Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) Read Online Free PDF Page A

reentry.”

    I knew I had to hold on to the purity of my intent. I knew my intent was not to gain status, or money, or fame this second time around, but to be . . . groundbreaking.
    Ruthie, my Kabbalah teacher, with whom I regularly meet, and who teaches me all things spiritual, told me my ego is my biggest fault and challenge.
    Oy vey.
    I wanted to go back because I knew it would be groundbreaking. One can break ground quietly; one can start a small crack or dent that does not mean much, except that it is an opening. When I started my show I was in the closet. There were no gay people on TV. Ellen wasn’t out yet and there was no
Will and Grace
. Now here we were ten years later; I could do it all again—only be out. I would be able to talk about my family like the other hosts did. I thought, “Wow—this could be a big deal.” I thought, when I saw the Times Square billboard, that this was what I was meant to do.
    There are no mistakes.
    Faith or fear.
    Remember to breathe.
    Maybe my job was to ride the wave, make it to shore, and rest. And then, once rested, surf out again, swim out again, only this time, without barriers or boundaries—without shame. Just be. Allow the light. Corny but true, that was my intent.

    I have had tremendous luck in my career, amazing opportunities to work with some of the best artists alive, and now another opportunity was coming my way. I have been fortunate. Almost all the directors I’ve ever worked with have been women, which is shocking to begin with, considering the law of averages. I got to be directed by Nora Ephron, Angelica Huston, and Penny Marshall. I have come to know and love Mia Farrow, Chita Rivera, Sharon Gless. Celebrity is odd—hard to make your way through. As I said, a few months ago Jane Fonda was at my house. Now I know people think celebs hang out with other celebs a lot—but I haven’t found that to be true. Jane Fonda called me one day and said with sincerity, that she would like to know me better, be my friend. I invited her over and she came.
    I’m the kid from Rhonda Lane, so how did I wind up here, or, rather, how did
she
wind up there, talking to me in my home? In the five hours Jane Fonda visited me, she was able to mine through all of my “movie-star mother” issues. And she walked down with me to my craft room and sat with me and watched twenty of the movies I had made, and looked at all of my art and asked me questions. Every fantasy I’d ever had about a mother being alive and wanting to know me came true, in that time with Jane Fonda in my craft room. And then we walked back up to the main house. Her son called and told her he had asked his fiancée to marry him the other night, and he wanted to tell her about it. I watched her eyes well up and I heard her ask about the ring, and, you know, I was thinking, “Wow.” I had just watched her live a real moment in front of me and the fact that she is able to live and feel all of that is why she’s a great actress, because most people can’t take that in. That was a moment of near complete clarity for me, with her in my kitchen, and thinking of her sitting on a tank in Hanoi in 1972 and speaking of peace at a time when I knew that peace was the answer because children know; their souls are closer to God. She inspired me as a child and here she was in my living room continuing to inspire me.

    This is what I was thinking in Times Square, when I saw the billboard, how lucky I had been, past opportunities, none of them lost, so why lose this one? Jane Fonda had been in my house and now Barbara Walters was asking me to be on her show, and it was startling to me, and the very fact of that—the startlement of it—made it clear to me to go forward. With the intent to challenge the image this country has of celebrities. The intent to work with very talented people. The intent to laugh and hear laughter, and not to get lost. One year only. I knew a person is only as good as her brakes, just like any