Redirected: L.A. Story

Christopher Walken

As told to Nancy Miller — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Photograph by Chuck Zlotnick

I took my first trip to Los Angeles to visit my older brother, Ken, who was an actor working in Hollywood. I was 16, and he was in his early twenties, which felt like a big difference at that age. One of the first nights he took me to the Sunset Strip. This was the late 1950s, so there were these coffeehouses where people played drums, drank coffee, and read poetry—that kind of beatnik stuff. We walked into a place, and there was a young Marlon Brando—at the beginning of his fame—playing the bongos with people gathered around him. It was one of my first impressions of L.A., and it was quite an impression. My brother also took me on a tour of one of the big lots—it might have been Paramount—and it was really like a studio from an old movie. We’d walk around, and a bunch of Indians and chorus girls would go by. It was very Hollywood.

Around the time of The Deer Hunter, in the late ’70s, I began coming here regularly. I’ve never permanently lived in L.A., but for over 30 years I’ve spent a lot of time here, sometimes for months in rented houses for movies that took a long time to shoot. For Batman Returns I lived in an area known as the “Bird Streets” because all of the streets are named after birds. I think I lived on Skylark Lane, just off Sunset Plaza, right up in the hills. That’s the kind of place I’d live in if I ever moved here full-time. But I live in Connecticut now and am kind of set in my ways.

I’m not a very good driver, so when I’m in L.A., what I usually do is walk around by myself and go to the movies. I always go to the movies in the afternoon. You have the place to yourself. It’s funny—when I’m not working, I never go to them because the Academy sends them to you on DVD so you can watch at home. But when I’m making a movie, on my day off that’s what I do. I walk down Sunset to the ArcLight, and I heard they’ve redone the Laemmle 5 near Crescent Heights, which I’m happy about. The last time I was in Los Angeles, I walked from the Chateau Marmont down La Cienega, like I have a million times, to the Beverly Center. I went in, took the elevator to the top to their theater complex like I always do. I wanted to see a movie; it didn’t matter what. But when I got there, all the movies had left. The multiplex had closed down, and I was unhappy about that, so I’m glad places like Laemmle are reopening.

I love the Chateau Marmont. I’ve been going there for decades. I’ve been staying in the same room for years. It’s reassuring that there’s still a crack in the tile in the bathroom that’s been there and never fixed. My room also has a kitchen because I like to make my own food. They have good kitchen stuff, which they automatically put in my room before I get there. I get a big pot, a small pot, a good-size frying pan, and a tea kettle. There’s even a toaster, which I don’t use. It’s their stuff, but it’s good stuff. One dish I like to make is scallops à l’orange, but that might be because I just like saying “à l’orange.”

» Get Walken’s scallops à l’orange recipe

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

As told to Elina Shatkin — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:39:00 GMT

Photo courtesy of Joseph Gordon-Levitt/twitter.com

I am a third-generation Angeleno. My grandpa grew up in South-Central, and my grandma grew up in Boyle Heights. When they were young, South-Central was a Jewish ghetto, and Western was the western edge of L.A. They had a soda pop wagon, but I think they made most of their money selling liquor during Prohibition. My grandpa started working when he was 12. He was a hustler. I get a lot of my work ethic from him. He used to take the Red Car, and he remembers when it got dismantled. It’s fascinating to me: How different would L.A. be if public transportation had been allowed to flourish? We’d probably be a more classically designed city, spend less time in cars, and all be happier. I love old Los Angeles. If you watch the brilliant Charlie Chaplin movie City Lights, you don’t think of it as L.A. because it looks so urbane and gorgeous and art deco, but it is. It’s downtown L.A. That’s sort of the neighborhood where we made a lot of (500) Days of Summer. We now have a plaque at that park near Angels Flight.

