I didn’t get the part!

No surprise there, really. Am I disappointed? It’s hard to say. I would’ve liked to have been doing some form of acting (pretending to be sympathetic to the disgruntled clients who walk into my workplace doesn’t count). But, well I didn’t feel I was right for the part. They wanted someone who looked like an English rose, you know the type. Not someone who’s rough around the edges, overweight and common-looking. Trisha would say that’s what make-up is for, but I guess the casting directors didn’t have much imagination.

When I got there there were five other women; all over 5′7, all as skinny as twigs, and all with the posture and air of women who had been in private education from birth and had decided to pursue acting as a career to piss off their well-to-do parents who had high hopes of them being lawyers,doctors etc. (I’m good at analysing people). When I walked in they were all holding their scripts and mentally reading them, with concentration. It looked painful. Serious, like brain surgery! All eyes were on me for what seemed like forever, then they went back to going over the script. Anyone would think they had lines for the part.

I was the third one to be called in after waiting for 15 minutes. I wouldn’t call it an audition as such. They screened me; they made me say a few sentences about the weather and the place where I lived while the camera rolled. It was just to see how I looked on camera. I imagine I looked quite awful, seeing as it added 10lbs on (10lbs I really didn’t need.)

Surprisingly I found out the same day that I didn’t get it. I was on my way to the train station when the runner called and relayed the bad news. The train back to Manchester was slow and dull after that.

I called Bev Newman up when I got home. She said she had tried and that I must not have presented myself properly. Again, back to blaming me. I told her I wanted her actively searching for something, anything, that I can do. I am even willing to do theatre work. She said she would put in overtime to find me the right role, and reminded me that if I didn’t get paid then neither did she, so it was in her best interest to actively search. That didn’t comfort me in the slightest because she doesn’t need the job anyway; her parents are loaded and almost in the grave, and she stands to inherit everything. Plus, her husband is a property developer and has a large portfolio, blah blah blah. Bottom line, this is like a hobby to her. But it’s my life.

That was Wednesday. On Thursday I got a phonecall from the pharmacist. It was 7.30 in the evening and I had just sat down to watch a rerun of Friends that I’d already seen a dozen times before. I put a pizza in the oven and told my housemates I had no intention of sharing.

When I answered the phone the guy sounded really shy and that made me keen to listen to what he had to say. It was an awkward conversation for the first 10 minutes, because we knew nothing about each other and we were basically both putting our trust in Trisha. We knew we shouldn’t have, but at that point it was already too late. Anyway, after the first 10 minutes it became easier and easier to talk to him. He had a goofy laugh that I thought was sweet but knew would be one of the things about him I’d grow to hate IF we ever became something more. The conversation ended with us planning to meet for a few drinks in town. I’ve done it so many times I am completely unfazed by it.

We met Friday evening at Kro in Piccadilly Gardens. We sat and talked about everything from movies to carpet cleaner, and surprisingly it never got boring. For 3 hours we talked and drank (he bought all the drinks, and I stuck to cocktails and then lemonade once I started floating). He seems genuine, really nice. He’s good looking in an Ed Harris sort of way. You can also tell that he is a divorcee. I don’t know what it is about divorced men but they have this look about them that is a dead giveaway that they were once married. It’s something to do with the way they look at you when they speak, and the way they listen when you speak. He mentioned his ex-wife only briefly; his 3 children live with her and they are still on good terms. I must admit it was a bit daunting when he said his oldest son was 20, only 6 years my junior!

The date ended with a goodnight kiss, on the lips I might add, and me taking a taxi home. I was a bit tipsy on the journey home and kept smiling to myself which prompted the taxi driver to ask me what I was smiling about. To which I replied, “That was the best date I’ve had in 4 years.” Knowing my luck, though, he’ll probably never call.

Trisha and I had lunch on Saturday as usual. She was anxious to hear how it went. I played it down and said it was okay, but within minutes of me talking about it she realised I actually liked the guy.

“You couldn’t make it more obvious. When’s the wedding?”

“Shut up! It’s only the first date. He said he’ll call this weekend.”

“Can I be bridesmaid?” By now she was already in her own little world of plotting the ceremony, the catering etc.

“There will be no wedding. Listen to yourself.”

“Oh, and will you wear white? I mean, no offence but that’s a huge fabrication.”

“Trisha!”

We talked about the pharmacist some more, and I found myself (reluctantly) humouring her by discussing wedding venues and babies’ names. If he ever found out that’s what I did 2 days after the first date, he would never call.

