Dorian won his first Oscar two weeks after my divorce was finalized. Soon after, he started dating one of the most famous actors on the planet. I fantasized about her death, and sometimes my own, more often than I can admit. I spent the next few years on antidepressants so strong I remember only snippets of them.
Eventually, I crawled out of my hole.
I got work again.
When that story about celebrity phones getting hacked broke out and those nude photos of me were everywhere, I barely reacted.
When it started coming out that I was difficult, unstable, that my assistants quit one after the other, I took it in stride. I scoffed at the idea that I’d given an STI to many of my lovers. That one was so blatantly made up it was almost funny.
You’re not here to learn about my sex life, but there was no one for averylong time.
I got cast in that goofy comedy—god Ilovedthat role and everything that came after. Gradually, I stopped all the pills. I avoided seeing Dorian as much as possible. I only attended events I was certain he wouldn’t be at. When I turned out to be wrong and I did see him, it would send me spinning for weeks. I drank. I daydreamed about all the things I wanted to do to him, all the ways we could have been happy. I popped pills again,and immediately made myself throw up. I hid from everyone around me.
I was thirty-one when I met my second husband, young enough to start a life like normal people do. To say I do in a big white dress, grinning like idiots in our portraits. It was a small wedding, allegedly because that’s what we wanted. We were two famous people who valued privacy. The gossip rags said I’d lost too many of my friends over the years. The truth: I was terrified that Dorian would randomly turn up and ruin it, so we only invited our twenty-two guests one week earlier.
We had Jonas and, two years later, Hazel. Dorian sent extravagant gifts, which I immediately put away in storage. I had my assistant send him thank-you cards and sign them for me.
He won more awards, dated much younger women. I tried really hard not to care.
For the next few years, I clambered through a professional desert, as so many of us do after having children. I battled with postpartum depression twice. I enjoyed being a mother, some of the time. The rest of it, I mapped out all the other ways my life could have been. The roles I could have snagged. The risks I should have taken. The awards I could have won. Or at least, been nominated for. If only I’d been stronger, smarter, prettier, better.
Things took a turn, once more. I was approached by the director you know, about the movie you think of when you hear my name. The role of a lifetime, dropping in my lap, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven. A budget so high it made every mouth in Hollywood water. The bottomless digital ink spilled over the surprise, the shock, the strangeness of the fact thatI’dbeen cast.
By the time I found out that Dorian was the main producer on the movie, I was in too deep to walk away. Wouldyouhave? Would you have turned down everything you’ve ever wanted because of the risk you mightlose it again?
Maybe you’re stronger than me.
The rumors didn’t start again right away. Yes, I’m talking about the one where I threw a glass at a production assistant. How I was found almost unconscious and half-naked in my trailer one morning. About my husband’s despair over the state of me.
I’d like to be able to claim that I made the connection. That I understood, right away, how the events of my life fit together like pieces of a puzzle. But, like I said, this isn’t about making me look good. This is about the truth.
Because Dorian was back in my life, and that was enough to distract me from the curious timing of these rumors.
Technically, there was no cheating this time. No sex, nothing of that sort.
I’d learned a few things. I was more mature. I had children I hoped to raise in a stable home.
But Dorian managed to permeate every pore of my life just the same. There were middle-of-the-night calls to discuss revisions to the script. Later, there would be middle-of-the-night calls over his relationship woes, his broken heart. Calls from a rehab clinic, at which, I learned only recently, he was never a patient. There would be endless texts, last-minute schedule changes. Filming on the other side of the world at a grueling pace.
I’m not suggesting thatallof it was orchestrated with the ultimate purpose of my demise. But nothing Dorian did was innocent.
He threw party after party, where I had no choice but to make an appearance. He announced his engagement two days after calling me crying because of the breakup.
My marriage suffered, obviously. I breathed Dorian. Thought abouthim all the time. In many ways, usnotsleeping together made it worse.
There were more roles, each one better than the last. Nothing I could seriously consider turning down. All produced by Dorian. Before I knew it, our lives were intrinsically tied. He had access to me at every moment of every day.
I’m not pretending to be a damsel in distress. I claim no innocence, not then, and not now. Dorian was destroying my life, but he was also shoving this most delicious feast right in front of me.
And I was hungry, so hungry.
My husband stuck around. I’m pretty sure he was having an affair for the last two years of our marriage, but no one would blame him for it. The man was married tome. He tolerated Dorian at our holiday parties, our children’s birthdays. He allowed him to offer Hazel—our sweet Hazel, who’d wanted to act since she was so little—her first role at age thirteen. Dorian had approached her first. By the time the decision came to us, the parents, we knew Hazel would never speak to us again if we objected.
That brings us to the movie Dorian and I starred in together. The erotic thriller, the twisted romance. Add this to the list of things people would never believe: for the longest time, he wasn’t meant to be my costar. At least five other actors had been attached to play the male lead role. They all dropped out. Creative differences, the media said. Conflicting schedules. You’ve heard all that before.
Now I know that Dorian designed it that way. He never even suggested he might be interested in the role, only to swoop in at the last possible moment, when it was way too late for me to back out.
This part was never leaked, so I’ll paint you a brief picture. For every sex scene, there were a dozen takes. In between, I lay mostly naked for everyone to see. Despite my repeated requests, no one could find the time to bring me a robe. Intimate scenes are usually filmed on closed sets—withonly essential crew members present. But not on this film. Every time the director yelled Cut, there were more men I’d never even met behind him. And then there were all the instances of Dorian going off script, kissing me and touching me in ways I never saw coming. How violated I felt deep inside, how much I forced myself to go along with it, hoping it would be the end. How I despised myself for liking it a little bit, in spite of everything.