I grew up in Sherman Oaks, and I went to Van Nuys High. The Valley is a hybrid of two worlds. On the one hand, it’s a lot like every suburb everywhere in the country. But I also got the benefit of a huge metropolis with all that culture: music, food, movies, people. In New York the suburbs are distinct from the city, whereas L.A. is one big sprawling mess, so there’s not as big a separation between the Valley and more cool urban pockets.

I live in Silver Lake now. Looper’s director, Rian Johnson, and I are neighbors. We hang out at each other’s house or we go out to eat, although Rian can cook pretty well. Looper is the first time anyone has written a part for me. When Rian handed me a draft of the script, we were at Du-par’s eating steak and eggs. I waited until I got home to read it. When I did, I thought, “This is brilliant.”

I basically like to watch movies and eat. Of all the cities I’ve been to, Los Angeles has some of the best cinemas. You’ve got the New Beverly, the Nuart, and the Egyptian. It’s funny to have such a dignified cinematheque amid all the Hollywood mishegoss. Growing up, my cinema was Laemmle’s Sunset 5. When I was 16 and got my license, I would drive over Laurel Canyon to see anything that was playing there: Sling Blade, Big Night, Trees Lounge, Daytrippers. I saw Swingers there—twice. I went with my buddy from high school. We were so stoked about the movie, we went back in and saw it again immediately afterward. Spending time in the world of twentysomething guys who are on the prowl for chicks—that’s what you dream of doing when you’re 16. Plus it’s a great movie.

I lived in New York for nine years, and I decided to move back to L.A. because I like having a space where I can just freak out if I want to. I have a house where I can yell at the top of my lungs. In New York, if you start singing at the top of your lungs, no matter where you are on the island of Manhattan, someone’s going to hear you. Another virtue of Los Angeles is getting to sing in the car. I miss that when I’m out of town. Even though the traffic’s a bitch, it’s nice to have such a private environment to listen to music.

Los Angeles is a hard city to show to people because I think what’s charming about it are the people. It’s not like New York or Paris, where I’ll take you to this great neighborhood and we’ll walk around and it’s gorgeous. L.A. doesn’t really have that. When friends are in town, what I’m excited to do is introduce them to other friends of mine, and that usually happens at someone’s house. When you’re in New York City, you’re in New York City, and it defines a lot of your experience. But when you’re in L.A., you can make your own experience. There’s so much more space, you have the room to make your own world.

Jeff Probst

As told to Nancy Miller — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 03:25:00 GMT

Photograph by Andrew Eccles

If I hadn’t grown up in Kansas, moved to Seattle, and then New York before coming to Los Angeles, I would have self-destructed. I came to L.A. once about ten years before I moved here to visit friends who were loosely—and I mean loosely—working in the entertainment business, but I thought this was the inside of the Hollywood machine! All we did was party every night. I left thinking that’s what L.A. is: a series of clubs where you’re either on somebody’s list or you stand in line hoping to get in. When I moved here, those friends had partied their entire careers. I think seeing them woke me up. If you’re going to L.A. to work, you need to pay attention to how easily you can get lost in a party that never ends. L.A. can be a rolling orgasm if you want it to be.

The city is full of pockets—my favorite is the beach. I love to play volleyball and Rollerblade, even though I’ve been told Rollerblading isn’t cool anymore. I love to do the rings on Santa Monica Beach. When you swing on them, you feel like you’re a flying trapeze artist. But first you have to decide if you’re willing to be embarrassed. Half the time I’ll be in line and think, “Oh, look at that guy, he’s so much better than me—I’m not doing it. Oh, now the hot chick is going—I’m not following her!” But then you ask somebody to give you a hand, and suddenly the entire culture that was so intimidating becomes your support group. Once you do it, and you get a little bit of a blister, it’s an electrifying feeling.

Another favorite pocket is Beverly Hills. Right around lunchtime—in that spot around Rodeo, Beverly, and Wilshire—is a big pot of agents, assistants, and famous people. It’s not merely the money, which is sometimes literally flying out of people’s pockets, but it’s a sense of style that the men have and the look of the women, with the whole out-of-control plastic surgery thing. Whenever my very granola, Birkenstock-wearing buddy from Seattle comes to visit, our standing date is at an outdoor restaurant in Beverly Hills. We just gawk at the boldness of it all, then we’ll look at each other and say, “They’re humans like us; we’re just here gawking at ourselves.”

