Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(23)
His favorite saying belonged to producer Neal Moritz, the man behind The Fast and the Furious franchise: “Don’t give it five minutes if you’re not gonna give it five years.” Trevor said it so often that, in time, Meghan began to use it herself, presenting the phrase as though it had sprung fully formed from her head. Her version is more refined: “Don’t give it five minutes unless you can give it five years.” But Trevor had aphorisms—and chutzpah—to spare. As he once told a former USC buddy: “I’m a gigantic believer that all this shit can come to an end any minute now, and you’ve gotta take advantage of [it]. I’m Jewish and all that, but I think you got one shot at this life, so if you have a chance to have some fun and you’re not hurting anybody else and you can still take care of everything else to be taken care of and—I always find a way to have a lot of fun. That’s never an issue.”
He was the quintessential example of a young man who burned the candle at both ends, playing and working hard. Cuba, Palm Springs, New York: the world was his oyster—at least until he reached his credit card limit. As he said: “If I’m on a plane going somewhere, when I land I’m working, on the plane I’m working, when I’m drinking I’m working. But I’m always having a lot more fun than most other people I know.” A driven producer and an ambitious actor—it was a classic Hollywood combination.
When Trevor’s movie Zoom began production in early 2005, Meghan had recently snagged a brief appearance on the sitcom Cuts. It was one line, one measly line, but Meghan felt that she was on her way to the stars. Later on an anonymous blog, Working Actress, she described that feeling: “At the start of my career, I remember freaking out, and celebrating over getting one line on a shitty UPN show. At the time, that was a big success. It was phone calls of congrats, and flowers, and celebratory dinners with wine glasses clinking. It was a landmark of more work to come, and a glimmer of hope that said ‘holy shit, you’re really doing this.’”
While she waited for her close-up she made ends meet as a hostess in a Beverly Hills restaurant, teaching gift wrapping at a local store, and using her other skill, her impeccable handwriting, to earn decent money as a calligraphist. She had learned the skill back at Immaculate Heart, and as she later commented: “I’ve always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well.” At that time her claim to fame was writing the envelopes for the June 2005 wedding of singer Robin Thicke and actor Paula Patton.
The roles were coming, but not as quickly as she would have liked. In the summer of 2005 she was booked for a role on the show Love, Inc. and later in the year, around Thanksgiving, a TV movie called Deceit. That was followed by an appearance as an insurance salesperson on the short-lived sitcom The War at Home.
While Meghan was steadily but slowly chugging along, Trevor went from boom to bust. His movie Zoom, which was released in the summer of 2006, was an unmitigated disaster. The family action film, described as a “dull laugh-free affair,” received a 3 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie’s star, Tim Allen, even received a Razzie nomination for Worst Actor.
It was not much better for Meghan. So far, 2006 had been a bust both for film and TV roles, though the couple’s social life got a bit of a boost when in August they were invited to the Hamptons for the Coach Legacy Photo Exhibit. The event celebrating the American handbag manufacturer saw the couple sipping champagne and rubbing shoulders with wealthy socialites and the celebrity fringe—but it didn’t help them up the Hollywood ladder.
The daily rejections would have broken someone with less grit, but Meghan knew it was a numbers game. As girls dropped out and headed home, defeated, and the more she went out for parts, the greater her chance was of booking something. As her motto said, don’t give it five minutes unless you can give it five years. And her five years were not even close to being up.
Like other girls doing the rounds she had a gym bag containing the essential wardrobe for every possible part she may be called for: red for a feisty Latina, pastels for the girl next door, mustard yellow for African American. Short skirts, long skirts, blazer, bikini, and tops—everything she needed was in her trusty tote.
At the same time, as she acknowledged, being ethnically “ambiguous” allowed her to go for virtually any role. “Sadly, it didn’t matter,” she later wrote for Elle magazine. “I wasn’t black enough for the black roles and I wasn’t white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn’t book a job.”
She was sitting in her sweats, fabric tubes covering her forearms to keep skin oil off the envelopes she was hand addressing for a calligraphy client, when her agent called.
He had secured an audition for her. There was one hitch. She had to appear in what the producers coyly described as a “body-conscious outfit,” that is to say a bikini, swimsuit, short skirt, or shorts so that they could get an idea of what her body looked like. It was a cattle call for the position of briefcase girl on the popular TV game show Deal or No Deal, but with nothing else lined up, she agreed to go. After all, it was only a short drive from the West Hollywood home she now shared with Trevor to Culver City, where the auditions were taking place. As she picked out her shortest skirt she could have been excused for wondering: Is this why I earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations?
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