expression and said, "Those are really two different stories."
"Pick one to start with."
He slipped out of the robe because the sun was warm and he had dried off. He stretched out on the chaise with his arms over his head and closed his eyes, the picture of relaxation if you didn't look too close. I could tell he was tense.
I hastened to add, "That is, tell me if you are comfortable doing so. I don't want to pry. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
He sat up suddenly, like a coiled snake striking, and turned toward me. His eyes bore into mine and he asked with something like fear in his voice, "Can you read my mind?"
I sat up, facing him and took his hands, smiling, "Not at all. I don't have to read your mind. Maybe it's your acting training or something, your face and voice don't show the signs of tension, but your body gives away what you are thinking. If you don't want to share your story, that's fine. I understand. And, I truly don't want to pry. I'm sure you get enough of that. It's really none of my business."
He raised my hand to his face and held it up to his cheek. Then he totally relaxed and smiled back at me, "Typically, I don't share my personal information, especially with women. As I told you, I kinda lose track of the stories the publicity department puts out about me." He laughed, "The woman I'm supposed to be dating right now is somebody I've never even met. She called me a couple of weeks ago after our publicists cooked up the story. We talked about whether or not either of us actually wants to go along with the publicity stunt. We each have big movies coming out. The publicity will help both of the movies. We decided to meet in Vegas in a few weeks and get our pictures in the paper."
I stroked his cheek with my finger, "That must be awful. What happens when you are actually dating somebody you like?"
"If she fits into the publicity department's criteria, we make a big splash. If she doesn't, then we have to sneak around."
"How awful."
He shrugged. "I'm used to it." He turned his head and brushed my palm with his lips. Then he let go of my hand and stretched out again, sighing. "I've never really told my story before. I'm not sure I can distinguish between the reality and the story the studio concocted, but here goes...."
He talked for a long time, telling me in great detail about his struggles to learn English and to fit into the American culture. Immigrants, even immigrants from allied countries, were not particularly welcomed in Southern California during the Second World War. His parents worked in the movie business, which helped a little. He went to school and focused on becoming Americanized. Like the children of many immigrants, he did everything he could do to shed his 'foreign-ness.' He refused to let people call him Jean-Luc and insisted on being called Luke. When he got old enough, he hung out with the surfers at the beach. He enhanced his naturally good physique with exercise and nearly constant surfing.
He smiled when he said, "My first movie role was as an extra in Gidget. Not the TV show in the 1960's. The Sandra Dee movie in the 1950's. I was actually in about three scenes. In each scene, I simply walked across the shot. The first time, I walked by as though I had just come out of the water. On the first take, they squirted me with a hose, so I was streaming wet, sort of like that coming-out-of-the-pool thing. The censor objected, so they dried me off for the actual shot. The second time, they had me carrying a surfboard. They darkened my hair so I would look like a different person. In the last scene, they had me running into the surf and jumping on a board. It was a great shot of my ass.
"I think I made $50 bucks for two days' work. More importantly, I met Sandra Dee. Even more importantly, I met Bobby Darin who was my idol and still one of my favorite singers ever. Well, to be honest, I didn't exactly meet Bobby Darin. I saw him on the set, but I've been telling people I met him for so long, I've almost started to believe it.
"A few years later when they were casting for the Beach Blanket movies, I auditioned for a part. The casting director was a really nice lady who said she liked me but thought I was too sexy and a little to exotic for those movies. They were looking for all-American boys who didn't look like they would actually want to have sex with Annette Funicello. I wasn't what she was looking for in that movie, but she was nice enough to send me to see a director who was making a B-movie murder mystery. He cast me as the killer. Thus was born my career as a bad guy.
"I have never really liked playing bad guys. I especially hate playing psychos for two reasons. One is that, I have always seen myself more as the romantic lead type - you know, a sort of suave, sophisticated, sexy kind of guy. I hate the thought that there is something in me that appears to be so dangerous and dark. The second thing I hate about it is that in order to get into those characters I have had to actually explore the fact that there is something dangerous and dark in me. It is psychologically and emotionally draining. As my parts have gotten bigger and more central to the movies, the darkness is deeper and sometimes it scares me to think that I could become like my characters." He paused for a long time and then laughed, "Besides, I want to play romantic parts opposite beautiful actresses instead of doing all my best work in scenes with rough-looking guys."
"Excuse me for interrupting, but wouldn't your French background help get you those romantic parts? American women love French men."
He nodded. "It would, except for the fact that when I started in the business in the 1950's the Cold War was raging. McCarthy was searching out Commies under every rock. Immigrants and anyone with any foreign connections at all were suspect. Hollywood was scared. I had buried my immigrant past when I was still in school. I went to work for the studio under the old contract system. They owned me, body, mind and soul. The studio invented a persona which was 100% all American; I was a suntanned, muscular LA surfer-dude. I've talked at length to my agent recently about how to get my Frenchness back. Neither of us have been able to figure out how to do it. I'm afraid that ship has sailed."
"So your public persona is sort of a rootless guy who is only part of the whole person you are."
He made a weird noise in the back of his throat that was something of a cross between a growl and a groan and then turned his head to look at me, without sitting up. He had tears in his eyes. "Nobody has ever summed it up more succinctly."
He closed his eyes again and put his hands behind his head, "At first it was fun. I was in the movies. My parents were proud of me. They had worked in the business for years, but having a kid actually working in front of the cameras was a thrill for them. I think I was on my second or third movie when my dad came to work on the film I was in. That may have been the highlight of his life. He kept introducing me to other crew members as his son, the movie star. Keep in mind, mine was a very small role in a B-movie, but to my dad I had become as big as Clark Gable or somebody." He smiled to himself at the memory.
He went on, "My dad died in a terrible accident on a movie set a couple of years later. The studio paid a sizable settlement to my mom and me. Maman couldn't live without Papa. She died a year or so later, supposedly of a congenital heart condition. The only problem with Maman's heart was that it was broken.
"I paid off my bungalow in West Hollywood with the settlement money and decided to get serious about my career. I made dozens of movies in the 1950's and early 1960's. Most of them were small roles in bad movies. There was a lot of dreadful acting in those movies, most of it mine, but I learned something from every mistake I made. I was mentored by some really great actors and some fabulous directors.
"Because my dad had been in the business so long, I knew a lot of the behind-the-scenes people who had been my parents' friends. I already knew how much the crew knows about the craft of movie making from listening to my dad and his buddies talking with amazing sophistication about intricate details of movie making, including acting. Once I started acting, I learned as much from the crew as I did from the actors and directors. Even now, sometimes if I'm having trouble with a scene, I'll ask the prop lady or a lighting or sound guy what they think I'm doing wrong. M
ost of the time they can tell me exactly what is tripping me up, because they've seen it all before at one time or another. The crew can be a huge resource to an actor. Unfortunately, a lot of actors barely notice the people who work behind the cameras other than the director or maybe the director of photography.
"Actors make a big mistake in ignoring the contributions of the crew. I learned early in my career, in an incredibly dramatic way, how much they can help an actor. A couple of years ago I was nominated for an Academy Award as a supporting actor. Nobody expected me to win. Frankly, it wasn't a great movie. I had a really small part that didn't require much of me. I can't really understand why I was nominated other than there weren't a lot of great supporting roles that year, and the Academy had to pick five nominees. I don't know what the criteria was. Anyway, there was no way I should have won that award. People aren't supposed to know how the voting went, but I was told by someone who was supposedly in a position to know that I won by one of the largest margins ever - despite being the darkest of dark horses.
"The people who voted for me were not my fellow actors, who for the most part barely knew who I was. The people who voted for me were the non-acting