The biggest culture shock is when I return from shooting Survivor. I’ve been out on this island for seven weeks with locals who look like they’re from a Mel Gibson movie. The local women are usually missing teeth because it’s cultural or cool to pull them out, or they’re quite heavy because they drink a lot of coconut milk—not anything we’d define as sexy. And then I land at the international terminal at LAX, and I get into my car, and all of a sudden it’s superbeauty, it’s beyond beauty, and it’s everywhere.

Kenneth Branagh

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:02:00 GMT

Photograph by Blake Gardner

My first visit to L.A. was in 1988, promoting PBS’s Fortunes of War. I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and it was a shock to the system, it was so glamorous. I would walk from the hotel to Rodeo Drive and window-shop, not that I was in a position to make many purchases. I returned with my theater company to do a play at the Mark Taper Forum in 1990, and it was interesting to be in the city on theater wages, which was not much at all, to be dependent on communal transport and not be picked up in limousines. We would carpool from the Oakwood apartments on Barham Boulevard to the Music Center. We had to discover which bits of town were open after ten, when the curtain goes down. We found that if you were a meat eater, it was possible to have a great time around the corner at the Pacific Dining Car. It was a slightly more feet-on-the-ground relationship with the city.

Six months later I was back to properly do a Hollywood movie in Dead Again, with a lovely house in the Hollywood Hills and a very nice car, and to see a more shiny Los Angeles. The house was just above Chateau Marmont, with an amazing view of the city that was sometimes entirely clear, beautiful, and crisp and other times completely hidden. This has always been a city of contrasts to me, and I feel fortunate to have seen the extremes. I’ve always found it to be a friendly place because so many people are from somewhere else. You aren’t quite so lonely, in a strange way—you’re in the company of others who came here for work or for the sunshine or for the Hollywood dream. So whether I’ve arrived with a pound in my pocket or more strapped for cash, I’ve always felt at home.

That time was an incredibly dreamlike existence, and my day involved waking early and getting into the pool and then into a red Mustang convertible and coming down from the hills and along Sunset to Paramount. One of my biggest thrills was realizing that the soundstage we were on was where Orson Welles started filming Citizen Kane in 1941. My Angeleno friends talk about the city having no history and bemoan the lack of castles and palaces. But for me the recent history is rich, whether it’s where Citizen Kane was made or the studios on La Brea where Charlie Chaplin worked in the teens and would walk out the back into the lemon groves.

One of the things I enjoyed about directing Thor was to dig into a new neighborhood. Raleigh Studios, where we were shooting the interiors and visual effects, is in Manhattan Beach. People were saying that my wife [film art director Lindsay Brunnock] and I were going to need a passport to go that far south. They talk about the South Bay like it’s in the middle of the country. We found a house on the Strand, and we made friends and had a whole neighborhood life. We walked a lot on weekends and got into a routine that we liked in that it involved being outdoors. I would get up early in the morning to work out at the beach, where you come across an amazing crowd of characters, and soon you’re on nodding terms with all these mildly crazy and eccentric people, all trying to develop a relationship with that big lung that is the Pacific Ocean breathing its goodness back into the land—you just felt fantastic at the end of the day. I would play hooky while we were in postproduction and go down to the beach to catch the sunset. I like to meditate, and it was a great way to clear my mind. There’s a lot of passion in Los Angeles. The sun and lifestyle don’t dampen the enthusiasm with the world, which is contrary to how most people view Los Angeles.

