|
I
Am Not The Difficult Angel |
She may not be an angel among "Angels" says Kate
Jackson, but reports of her ill temper are exaggerated
Seven
o'clock on a California Sunday night. All over the
state, families watch television, finish washing or
waxing the car, even go to church. But up in the
farthest reaches of Los Angeles' very richest canyons,
Kate Jackson, the intelligent, "difficult" Charlie's
Angel, is staying home - alone.
Her house is a California work of art. Fresh flowers.
Artificial flowers. A carpet that looks like an ice
cream flavor-of-the-month. A grand piano, with sheet
music open. Skis propped up in a doorway. In another
doorway, tennis shoes with accompanying racquet. "I'll
turn on the lights out back, so you can see how great it
looks." And outside - past wall-sized windows, a
shimmering blanket of new-mown grass - a perfect,
understated pool; rows of golden marigolds that swirl
against the luminous green and blue. Man! It is quiet!
"I live here alone, sure. But I'm not worried. I have
the dog. And naturally, the neighborhood is okay. I did
live in a house that was robbed once. That was awful."
Kate Jackson pours coffee from a perfect china service
and, as almost the first thing she says, talks about
fright. "I'd been out to some friends' house for dinner
and it got late so I spent the night. The next morning
we decided to go to the beach. We went by my house for
my suit. We went in the front gate. A fern was missing.
Well, you know, I just thought, a fern is missing! But
as we were walking around the back, I thought, things
just don't look right, you know? Then when I went into
my bedroom, I saw it was - awful. Someone had been in
there a long time. The brass bedstead had even been
bent" she waves her hand as though to shoo the whole
thing away.
"Anyway!" she says. And smiles.
Kate Jackson was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She
majored in drama at the University of Mississippi and
Birmingham Southern College. She did summer stock,
studied in New York, then held a variety of odd jobs,
including that of an NBC tour guide, before becoming a
regular on ABC's Dark Shadows.
In her early 20s, she drove - by herself - out to
Hollywood, where she managed to land a few small roles
in series. She was a beautiful girl who could act, and
Hollywood rewarded her by making her a star on ABC's The
Rookies. Then - too quickly? - came Charlie's Angels.
Those three beautiful girls, with the stunning blond in
the middle. And perhaps because there was only one
blonde, it was inevitable that Farrah Fawcett-Majors
should get the hard publicity.
"Well," Kate says, loyally, "it was wonderful that she
got it. It was great for the show, and she never did
anything at the expense of anybody. She never said a
mean word, and that means a lot. You know, at first I
used to kid her by saying that if she ever washed up in
television, she could get a job in the Brillo business
with that hair of hers - but wait! That's just the kind
of thing that if you write it down they'll think we're
fighting again, when the truth is we never fought at
all."
"In fact," (and Kate Jackson draws herself up severely
on her couch), "I would like to take this opportunity to
say that in many ways I have been mis-tagged by the
press. I have been called the difficult one. And I'm
not!"
But why, with three to choose from, would the difficult
one be Kate?
"For all sorts of reasons. I think because with Farrah
and Jackie, if you say something to them, it's more or
less predictable what they might do. Farrah might smile,
Jackie might say something sweet. But I might say
something! So that doesn't conform to some people's idea
of an actress. Listen, I'm not kidding, there's a rotten
little snitch on the set of Charlie's Angels. The minute
any little thing at all happens, he's on the phone to
one of those grocery-store newspapers. It makes me
furious! Because the character they've evolved for me is
terribly insecure, temperamental... I may be a little
bit nervous, but that's as high up on the scale as I
go."
Remember, we are in California twilight, in this
well-kept room. Kate is sitting on her couch, looking as
nice as peach pie.
"Here's a good example of the kind of thing they do. The
first day, ok? Of the second season. Naturally, Farrah
didn't show up. Well, we knew she wouldn't. And they
hadn't really fixed on Cheryl Ladd. Nobody knew what was
happening! So Jackie and I were sitting there in makeup
- it wasn't any later than 8 in the morning - and they
said, "OK, that's it. You can go home now." After we got
our makeup off, Jackie and I decided to go out to
breakfast. When we went to get Jackie's purse, we
realized someone had locked it up in a storage room. We
could see it, but we couldn't get to it. The door was
really flimsy, so what I did - was this."
And Kate Jackson jumps up, in perfect faded jeans, and
executes a violent karate kick into her living room's
quiet evening air.
"I just gave the door a kick. Because we thought
everyone else had gone home and we needed Jackie's purse
if we were going to breakfast. But there it was in the
next issue of the Enquirer. Kate Jackson in tears!
Storms off set! That stuff was just a lie. And they tell
those lies all the time."
But, again, why would they choose Kate as the one to
pick on?
"Well, it isn't just me, of course. From the start,
there was a whole lot of feeling that we wouldn't be
able to do it. That three women just wouldn't have the
stamina and drive to do an hour show for more than one
season, or maybe even the first 13 weeks. Because it's
an incredible amount of work. But more than that,
somebody out there is sure that women don't get along
together! That they just don't! So that's what those
people are looking for - a story about three women
fighting. Farrah said it herself last season - the only
thing we competed for was the butternut doughnuts they
brought us with coffee. And this season, even though
Cheryl is new, she certainly isn't going to be the new
kid on the block for long."
