Fame

‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have to take this part.’

Sabrina Leon looked at her manager with queenly disdain. Ed Steiner was fat, balding and past his prime (if he’d ever had a prime). In cheap grey suit trousers and a white shirt with spreading sweat patches under each arm, he looked more like a used-car salesman than a Hollywood player. He also had an intensely irritating, domineering manner. Sabrina did not ‘have’ to take the part. She did not ‘have’ to do anything. I’m the fucking star here, she thought defiantly. I headlined in three Destroyers movies. Three! That’s Destroyers, the most successful action franchise of all time. You work for me, remember?

Ignoring Ed, Sabrina got to her feet and walked across the room to the French windows. Outside her room, a lush, private garden exploded with colour and scent. Bright orange, spiky ginger flowers fought for space with more traditional roses in white and yellow, and orange and lemon trees groaned with fruit beneath the perfectly blue, cloudless California sky. Then there were the views. The house was built at the top of a steep canyon, so even from the ground floor they were spectacular, across the rooftops of the exclusive Malibu Colony, home to some of Hollywood’s biggest, wealthiest stars, and beyond to the endless, shimmering blue of the Pacific Ocean. If it weren’t for the resolutely hospital-like furnishings in all the rooms – white metal beds, uncomfortable, hard-backed chairs – you could almost imagine you were in a junior suite at the Four Seasons, and not locked up like a prisoner at Revivals, the infamous $2,000-a-night rehab of choice for burned-out Young Hollywood.

It had been Ed Steiner who had forced Sabrina Leon to check herself into Revivals. Two weeks ago, Ed had driven round to his client’s mansion off Benedict Canyon at eight in the morning, packed an overnight bag while she watched, and frog-marched Sabrina into his shining new Mercedes E-Class convertible.

‘This is ridiculous, Ed,’ she’d protested. Still in her party clothes from the night before, a black leather Dolce & Gabbana minidress and sky-high Jonathan Kelsey stilettos, with heavy black eye make-up smudged around her eyes, Sabrina looked even more desirable and vixen-like than the tabloid caricatures that were wrecking her career. ‘I’m not an addict. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘Grow up, Sabrina,’ Ed Steiner snapped. ‘This is not about you. It’s about your career. Your image. Or at least what’s left of it. How many ratzies saw you staggering out of Bardot last night looking like that?’

‘Looking like what?’ Sabrina bristled, her sultry, almond-shaped eyes narrowing into slits, like a cat about to pounce. ‘Looking sexy, you mean? I thought looking sexy was part of my job.’

Ed fought back the urge to slap his truculent, twenty-two-year-old client across her spoiled, heartbreakingly sensual face. Sabrina knew full well she had no business being in that club last night, or any club for that matter. She could be foolish, and reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. He started the engine.

‘Right now your job is to look contrite,’ he said crossly. ‘You are deeply sorry for your behaviour, for what you said to Tarik Tyler, you are addressing your problems, you are asking for privacy while you heal during this difficult time, yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill as well as I do, kid, so do us both a favour and quit playing dumb, OK?’ He glanced over to the passenger seat. ‘What the fuck is that?’

In the outside zip-up pocket of the overnight bag, a bottle top was clearly visible. Pulling it out, Ed Steiner found himself clutching a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Sabrina was unapologetic. ‘Helps me sleep.’

‘You think this is funny?’

‘Oh, c’mon, Ed, give me a break. Rehab’s boring. I’m not gonna get through it without a drink.’

‘You think you’re Marianne Faithfull or something?´ To Sabrina’s consternation, Ed flung the bottle into the rosemary bushes that lined her driveway. ‘You think people are gonna forgive you this bullshit because it’s so rock ’n’ roll? Well, let me tell you something, Sabrina: they won’t. Not this time. You are this close to being finished in this town.’ He held up his thumb and forefinger, waving them inches from Sabrina’s face. ‘This close. Now put your fucking seatbelt on.’

Sabrina yawned defiantly, but she buckled up anyway, slipping on a pair of Oliver Peoples aviators to shield her eyes from the sun’s early morning glare. Outwardly, she continued to play the rebel – it was all she knew how to do. Inside, however, she felt her stomach flip over, a combination of last night’s excessive alcohol consumption on an empty stomach and visceral, gut-wrenching fear.

What if Ed was right?

What if she really could lose it all?

No. I can’t. I won’t let it happen. If I have to go back to my life before, I’ll kill myself.

The headlines of Sabrina Leon’s rags-to-riches, True Hollywood Story were familiar to everyone in America. Homeless kid from Fresno gets plucked from obscurity by big-shot Hollywood producer Tarik Tyler, becomes a mega-star thanks to her lead role in Tyler’s Destroyers movies, and slides spectacularly off the rails.

Snore.

No one was more bored by Sabrina’s past than Sabrina, as she’d made patently clear in Revivals’ group therapy sessions.

‘Hi, I’m Amy.’ A shy, middle-aged woman in a drab knitted cardigan introduced herself. ‘I’m here for alcoholism and crystal meth. I pledge confidentiality and respect to the group.’

‘I’m John, I’m here for cocaine. I pledge confidentiality and respect.’