Elijah Wood

As told to Nancy Miller — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:52:00 GMT

Photograph by Joe Pugliese

We first moved to Los Angeles from Iowa when I was seven. My mother, older brother, and I moved into the Oakwood Apartments—this prototypical, entry-level complex for anyone who wants to be an actor. I think Seth Green and Jennifer Love Hewitt were living there at the same time. Our idea was to give it six weeks and see what would happen during pilot season. As I booked work and things got more stable, my sister and dad moved out here, and we lived in Toluca Lake and then close to Valley Village. It was there I discovered my favorite pizza: Joe Peeps. It has this great list of ingredients for designing your own pizza. My mom suggested we get a sauerkraut and Canadian bacon one. For 15 years that combo was our thing. Now when I call to place an order, they always know it’s me because nobody else has ever ordered that except my family.

So many formative teenage moments for me happened here. I grew up in the Valley—from about age 8 to 17—so I’m connected to that area, and revisiting always brings back memories. For five or six years we lived on Hesby Street, and it was the first house of ours that felt truly like home. When we were buying it, I was shooting a movie called North with director Rob Reiner. He overheard a conversation about the house and said, “I used to live on Hesby.” Turns out he and Penny Marshall had lived in the same house—our house!—back in the ’70s. For me it’s where I became a teenager. I learned to drive at that house, and with that I learned Laurel Canyon was the gateway, the connective tissue, between the Valley and basically the rest of L.A.

My friends and I would eat dinner in Little Ethiopia and see shows at the Troubadour—that’s a favorite venue of mine. My brother, who is seven years older, used to hang out at the Bourgeois Pig on Franklin. That coffeehouse was a popular place for teenagers because it was like this den of intellectuals, and you could play pool. I couldn’t wait to get old enough to hang out there by myself. When I finally went at 16, I felt really cool.

I also remember the first time I had uni at a sushi place on Ventura. I was 16, on a date, and I saw it on the menu and thought I’d look cool ordering it. Not knowing what it was, I put the whole piece in my mouth and instantly experienced the worst smells of the ocean in this orange gelatinous substance. I kind of vomited. I didn’t have uni again until about two years ago.

Like a lot of Angelenos, I’ve run hot and cold with L.A., but that perception has softened in the last decade. I live in Venice, which has undergone a renaissance, and the whole city seems to be reestablishing itself. I’m not sure if we are more connected to it or that we’re representing it better, but L.A. has become more exciting. It’s an awesome time to be here.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

As told to Elina Shatkin — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:25:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy wikipedia.com

For me, going anywhere in L.A. is often about food. I grew up near Angeli Caffe, and my brother and I remember eating there a lot when we were kids. When I heard it was closing, I thought, “Oh, we better go and have dinner.” ¶ I grew up mostly in Los Angeles until I was 17 and moved to New York City to go to Columbia University. At first we lived in Silver Lake, and then we moved to Hancock Park. Because I grew up on the Eastside, it was kind of a special occasion to go to the beach and ride our bikes. So now if I’m in Los Angeles for work and they put me up in a hotel, I like to stay by the beach.

I love Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica. When I was nominated for an Academy Award for Crazy Heart a few years ago, I ate really carefully to fit into my dress. The night after the Oscars I went and had a double order of my favorite langoustine pasta at Giorgio’s. Actually I think I went two nights in a row.

Another time, when I had to do a week of press for Nanny McPhee, I took [costar] Emma Thompson there, and this group of gorgeous Italian men recognized Emma and had crushes on her. They must have been heirs to billion-dollar fortunes. They kept opening $500 bottles of wine and sending glasses to our table. One of them finally came over with his shirt open down to his belly button and sat with us, flirting with Emma.

My dad still lives in L.A., and my mom and brother are more bicoastal these days, with places here, too. Something I love to do with my family is go to the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. You can spend the whole day there. My mom loves to go, and I’ll bring my daughter. The farmers’ markets in Los Angeles are so different from the ones in New York. There are 15 kinds of oranges, for instance, and the avocados are like no avocado you’ve ever had before. Sometimes in New York I’ll eat a piece of fruit and think, “This is not the way a tangerine is supposed to taste. This is not what an artichoke tastes like.”