Once, in the late 19th century, an obscure woman
novelist named Olive Schreiner said that the life of a
woman artist should be lived all in her work, that the
events of her "real life" should be as thin as skim milk
under the rich cream of her accomplishments. Olive
weighed close to 200 pounds, was dead broke and not very
pretty; she was talking about herself but could have
been describing the rich, thin and beautiful Kate
Jackson.
"It takes three months to make the average 90-minute
movie. Well, we make a 60-minute segment of Charlie's
Angels in just six days. I'm up every morning at 5. I
water the plants and walk the dog for 15 minutes - I
don't jog, if I did I'd be dead by the end of the day -
but I walk briskly and take, you know, deep breaths. I
leave here by 6:15; I'm usually at the studio by 6:30.
Then there's a wardrobe and the hairdresser and makeup,
and by 8 we're on the set. We rehearse for marks." (By
the time, Kate Jackson's voice has dropped into the
one-not monotone of small children or faith healers; she
is telling this story more to herself than me.)
"Then they light. Then they do the master shot. Then the
close-ups. At noon, every day, they bring me a
turkey-san-with-mayo-and-a-carton-of-milk and I take it
with me to the dailies. I watch the dailies every day.
Usually the other girls use that time for publicity, but
I watch the dailies so I can see my work, see what I'm
doing wrong, OK? Then we work the rest of the afternoon,
usually until about 7:30. Of course, if we're out on
location that's something else. Some nights when I come
home, it's 10:30; 11:30. I look at the clock and think,
'Oh God.' Because I'm only living that night to get up
again at 5 in the morning."
It is an oft-quoted remark of Kate's that starring on
Charlie's Angels has cut down on her love life. Some
years ago she shared a beach house with Edward Albert.
Recent months have featured a string of glamorous men.
As dates, no one could complain about David Soul of
Starsky & Hutch or Warren Beatty, or Nick Nolte, so
dashing in The Deep. But glamorous as these guys are,
there is certainly no one around here on this lonely
Sunday night.
"I never do anything on a week night," Kate continues.
"I eat something, I read a book, I talk on the phone, I
go to bed."
She lets her head drop from side to side. "Listen!
There's nothing like the necks and shoulders of actors.
Have you ever noticed how they crane their necks like
this or this? Or pull at their shoulders like this?
Sometimes they do it on the sneak like this. What
they're trying to do is lighten up some of the burden.
It's not just the long hours, it's the responsibility -
especially in a show like Charlie's Angels. There's a
lot of money, a lot of people's jobs riding on your
shoulders. You feel it. You have to be very careful
about your own energy level. About what you eat, and how
much rest you get. The quality of energy you put into
your work."
Marigolds and swimming pool aside, it's all beginning to
sound a little bleak. Kate Jackson seems, in this
silence and luxury, like one of those children born
without immune reactions, raised in a sanitized glass
cube, beautifully cared for but irrevocably isolated -
from the dirty, exciting outside world.
"What," I cautiously ask, "did you do last year during
your vacation?"
"I went to Hawaii with my sister and her husband for a
week. Then I did James at 15. Then I was on The Mike
Douglas Show. He let me sing. I messed up the first
time, I was so scared, but I did it over and everyone
was swell. Then, for a surprise, Mike had my little
sister come on the show. I sat there, just speechless,
entirely blown away. Because I guess I love my little
sister more than anything else in the world. Later, I
watched the tapes, and it was very useful to me, because
I got to see myself acting naturally you know?"
And the rest of her.... vacation?
"I went to New York, to work on the $25,000 Pyramid. We
won a whole lot of money! We'd do the shows; we'd go out
to dinner. It was just great." (Kate did magnificently
on that zany show, displaying notable intelligence and
grace under pressure, winning at least one of her
contestant-partners $25,000). "Then I did The Today
Show. It was good to see how I worked, live. Then I
drove my jeep to Utah for a week."
It's getting on toward 10 o'clock. Time to leave. Before
I go, Kate takes me into what seems to be a combination
storage room and den. She shows me a wall of
photographs, which she has taken and developed herself.
Pictures of children, elephants, a young man with a
guitar. She picks up another picture.
"Take a look at this, what do you see?"
It's the man with the guitar, behind glass.
"What is this, a double exposure?"
"Look again," Kate says sternly.
Kate is faintly there in the picture, her camera up to
her eye.
"It's me, outside, taking a picture of him, inside. I'm
reflected in the glass."
I notice we are really in a dining room. Up against
cartons and a broken clock, just in front of a large
television set, a card table waits, with one place
setting - knife, fork, spoon, placemat, and a small
white saucer with perhaps a dozen vitamin pills. "That,"
Kate says, "is what the maid sets up for me before she
goes home."
Kate Jackson. Less a glamour queen than the athlete in
training. An actress who says wistfully, as she walks me
to the door, that she guesses she has a "love affair
with the camera," that she likes to act at "full tilt
boogie," that in 10 years "I'll be just where I want to
be, and I will have been there for a long time." On the
other hand, Kate Jackson says, as though the thought had
just occurred to her, "I might be fat, dumb and happy?"
-By Carolyn Se |