I spoke to my sister Janette that evening also. We do speak very regularly, even though she assures me and everyone she knows that she’s far too busy with work to have full length conversations. She calls at least twice a week, and I call maybe once a week. She wanted to come up for a visit, with the kids. She lives Milton Keynes. I told her I would be busy on Sunday which is a complete lie; I just don’t want to see her children. They drive me insane! Olivia is 8 and Robin is 5. They’re smart as hell and beautiful to go with it, but this they are aware of, therefore they’re extremely vain. Even at their age they have vanity down to a T. Olivia is the worst, pointing out my flaws whenever she sees me.  “Aunty Fiona, you look…round today.” Never fat (because Janette told her it’s rude to call people fat) but round. Or, “Aunty Fiona, mom didn’t tell me you were pregnant. That’s awesome.”  And if Olivia’s insulting me, Robin’s running around breaking things and making a racket and making mess - 2 of his favourite pasttimes.

I love them, but I hate being around them. I love them because I have to, because they’re Janette’s progeny, and because they’re family. But it doesn’t mean I love being in their company. Maybe in a few weeks when I’ve been to the gym and shed some of this weight. Mind you, little Olivia will still find something nasty to say about me. I’m almost certain she does it on purpose.

Oh, did I tell you? She’s a child star.

I went to lunch with Trisha on Saturday afternoon. It’s this thing we do, something we’ve been doing for almost 3 years. Except for the last four months or so we’ve been unable to because Trisha’s been filming abroad. As i mentioned before she’s never really had a dry spell on the work front. Her agent is much better than mine, but more importantly Trisha is a much better actress than I could ever hope to be. Unlike me, when she first started out as a child it was something she actually wanted to do, whereas I was practically forced into it by my parents (who were still married at the time). As I got older I realised I didn’t really have any skills to speak of and so I’ve convinced myself that acting is all I know. That and being a receptionist.

When I meet Trisha she’s vibrant, smiley and has jokes and stories to tell about her time abroad. She’s been in Argentina filming this new Hollywood movie. The script is crap by the way, but that’s a small price to pay for the chance to be in a Hollywood movie, alongside a couple of well-known Hollywood actors. She’s sporting a very short hairstyle, veryshort, like a man’s. I haven’t seen her in months and all of a sudden all her hair’s gone. I don’t like the hairstyle but I tell her it looks nice anyway. She knows I’m lying straight away. She tells me it was for the part. She’s also much darker than she was the last time I saw her; Trisha’s Afro-Caribbean.

We eat at this restaurant in Stockport, away from the hustle and bustle of Manchester City Centre because it’s always too crowded. She tells me about her time on location and about the drug and drinking habits of her co-stars. None of it shocks me, however, I’ve seen it all before.

And then she moves swiftly on to the new date she wants me to go on. I knew it was coming because it always does.

“You’ll love this one. He’s a hottie and he’s smart. What more could you hope for?”

“Is this one straight?”

About 6 months ago - on the last date she sent me on - the guy spent the whole night eyeing up the male waiters. Even before we arrived at the restaurant I could tell he wasn’t interested in women; I been around enough gay men in my life to know when a guy isn’t interested in women. The “date” went well considering neither of us were interested in the other, but it was a complete waste of time when I thought about it. When I told Trisha he was gay she simply laughed and said she’d do better next time. I vowed I would never go on another one of her blind dates again. But I always did.

“Yes, he’s definitely straight. He’s a pharmacist; went to Cambridge. He is recently divorced, but you can work with that, I’m sure.”

I shook my head and sighed. Even though she was my best friend she spent most of the time depressing me, just like my sister Janette. I’m sure their intention wasn’t to depress me, but alas, that’s what they did.

“I don’t want to date a divorced pharmacist, Trisha.”

“Why not?” She asked this with genuine confusion.

“Because!”

She carried on eating her salad and just stared at me, and I knew what she was doing because she always did this. She was trying to guilt me into going on the date. She knew I’d give in eventually.

“How old is this guy?” I asked her. 

“42.”

“Jesus, Trish, could he be any older?” 

“He doesn’t look it, trust me. He looks 35 at the most. Don’t rule him out just yet, you’ll love him, I promise.”

She promised this every time, and every time I was disappointed. Disappointed in them and disappointed in her for thinking I could ever be interested in them. If they weren’t obnoxious chauvinists, they were stuck-up actors, writers or amateur producers who talked about themselves throughout the whole date. She said dating a man like that would humble me. I didn’t think I needed humbling that badly.

“Does he know what I look like? I don’t want to scare him away when I turn up.”

“Oh yes, he knows what you look like. I showed him the picture.”