Val Kilmer

As told to Linda Immediato — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:29:00 GMT

Photograph by flickr/TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³'s

My favorite place in Los Angeles is LAX. Don’t laugh. Seriously. You know that runway that takes you out over the ocean? We lived at the end of that runway. It was my first home—in Playa del Rey. Now if you look straight down during takeoff, you’ll see there’s this ghost of a community. It’s all sand, the streets are still there, but all the homes are gone because that runway didn’t exist. As soon as they put it in, in 1964, all of the houses were condemned. In 1963, there was an earthquake, and I think my dad was bothered by the ocean—by the idea of a tsunami—so we moved to the ass end of L.A: Chatsworth. We lived at the very end—and I mean the very end. You would see a lot of desert rats: the remnants of real cowboys and prospectors. They were eventually all lumped together as “hippies,” but they were real country people back then. I remember Wilford Brimley shoeing horses. There was a rodeo below our house every Saturday. So what you would call a real cowboy was around back then—there’s still zoning for horses on Devonshire.

Our next-door neighbor growing up was Roy Rogers, and that was weird because he was a normal guy, but he happened to be the most famous cowboy on earth. He would go to the market in that crazy Cadillac with the bent Winchester for a steering wheel. The Jeep—Nellie Bell—was there. Trigger had died, and he was stuffed and displayed in the window. We used to go and peek in. My dad later bought that ranch.

I went to a Christian Science school called Berkeley Hall on Burton Way until I was 14. It took two hours to get there, which is probably part of the reason I have such trouble with traffic now. Back then, in the ’60s, there was heavy fog—and yes, smog, too. There was so much smog that in the middle of Beverly Hills they would cancel P.E. because our lungs were hurting from just breathing the air.

My brothers and I were bused in, but more often we were late, and my parents would have to drive us. I have a vivid memory of coming over Coldwater Canyon—about 12,000 times—and seeing Edward G. Robinson; he lived at the bottom of the canyon. I guess he missed being famous or something because he would be out there often, just standing there and waving. I still remember him dressed in beautiful silk paisley—and that face! This was L.A., and it was normal.

L.A. works great if you don’t think of it, or have expectations of it, as a city. It’s just a giant, goofy town. I’ve come to peace with Los Angeles. I started to years ago—oddly, through Jim Morrison. He was looking at the city with the eyes of a poet, and he was a big fan. L.A. is a mecca, really, in the way the rest of the world still thinks of Hollywood. For good or ill, we’re the center of the entertainment business on earth. People don’t drive through Oklahoma City and expect to make their dreams come true.

Timothy Olyphant

As told to Julia St. Pierre — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:31:00 GMT

Photograph by Maarten de Boer

I was a swimmer. My senior year I was flown to USC on a recruiting trip. It just so happened that weekend was the world premiere of the film 16 Days of Glory, a documentary about the Olympics. I went with Mike O’Brien, who swam for the U.S. in the ’84 Games, and Thomas Fahr-ner, who swam for West Germany. Those guys were walking the red carpet—and they were Olympians. It was a wonderful combination. I was an athlete and I was coming here to swim, but at the same time there was show business! I am not sure I would have admitted it at the time, but Hollywood was very attractive to me. I just found the whole thing seductive.

I thought I wanted to study architecture. But when I went over to the architecture school and sat down with the dean, the meeting lasted about a minute and a half. He said, “The swim team flew you out?” I said, “That’s right.” He said, “You can’t be on the swim team and study architecture. The commitment, the classes—it can’t be done.” I said, “Well, that’s disappointing.” I told him I’d noticed an art gallery or ceramics studio on my way to the interview. He said, “That’s the fine arts school downstairs.” And I said, “Can I be a fine arts major and be on the swim team?” The answer was yes.

