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Peaking at 10 by Anna Chlumsky

I am applauded every day. Not in the traditional sense—no thunderous claps, bravas, or standing ovations to seven curtain calls after a luminous rendition of Ibsen or Brecht. (Not yet, anyway.) No, I am praised on the subway, at the corner deli, at my regular bistro from the table next to me, at Starbucks as my barista hands me my tall vanilla latte. And the kudos sound like this: “I know you from somewhere . . . ” “Aren’t you that girl?” “Wait, you’re ‘My Girl,’ aren’t you?” “You have no idea how much that movie meant to me.” “You made me cry.”


When I was little—heck, even up to a year ago—this type of attention was a downright daily struggle. I knew they meant well, but these folks embarrassed me in front of my junior high companions and my college friends. They singled me out when all I wanted was to forget that I used to be “special.” It wasn’t a pleasant sort of admiration either; they reminded me of the rejections of my adolescence. I dreaded explaining my waning appearances on screen. Why hadn’t they seen me work in so long? I wanted it all to go away with the snap of a finger.


All through high school, at the height of my insecurities, the lure of Hollywood was my only ambition. I practiced my Oscar acceptance speech and my Vanity Fair poses in the mirror. I spent all of my time memorizing screenplay sides and driving to auditions. Acting had been my life since I was 10 months old, and I knew no other system. Wake up, go to school, explain to your buddies that you don’t have a limousine, pretend to eat lunch by downing a can of pop, go home, fix your face, and drive to the agency. All to a chorus of “you’re too fat” and “you’re too young.”


I longed for the days when I had the birds and bees explained to me by the lovely Jamie Lee Curtis. The days when Jean-Claude Van Damme cut in front of me while I waited in the Port-a-Potty line at the Last Action Hero premiere. The Fourth of July I spent in Rob Reiner’s pool with Elijah Wood, or the time I played with Paula Abdul’s pug at the beach. The night I “ummed” my way through thanking my dog and teachers for the Best Kiss award at MTV. (Not to mention getting kissed on the forehead by Luke Perry!)


I had been given a big wide glimpse of what VH1 tells you “making it” is. But in order to realize what my version of “making it” would be, I’d need to purge theirs. By the end of high school, it had grown painful to want something so bad and seem to get so little in return for my efforts. I could barely look myself in the zit-magnifying mirror, let alone tackle an entire industry that thought I wasn’t good enough.


When the Entertainment Tonight folks interviewed me as a blonde, pony-tailed pre-teen, sitting in a monogrammed director’s chair, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “A horse dentist.” “A paleontologist.” “A journalist,” I said. Even though the footlights had always been my dream, it was never the answer for my real life. It was what I did for fun. My dream life. A more serious study would surely put me on a path to success.


So, when the time came, I chose to study International Relations, assuming my entire adolescent life had been enough Drama. I limited my stage appearances to our university’s black box theater; I thought that college would end the years of low self-esteem and self-loathing. And for four years it did. I breathed easy behind the sheltered walls of Higher Learning, sporting my maroon University of Chicago sweatshirt with the words, “Where Fun Comes to Die” emblazoned on the back. I relished burying my nerdy little head in the musty library volumes on guerilla war tactics, Aztec sacrifice, and the Tokugawa Shogunate. I built my brain, my confidence, and what I thought was a life far away from the dreamworld of showbiz. In academia, if I worked hard enough, I could make a paper better, or I could get a better grade. With acting, success seemed out of my control. After years of repeated rejections, it was getting hard not to take things personally. Even if I did my best, I still might not be a “fit” for the role. I wasn’t really sure if I still had “what it takes” to get to the top.


As soon as I graduated, I moved to New York. Don’t ask why. I robotically used to say it was because of a fact-checking job for a restaurant guide, but I could have found that in any city. In truth, it seemed like an invisible hand was pushing me to this place where people come to “make it.” I wanted to make it just like everyone else, but I wasn’t sure what I’d make it as. I tried my hand as a freelance food and travel writer, but I found myself, ironically, much hungrier than I’d hoped. I then tapped into my not-so-inner geek and set my sights on editing science fiction and fantasy—by far the most fun 9-to-5 I can imagine. (I handled dragons and spaceships daily, and the salary was better than freelance). Although the cramped cubicles and florescent daylight felt like a foreign habitat to someone who thrived under the bright lights of the stage, the office was easier to accept than to admit I had denounced my childhood ambitions.


