee hills if we were shooting outside, off into a corner of the former city hall that served as the family mansion, and, once, on the soundstage, up a series of ladders to a nosebleed catwalk the lighting crew used only while in safety harnesses. We smoked cigarettes until we set off the smoke alarms, then hid up in our aerie, undiscovered, until the excitement died down.
Our adventures inevitably turned romantic, and there was nothing better than sneaking off to make out in a former courtroom or coming back from a “nature walk” with leaves in my hair and a blush on my cheeks.
I thought about who I’d been with Justin: not just Lizzie Pepper, but the first-time-in-love Lizzie Pepper. A once-in-a-lifetime version of myself, glowing with the new feeling of connecting with another person. In the middle of getting notes from the director, a glance from him spread warmth through my body. His hand on the small of my back was everything to me. When I walked, my fingers twitched in the air, remembering the sensation of his skin.
Years had passed since then. I was over Justin, rationally and emotionally, as much as I ever would be, but I would always feel nostalgia for the heights of romance I had discovered with him.
“There!” Rob interrupted my reverie. “That was it. I saw it on your face. First love ends but never dies. Go there.”
When I returned to the set, we shot the scene on the first take.
That night, back home, I thanked Rob for helping me. “Is that how you connect with each of your characters? Find something from your life?”
“It’s not quite that simple. Mostly I have to credit One Cell. What practicing at the Studio has done for my acting is incredible.”
There it was.
It was so casual, so thrown
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