There are so many things in life that you just don’t see coming. I needed some elective units to graduate, and I’d read some Joseph Campbell books and I was trying to follow my bliss, so anything that came to mind I was giving a shot. I was like, “I can even take Acting 101.” I’d never done a high school play, and I was doing these silly exercises, but I read the Stanislavski book, which I found quite confusing and at the same time wonderful. In art school I’d learned to appreciate artists and the way they were going about things—having a great deal of fun with the work but also taking it seriously. Until I read that book I didn’t think of acting in that regard. I had a list of goals I wanted to reach, and each one was just as stupid as the next: Go back east and get my master of fine arts. Do stand-up comedy. Join a band (I can’t sing or play an instrument, but it still made the top five). I went to my wife and said, “You know, I’m thinking about doing this acting thing instead.” She said, “Tim, just do something.”

Some people told me to stay in L.A. because this is where the business is. Other people told me to go to New York because that’s the best place to learn. So we loaded up a Ryder truck, and we drove across the country and went to William Esper’s acting studio and knocked on his door. We were there about seven years.

Now we’re back, and I really enjoy the city. Who doesn’t like putting on a pair of flip-flops in early February? I still get a great deal of enjoyment out of the art world here, which continues to be arguably the best place to see up-and-coming art. It’s like anything, though. You’ve got to make an effort. It doesn’t come to your door.

Alison Brie

As told to Amy Wallace — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:33:00 GMT

Photograph by Ramona Rosales

I worked as a clown at parties when I was 17. I took a little weekend course to learn how, but it was not like going to clown college, which I imagine to be much more legitimate. You made up your own face paints and decided on your clown name. Mine was Sunny. My wig was yellow. We each got a boom box with songs, and they’d send you on your way. My best balloon animal? The giraffe. But really, if you know how to make a four-legged creature, you can basically call it anything. I saw all different parts of Los Angeles. Some of the parties were at rich people’s houses. You’d walk in, and it was fully catered, and the adults were having their separate party off to>

the side and were all dressed up. You’d go to another booking, and it was a family of five living in a one-bedroom house. Sometimes I was Sunny, and other times I was Snow White, which was probably my best character. The worst characters were the Powerpuff Girls. The costume was this really short dress and a giant strap-on head, which posed a challenge when you’re making balloon animals and trying to get away from leering fathers.

I grew up in South Pasadena. Other than college—I went to CalArts—I lived in South Pas until six months ago. I love the place. You can’t build buildings there over three stories. You can’t put up billboards. When I was a teenager, a lot of the kids in high school hated it because they wanted to be in Hollywood, where it was cool. They said there was nothing to do. It was so boring. But my friends and I saw that as an opportunity. We’d have little barefoot parades. Or borrow shopping carts from the market and take them out for rides. Or put on crazy outfits and go somewhere and make a scene: “Let’s dress up as boys and go to Blockbuster to rent a video and see if people think we’re boys or girls.” So nerdy, but it was good, clean fun. It probably fueled a lot of what I do today.

I had a girlfriend who was a year older, and I felt like such a rebel when I would hang out with her. We would get in her car, put on Pat Benatar, drive down to Venice Beach, and dance in the center of the drum circles. We loved drum circles. We researched them and found different underground ones in seedy parts of L.A. We’d go, and they always turned out to be cool and not scary at all.

When I moved back to South Pas after college, people would say, “It’s so far! How can you still live over there?” I would always say, “We actually have trees. It’s so beautiful.” For a while I worked the front desk at three different yoga studios. It was nice to feel that everyone knows your name—and not because you’re on a TV show but because you went to school with their daughter.

Madeleine Stowe

As told to Amy Wallace — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:03:00 GMT

Photograph by Craig Sjodin/ABC

I went on my first date when I was 18. It was with Dennis Quaid. He had just come to L.A.—he’d maybe done a couple of films. We met at a theater where I was observing actors, and he asked me out. I made him come to a cinema class at USC, where I was studying journalism and cinema. He kept wanting me to go see Swept Away at his house. And something told me I wasn’t ready. He told a friend of mine, “You know, I think she’s a virgin. And I’d hate to take that responsibility.” He was very sweet.