The picture. You wouldn’t believe it but Trisha carried a passport-sized photo of me in her purse. It sounds extremely dodgy, I know, but I’m not the only one she does it to. You see, Trisha likes to think of herself as a matchmaker. Ever since she set her cousin up with a guy she later went on to marry, she’s taken on this role of cupid. She has no less than 6 pictures of her close friends in her purse, just in case she meets a guy she can pair them with. No one’s had the heart to tell her to get a life. I’m sure one day I’ll be the one, when I’ve had one bad date too many.

“What did he think?”

“He thinks you look like his ex-wife…before she started drinking.”

That can never be a good thing when your prospective date looks like your ex-wife. I could already see this being a disaster. I wanted to walk away from her that minute, and just leave her there eating her very unappetising salad - real people don’t even eat salad. Already the Hollywood lifestyle was washing off on her.

“When is this thing supposed to happen?”

Her face brightened up immensely. “You mean you’ll go?”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” I said, knowing that I actually had agreed, impliedly.

“I’ve gotta give him your number then he’ll call you to arrange something.”

She was very excited. She gets more excited about setting me up on dates than she does going on them herself. She’s seeing someone now, anyway. An actor, even though she dislikes dating them. He’s a nice bloke, though. Bit of a would-be like me, but she believes he’ll make it big eventually.

The conversation moved on to my brief visit to London to talk with Bev Newman. Trisha keeps telling me to get shot of her and I keep telling her it’ll happen in due time.  She’s glad I’ve found some TV work, even if I don’t have a speaking part. I reminded her I didn’t have the part yet, but she’s optimistic that I’ll get it.

That was my Saturday. On Sunday I did some cleaning in the house. My housemates are in Blackburn for a few days so I’ve got the place to myself. It’s quite disgusting at the moment, I’m the only one who does any cleaning. If I don’t move back to London in a year I’ll surely move in with Trisha; she has a two bedroom flat in a much nicer area of Manchester, where her car won’t get broken into every 5 minutes.

Janette called in the evening. She’s stressed. The kids are driving her up the wall, and the holidays have only just begun. She’s shipping them off to a summer camp for several weeks so she can breathe again. Her husband thinks she’s a negligent mother for trying to get rid of her children at the first opportunity. But if you knew what Janette’s kids were like, you’d wanna ship ‘em off at the first opportunity too. He’s never around to know what hard work they are; he’s a doctor.

But I’ll tell you about Janette and her family another time. For now though, I’m off to bed. G’night.

It takes 4 and a half hours to get to London from Manchester, on the coach. Once in, it takes a further 45 minutes to get to my agent’s office in Clapham Common (well I say office, but really it’s a room she converted in her house) then it takes fifteen minutes for her to finish her phone conversation with the “famous Hollywood producer” who no one has ever heard of and we all suspect doesn’t exist. Once she’s finished her conversation only then will she instruct her assistant (who is really her daughter’s friend who helps out for the experience) to send me in. She greets me with a smile which I’m sure is genuine, but I never return the gesture.

Why? Well, because she’s useless!

Her name’s Bev Newman. She’s in her mid-40s, speaks with a thick Scottish accent, and owns the most hideous yellow suit I’ve ever seen. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. She was wearing it this week when I went to see her. The conversation went something like this:

“So what did you want to see me about, Bev?’ I asked this because it was her who called me to come down. A phone call is normally enough for me to learn she still has not found me any work.

“Good to see you too, Fiona. Have a seat.” (I was already sitting). “When was the last time you and I had a face to face?”

“6 months ago, I think. You told me you didn’t have anything for me and that it wouldn’t hurt my career if I lost some weight. I believe those were your words.”

She gave a nervous laugh. They were her words. She always made it seem as though I was wholly to blame for being out of work for so long, but really she was as much to blame. Besides, I had taken her advice. I lost 7lbs!! But then gained 8lbs a week later.

“That’s history. Let’s talk about the future,” she said, with a little too much enthusiasm. But what use was there talking about the future when the here and now was full of uncertainty?

“What have you got for me, then?”

“There’s a role in a 2-part drama. Now, it isn’t big -”

“Would I have any lines?”

She smiled nervously at that point.

I sighed. “What else?”

“Emmerdale? You would have lines for this one. It isn’t a recurring role, but it’s better than nothing.”

I’m not really a fussy person; I can’t exactly afford to be fussy because my receptionist job doesn’t pay enough. I can’t afford to be fussy because it is a rarity that my agent finds me work, so when she does I try to grab it with both hands. And what you don’t know about me is that I would have taken the 2-part drama if there had been nothing else. But as it was, Emmerdale sounded much better. The way I see it is, what’s the point being an actress if you can’t speak?