‘Hi, I’m Lisa, I’m an alcoholic. I pledge respect to the group.’

It was Sabrina’s turn. ‘What?’ She looked around her accusingly. ‘Oh, come on. You all know who I am.’

‘Even so,’ said the therapist gently, ‘we’d like you to introduce yourself to the group. As a person.’

‘Oh, “as a person”,’ Sabrina mimicked sarcastically. ‘As opposed to what? A dog?’

No one laughed.

‘Jesus, OK, fine. I’m Sabrina. I’m here because my manager is an a-hole. Good enough?’

Things got worse when patients were asked to talk about their childhoods. Sabrina sighed petulantly. ‘Dad was a junkie, Mom was a whore, the children’s homes sucked. Next question.’

‘I’m sure there was more to it than that,’ prodded the therapist.

‘Oh, sure. There were the assholes who tried to rape me,’ said Sabrina. ‘From twelve to fifteen I was on the streets. Poor little me, right? Except that it wasn’t poor me, because I got into theatre, and I got out. I got out because I’m talented. Because I’m different. Because I’m better.’

It was the first time Sabrina had expressed any real emotion in session. The therapist seized on it gratefully. ‘Better than who?’ she asked.

‘Better than you, lady. And better than the rest of these junkie sad sacks. I can’t believe you guys actually signed up for this piece-of-shit programme out of your own free will.’

Everyone knew that Sabrina Leon was not at Revivals by choice. That her manager, Ed Steiner, had staged an intervention as a last-ditch attempt to salvage her career.

Stumbling out of a Hollywood nightclub a few weeks ago, with a visible dusting of white powder on the tip of her perfect nose, Sabrina had lashed out at Tarik Tyler, the producer who’d discovered her and made her a star, calling him a ‘slave driver’. Tarik, who was black and whose great-grandmother had been a slave, took offence, as did the rest of the industry, who demanded that Sabrina should apologize. Sabrina refused, and a scandal of Mel Gibson-esque proportions erupted, with outrage spewing like lava across the blogosphere. Access Hollywood ran Sabrina’s feud with Tyler as their lead story, devoting three-quarters of their nightly entertainment roundup to a vox-pop of ‘celebrity reactions’ to Sabrina’s ingratitude, all of them suitably disgusted and appalled. Even Harry Greene, the famously reclusive producer of the hugely successful Fraternity movies, emerged from his self-imposed house arrest to brand Sabrina Leon ‘a graceless, racist brat’. In one, single, ill-judged night, the tide of public affection and goodwill that had swept Sabrina Leon to unprecedented box-office success – America loved a good rags-to-riches story and Sabrina had been the ultimate poor girl made good – turned so suddenly, so violently and completely, it was as if her career had been swept away by a tsunami.

And when the tide finally receded, she’d washed up at Revivals.

‘There’s no need to be insulting,’ chided the therapist.

Isn’t there? thought Sabrina

She had to get out of this place.

Two weeks she’d been here now. It felt like two years, what with the early-morning starts, the gross, tasteless health food served at every meal, the boring, self-obsessed patients. All the faux emotion of the therapy sessions, the embarrassing over-sharing of feelings, the fucking hand-holding. It made Sabrina want to throw up. Rehab was such a cliché. And, according to Ed Steiner, she still had six weeks to go.

Now, turning back from the window, Sabrina glowered at her manager defiantly.

‘I’m not working for free, Ed,’ she announced bluntly. ‘Not in a million fucking years.’

Ed Steiner sighed. He was used to spoiled, ungrateful actresses, but Sabrina Leon really took the cake. She ought to be on her knees, kissing his hand in gratitude. Here he was offering her a life-line – not just a role, but the lead role in Dorian Rasmirez’s much-hyped remake of Wuthering Heights – at a time when she couldn’t get cast in a fucking Doritos commercial. And she was bitching because Rasmirez wasn’t going to pay her. Why the hell should he? Dorian Rasmirez doesn’t need you, you dumb bitch. You need him. Wake up and smell the coffee.

‘Yes you are,’ he said robustly. ‘I accepted on your behalf this morning.’

‘Well you can damn well un-accept!’ screamed Sabrina. ‘I decide what roles I take, Ed. It’s my life. I have control.’

‘Actually, according to the release you signed when you admitted yourself into the eight-week programme here, I have control. At least over your career and business decisions.’ He handed her a piece of paper. Sabrina glanced at it, balled it up in her fist and threw it to the ground.

‘And it’s a good job I do,’ said Ed, unfazed by this childish show of temper. ‘Let’s not go through this charade, OK, Sabrina? It’s boring, it’s bullshit, and you know I’m not buying it. You know as well as I do that you need this part. You need it. Right now no other director in Hollywood would piss on you if you were on fire. Sit down.’

Sabrina hesitated. In jeans and a long-sleeved navy-blue tee from Michael Stars, with no make-up on and her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked about a thousand times prettier than she had the last time Ed had seen her. Healthier too, less scrawny, and with the glow restored to her naturally tawny, olive skin. This place must be doing something right, he thought. All she needs is to lose the attitude.

‘Sit,’ he repeated.