I was born in Queen of Angels Hospital, but Eagle Rock is where we had our first house, on Wiota Street. Eagle Rock was one of those places that nobody seemed to know existed. It was pure working class, sandwiched between Pasadena and Glendale, an extraordinary neighborhood where all the neighbors knew what all the children were doing. And me, my brother, and sister ran wild.

We would run into other people’s houses for dinner or wait to be invited. We’d play hide-and-seek and dash throughpeople’s backyards. At that time there were these communal gates that would let neighbors cross into each other’s yards to take a shortcut. We’d spy on the neighbors, and we were convinced they were counterfeiters. We were reading a lot of Nancy Drew. We would tunnel our way through a deep bank of ivy to peer into their cellars. That was the kind of play we had.

There were pomegranate trees all over the place, and we were doing our best to steal the fruit. We were out until dark, and then the streetlights came on. If I got bored, I would go talk to the woman next door, Mrs. Marks, and her mother, and we’d play pinochle. Another neighbor raced midget race cars—I remember I’d always look at his trophies. Another collected teeny-tiny penguins. When the Helms Bakery truck would come down our street, it was the biggest delight. The driver would toot his horn and open the back panel of his truck and reveal drawers and drawers of baked goods. Oh, my God, the cupcakes and the doughnuts. They had the best cream puffs. The smell of that was just all-time wonderful.

For all the bad raps that L.A. gets sometimes, I saw a lot of devotion here. I had a very sick dad—he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was four—and I remember him having terrible seizures in the middle of the night. The neighbors would come running in to help at two or three in the morning, no questions asked. It always gave me a sense, despite a lot of the darker things, of a great optimism in this neighborhood spirit.

I went to Rockdale Elementary in a brick schoolhouse. We used to tromp around the attic and pretend that the teachers were part of some kind of evil conspiracy. Every single weekend from when I was about six, my mother would drop us off at the movies at the Eagle Theatre at Eagle Rock and Yosemite. There’d be a double matinee. The first movie I remember was The Three Lives of Thomasina. Movies got there very late in the game, but I didn’t know that. Seeing them spurred my love of cinema.

When I was ten, I started to study the piano. First I studied with a woman at Occidental College, and then after about seven months I began to study with Sergei Tarnowsky, who had been Vladimir Horowitz’s teacher. He was in an old home in Hollywood—I want to say near Wilton—and he taught me until I was 17, when he passed away at the age of 92.

I adored him. Relaxation of the wrist was really important, and he’d put his fingers on my wrists to see if they were relaxed. I remember just loving the idea that someone could read me. He was really my father, I think. But we had a very formal relationship. After he became ill, in my last lessons he taught me from behind a trellis. He would sit in the sunroom, and I couldn’t see him, yet he was lucid and gave me these beautiful lessons. My last lesson, I just sensed I would never see him again, and I remember going to the trellis to say good-bye and my mouth started to quiver, but I wouldn’t cross to the other side to hug him. It was one of the real vivid moments of my life, and one of the things I really regret. I quit when he died. I’d spent so much time in isolation at the piano. And I also knew that I wasn’t good enough.

When I was a senior in high school, I was obsessed with James Dean—that’s what made me want to act. I was also interested in journalism, so I went to interview James Dean’s former best friend, William Bast. I was wearing knee socks and had this humongous tape recorder. Last year Bast wrote a book about having been Dean’s lover. He was very nice to me.

For a while my husband, Brian Benben, and I had a ranch in Texas, and I realized that I was somehow trying to approximate that feeling I had as a child, when we all took care of one another. What I got in Texas was a replica of that neighborly connection with people that I had growing up—where you can sit in someone’s kitchen and talk for hours—except with lots of land and lots of horses and cattle.

Now I’m back in L.A., and I go to this place in Santa Monica every morning that serves the most incredible lattes—Caffe Luxxe—and talk with people I would have never met otherwise. We’re all eccentric. And then we go off about our day.