“When’s the audition?”

“In a couple of days. The only thing is…they asked for an Asian lady in her early/mid thirties.”

I saw red when she said that. I felt like throttling her.

“Why did you tell me about it, then? I’m white!”

And that’s how it always is with Bev Newman. Word of advice, don’t ever hire that woman. At first when you’re young and fresh and you’ve been around the block searching for agents to represent you and make you the next Keira Knightley and she agrees to add you to her “client list”, you may be jubilant. But soon after you’ll come to realise that she is possibly doing more harm than good to your career.

I left her office feeling deflated, even more so than I normally do. I said I’d do the drama, which means another trip to London for the audition in a week. If I get the part it’ll mean I can buy that new wardrobe I’ve been after for months. The one I currently have was a secondhand purchase when I first moved into the Moston house. It’s just about had its day, and the doors are hanging off. I’m pretty sure it’s a hazard.

When I got home my housemates were at each other’s throats, again. It was over something trivial as usual; she forgot to wake him up for work, he got in late and got stick from his boss. You don’t know what it’s like living with a couple, especially teenagers. But I was glad to be back home, away from London, even if I had just walked into a thunderstorm right in the middle of my living room.

It takes all those hours to get in and around London, then all those hours to get out of it again. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

I’m the worst type of “celebrity”. I’ve had a taste of the life and now I want more. Except I’m rusty; I haven’t been on TV in 15 years! My last screen role was before I’d reached puberty - before I developed breasts, before all the spots, and long before I stopped being considered “cute”. My television career was going from strength to strength until then. Why did I have to get old?

A little bit about myself. I’m Fiona, 26 (which might as well be 30), former child star most famous for my role in ———–. I live in a 3 bedroom house in a rough part of Manchester, called Moston. I have 2 housemates who are both still in their teens and madly inlove with each other, and every now and then a stray cat wanders into the house through an open window, and stays with us for a few days, then disappears.

I’m single and because of this I eat lots of Haagen Daaz (only when it’s on special offer in Asda) and am now overweight. I’ve been on a string of dates which have either ended badly or never began. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been stood up. Generally I try not to agree to blind dates arranged by Trisha; she’s my best mate and fellow child star, only she made the transition from child star to adult star without ever being out of work.

I work as a receptionist part time, so that I have time to go to auditions if and when they come up. Only, they never do. That’s my agent’s fault. She’s useless, and I tell her so everytime I speak to her. She has three clients besides me and none of them have had any work in years. We keep meaning to fire her and look for other representation but the fact is, no one will want us. We’re all as rusty as each other, and our only claim to fame is that we are the products of our successful youth.

I know, it’s a very sad thought.

I’ll probably be moving back to London in a year; my agent thinks it’s the best thing for my career. But I just think it’ll plunge me deeper into debt. Oh, I’m in debt too, didn’t I tell you?

This seems like a good time to wrap this post up for the day. I’ll aim to write every 2 or so days, depending on how much exciting stuff has happened to me. I have an appointment with my agent tomorrow, in London, so let’s hope she has something new for me.

This wasn’t my idea, I want to make that clear before I begin. It was Janette’s idea (she’s my older sister).  She said to me one day in a phone conversation, “Hey Fiona” (that’s how she said it, “hey Fiona”, as though “hey” is a part of my name. She always starts her sentences to me in that way).

“Hey Fiona, why don’t you do one of those blog-thingys. You know, write about your rise to stardom and all that.”

“You mean my fall from stardom?”

“No, I mean your rise. It’ll make great entertainment.” Great entertainment?

She’s like that, Janette is. She routinely says things without sparing a thought as to how sad she makes my life sound. As though my struggle to make ends meet should be a source of entertainment/amusement to others.

“Why on earth would I do that?” I asked her, trying hard to keep my cool. She can’t help it, I know that. She’s always been like that.

“Well, you never know who might read it. Some hotshot producer who wants to turn it into a television drama with you in the starring role.”

That did get me excited, momentarily, only long enough to remember who the suggestion was coming from. You see Janette just happens to BE the hotshot producer. Well almost. I’ll tell you about that later.

“Think of it as a diary, only one you actually want people to read. It’s the perfect way to get yourself out there again.” 

Then she had to go because she had to collect her children (aka the spawns of Satan) from their afterschool club.

I was left alone with my thoughts; maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. I have nothing better to do with my time, so why the hell not?