I Blame Dennis Hopper by Illeana Douglas

actress, and is there any advice…” I was about to keep going when Lee Marvin—bless his heart—gently held up his hand to stop me. He smiled his wry Lee Marvin smile, and in that velvety, gravelly voice, he said, “Young lady, if you have half as much energy on the stage as you do off—you ought to do very well.”
    Then he asked me my name. Lee Marvin had come off the movie screen and appeared to me, and he was now asking me my name. “Illeana,” I said.
    He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck, Illeana.” All those years I had practiced kissing him into my pillow, and now he was finally kissing me back.
    And then he continued walking. I watched his back disappear up Madison Avenue. No one recognized him. No one turned to look. Just me. I touched my cheek. You know how people say “I will never wash that cheek again?” That’s how it felt. Lee Marvin had kissed my cheek, and I was sure he had passed his movie magic onto me. Some of that magic faded when half of my classmates reacted by saying “So what, who cares” or “Who’s Lee Marvin?” But I was on cloud nine. I did my final scenes assured that Lee Marvin’s “Good Luck, Illeana” was not only a sign; it was an omen. I was bouncing off the walls. Final scenes indeed! I was a shoe-in to be asked back.
    After the performance the headmistress came up to me and shook my hand. Clearly she was impressed, I thought. Her opinion of me had changed. I waited for her compliments. “Goodbye, Illeana,” she said. What? That didn’t sound good. Where was Lee Marvin when I needed him? He could have punched her out. Or at least explained to her about my marvelous offstage energy! Two weeks later I got a letter informing me I was not being “asked back.”
    Where is the sign? Is that what you’re asking? Well … I was pretty angry about not being asked back. I was convinced that they were wrong, and that Lee Marvin and I were right. So, I decided to prove it. I applied to another acting school called The Neighborhood Playhouse. It was there that I found the teachers—Sanford Meisner, Richard Pinter, and Phil Gushie—who were right for me. At the end of that first year, I was once again required to do my “final” scenes. There was no Lee Marvin in sight this time. But right before I went onstage, my teacher Richard Pinter said he wanted to talk to me. “Remember everything you used to do before you got here? Everything you learned doing musical and dinner theater?” he asked. “Do it now.” I smiled. I knew exactly what he meant. I was a serious actor now, and I hadn’t thought about the Camelot Dinner Theatre or musicals in a while—and even though I hadn’t actually ever been on its stage, when Richard Pinter told me to remember the Camelot, I knew that he understood me. That was the sign I needed.
    But back to Peter Sellers and riding unicycles—and how that became another influential sign in my life. I had just about forgotten his words of wisdom, when, twenty-five years later, Peter Sellers himself reminded me of our exchange. But I’ll get to that.
    My grandfather invited me to watch him at work—on the set of Being There . It was the first time I had seen my grandfather on the set of a movie. I knew he was important. I knew he made movies. But most of the time he was just Grandpa, and I was his only granddaughter. He had been amused when I told him “I’m going to be an actress. Like Ruby Keeler.” She was the adorable tap-dancing star of many Busby Berkeley musicals. I was almost fourteen now and wanted to be a real actress, not just Ruby Keeler, so inviting me to the set of Being There was his way of acknowledging that he knew I wanted to follow in his footsteps. We shared a special bond, and the bond was simple. He took an interest in me when no one else did. I think he knew it,