But even in the grand abyss of New York City, where people get lost so easily, the subway fans haunted me. “I remember your eyes.” “You were so good.” “Good luck to you.” “You can go far.” Finally, the familiar question, “Why aren’t you acting anymore?” demanded my honest answer.


I had been crying on my lunch break from my office job. Crying was something I did often. Oh, I cried. I’d cry for no reason. I’d cry to my parents, my friends over things like “I just feel so confused” or “I just need to make it all fit together.” What? Those weren’t even concrete thoughts! Emotional drivel, for pity’s sake! They came from some limbo place where twentysomethings dwell. A place where we want to act like grown-ups, but we still want someone else to provide us with the answers.


I was sniveling quietly past my deli, and a run-of-the-mill psychic stopped me on the street saying she “had a message” for me. You know, one of those psychics that say they see the name beginning with a “J” in your life because that’s the most common letter for male names? I rolled my eyes and walked toward my office, pretending that was really where I wanted to be for the last 10 minutes of my lunch break. But she persisted. She left her post and followed me a whole block, trying to get her “message” across. She caught my shoulder, and I whipped around to hear her out. She said, “You were in ‘My Girl,’ weren’t you?” Wow. Good psychic. She deserved her $50/half hour for such good intuition. Then she said, “You’re not happy.” Don’t strike a nerve, lady, I’m fragile today. “You still want to be in show business.” Crap. Crap. Crap. Don’t make me confront what that I’ve suppressed for the last six years. Please, don’t! “You’re not finished with it. You still have more to go.”


Who was I? And who was I going to be? Was I destined to be like my father, who tells martini-laden stories about playing his tenor sax on 1960s Rush Street, though it’s been years since he’s whetted a reed? Or like my Uncle Vince, whose friends still refer to him as “the quarterback,” even though he roughed up his knee 30 years ago? Maybe succeeding at this life-long dream of mine was not in fact as daunting as Tara Lipinski trying to match a gold medal after the age of 14. Could I actually do it? Should I actually try?


I paid the lady 10 bucks for 10 minutes. I know, I know . . . waste of money. But I needed to do it—I had a desperate desire for answers. The psychic didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already, but after I left her lair of dangling beads and colored crystals, I went home and dragged out my 8 x 10 photo of the Three Stooges, signed personally to their old Vaudevillian pal, my Great Grandpa Jim, who wrestled a bear before a captivated crowd in the days of The Palace and Orpheum Circuit. There was his legacy, the legacy of all the Vaudevillians who built Broadway with their bare hands.


Suddenly, what I wanted became clearer in the bright white light. I took inventory of the signs: the people on the subway, the feeling of stepping onto a stage, the little tap-dancing self in the back of my brain that kept saying, “Wait, you want to be in ‘Chicago.’” I had to jump. I had to take the risk. It was time to quit the salaried job and act full-time: to dedicate my present life to the pursuit of The Great White Way and, in the meantime, play basement theaters for the love of it. It seemed I’d made my first grown-up decision by staying true to who I was as a child.


Success at a young age not only gives you a taste of grandeur and attention that you forever strive to duplicate, but it also gives you that precious sense that you can achieve absolutely anything. The trick is to learn how to let the past drive you to your next, bigger, and better peak. I know it will be a harder road than ever before. It’ll be something more akin to the vigorous path trod by the Vaudevillians than to the lucky break I got at age 10.


So perhaps my childhood success was not my peak after all. My tireless roots are burrowing much deeper—now that I’ve chosen to nurture my ambitions. I’m auditioning practically five times a day; I’m rehearsing for two openings this month; an audience just paid $10 apiece to see me and my friends writhe on a wet, dirty stage in the name of experimental theater. I wake up every morning eager to climb to the next peak, to the next show. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.


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Anna Chlumsky is an actress living in New York City. After an early career in show biz, she received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and studied at the Atlantic Theater School in Chelsea. When not acting, Anna writes screenplays and immerses herself in comic books.