Inside Out(23)

Once I made the decision to get clean and sober, staying that way was actually easy. The negotiation was over: I never wanted to experience that moment of waking up and trying to remember what I had done the night before again. I didn’t want any more of that embarrassment. I wanted to be present, not dulled by alcohol or sped up by cocaine, and I dedicated myself fully to the process. I’d always been interested in spirituality but felt uninspired by organized religion. Once I saw that the principles of AA were centered on trusting God “as we understand Him,” I knew I had found a point of connection.

AA also helped me understand more about my parents. One of the program’s many catchphrases is “doing a geographic,” meaning when people like my mom and dad pick up and move instead of dealing with their shit head-on—not realizing, of course, that they are always taking their shit with them. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten” is another AA slogan that struck home with me, because it perfectly encapsulated my parents’ approach to life, and the inevitably disappointing outcomes they ended up with, over and over again.

St. Elmo’s Fire got passable reviews. The New York Times called it “as good a film as any to put into a time capsule this year to show what and whom young viewers want.” It did all right at the box office, too. Ultimately, it became a kind of classic of the era, a quintessential coming-of-age movie, and it definitely gave my career a massive boost.

But for me personally, St. Elmo’s will always be the movie that changed my life. If I hadn’t gone to rehab to make that film, I really wonder if I’d still be alive. And while I didn’t really think, Holy shit! I’m in a hit! at the time, I did have a tingly feeling that something had struck.





Chapter 10


Emilio and I started dating seriously after I got sober. We were together for six months, and then we got engaged, and I moved in with him in his condo in Malibu. He was very sweet, very attentive, and, looking back, I think a major factor in how quickly we moved was that I was craving a family, and he had a close relationship with his. They lived nearby and, in fact, when I first met Emilio, he was still living at home with his mother, Janet, an artist; his father, Martin Sheen (whose birth name was Ramón Estévez); his little sister, Renée; and his brothers, Ramón Estévez and Charlie Sheen, who’d taken his father’s stage name. All of the members of the Sheen/Estevez family were actors except for Janet, and whereas I’d always thought of acting as a job, they considered it an art form. I hung on to their every word, trying to absorb some of their seriousness and passion.

Martin had reembraced Catholicism after suffering a heart attack at thirty-six, and had subsequently overcome his own alcoholism. That was an inspiration to me. Emilio’s mom, Janet, had a no-nonsense side, and she was the pillar of the family. I particularly liked Charlie, who I saw as extremely bright and quick-witted, but also as an artist who was full of emotion. He showed me some of his poetry, and I remember being struck by the intensity of his feelings. That was the part of Charlie that a lot of people perhaps didn’t see, or maybe still haven’t—a more gentle, fragile, emotional man than the cocky, combative persona he has projected publicly. Look back at his performance in Platoon: that didn’t come out of nowhere.

Emilio and I would often go over to the family house to have dinner or hang out on the weekends. I never really felt fully incorporated into their clan, but I’m sure that had much more to do with me than with them. (I’ve seen his mother since and talked to her, and she had a totally different perspective of me than I would have thought.) I, of course, assumed that I wasn’t good enough for them—not educated or smart or sophisticated enough. I’d never known people with such strong principles, especially Martin. A longtime political activist, he had been arrested for his anti-war stance, at anti-nuclear demonstrations, for supporting Cesar Chavez, and so on. I was fascinated by all of it but rarely joined in the political discussions at their table, feeling I had everything to learn and little to contribute.

Emilio and his family were, in a lot of ways, a good influence on me. He hated cigarettes, so I gave them up. Unfortunately, like a lot of people quitting smoking, I started putting on weight once I didn’t have the crutch of my cigarettes. It became a problem in the summer of 1985, when I got cast in the movie One Crazy Summer, which required me to be in a bathing suit much of the time. We shot on the beach in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod and Nantucket. It was a dream setting for a truly wacky comedy with some very wild comedic actors: John Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, and the legendary William Hickey. I was pretty much the only girl, which was kind of isolating, until I met a quirky, wonderful social worker who was on the set to work with the kids in the movie. Her name was Patsy Rugg, and she became one of the pivotal people in my life.

We got talking the way women do, and when it emerged that I was newly sober, she told me that she had been sober herself for a very long time. She offered to be my sponsor. Her generosity and guidance made all the difference in the world. All of a sudden, I had a support system, someone I could count on. Patsy didn’t have kids, but she certainly was a mother to me.

But I was having serious food issues. I could barely bring myself to look in a mirror during the filming of One Crazy Summer because I hated what I saw and worried about how it would translate on-screen. I was also frightened; I was sure any director would find my shape unacceptable and I’d never get another part.