Inside Out(21)

True to form, within weeks of my move, my mother showed up at my doorstep with her new young boyfriend and Morgan. She needed a place for them to stay while she looked for an apartment, she told me. She seemed worse than ever. They crashed in my tiny house for a few weeks; I knew if I let them stay any longer, I’d never get them out. I wouldn’t have minded if it was just Morgan. (And neither would my girlfriends: he was sixteen and growing into his looks.) But he was a teenager now, no longer a fragile little boy. In fact, he was in military school back in Roswell; he had decided he needed some structure and sanity in his life—which I understood too well.

Time’s up, I told Ginny: you’ve got to go.


I GOT A call from my agent, Hildy Gottlieb, saying Sony wanted me to audition for a new movie by John Hughes, who had made a big name for himself directing a series of hits about teenagers: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science. The morning of the audition, I got on my motorcycle and took off for the studio, where Hughes was holding a general casting session. I did all right in the audition, but it seemed like Hughes wasn’t impressed, and I didn’t think I’d get a part.

I was walking down the hall after the audition when I heard footsteps hurrying after me. “Miss, miss,” a voice was calling, but I didn’t stop, assuming there had to be some other “miss” this guy was pursuing. I was halfway down the stairs when he caught up to me, panting.

“Are you an actress?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?” I said.

“Joel Schumacher,” he replied, “my boss.”

Joel would recount this story over and over again for years to come. Vanity Fair quoted him in a 1991 article as saying he’d seen “this flash running down the stairs—she had long black hair down to the waist, she was incredible-looking, like a young Arabian racehorse.” So he sent his assistant after me and had me come in to read for the part of Jules, in his new film with Columbia Pictures, St. Elmo’s Fire.

Jules was, fittingly, a party girl who was developing a cocaine habit. She was one of seven recent graduates of Georgetown University who were trying to find their way in the adult world and would meet regularly at a bar called St. Elmo’s. It had that dynamic energy about it, like it was really going to be something. And, in the wake of the John Hughes movies that were so popular, it felt like a whole new generation was coming into focus on-screen. St. Elmo’s Fire would star Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham, Andrew McCarthy, and me.

Memory—especially memory clouded by drugs—is a funny thing. In his own memoir, Rob suggests that we had some kind of hot-and-heavy romance; I can vaguely recall one ill-advised late night together, but I’m grateful to him for the complimentary descriptions of our youth. In truth, I liked all my costars and remain close to some of them today, but the person who stands out from this period is, of course, Emilio.

I met Emilio the day we were each having our screen tests, and we started talking right away. He had a quiet confidence, which was very attractive to me—he seemed so grounded—and he had a great sense of humor, too. I loved his looks: his sand-colored hair and piercing blue eyes, the lovely structure of his face and his chiseled features. As rehearsals got under way, we began to hang out.

But Emilio was a very disciplined person; he consumed alcohol like a normal person, and he didn’t smoke or take drugs. I kept that side of myself out of his sight. Zezé had moved to L.A. and was living with me now, and we did a lot of coke together. Actually, I did a lot more than she did: at my peak I was going through an eighth of an ounce every two days by myself.

I guess there were rumors about my partying, because one day when I was at the studio having a fitting in wardrobe, Joel Schumacher suddenly appeared in the room. “If I hear of you having even one beer, you’re fired,” he announced in a loud voice in front of all the others. Then he turned on his heel and walked out. I felt like I had been punched. For him to dress me down in front of other people was demeaning and released such an immediate flood of shame that I felt physically sick.

Soon after that incident, I got a call from Craig Baumgarten, who had lent me his house and was still kind of keeping an eye on me, at least partly because he had vested professional interest in St. Elmo’s working out. “This is what you’re going to do,” he instructed me mysteriously but firmly. “There’s a place in Redondo Beach, and unless you’re dead or dying, you’re going to show up there tomorrow. They’re expecting you.” I wasn’t sure exactly what this place was, but he gave me the address. I knew he was serious when the assistant I’d just hired told me I had an appointment scheduled for the next morning and that she was going to take me there herself; he’d called her, too.

I had already planned dinner that night with my friend Tim Van Patten, whom I’d met shooting the pilot for a TV show that never went anywhere, and a friend of his at a sushi restaurant on Melrose. At first I was careful with my drinking—no hard alcohol, that was my rule—but as I watched Timmy and his friend doing shots, I thought, What the hell.

One drink led to another, and then another at the next bar. I was joking with Tim about the effects of alcohol versus cocaine when I laughingly heard myself say, “I’m a drug addict,” as if it were a big joke. But it didn’t feel like a joke. I had never said those words before or admitted that to myself and suddenly I stopped laughing and started to cry. “No, I really am,” I told him. It was the truth.