At 32, She’s More Than Ready for Her Close-Up

My body still fits the preferred mold. I’m a size 2 and even shop in the kids’ department when I see an outfit I really want. My hair is years away from sprouting its first strand of gray. In fact, with help from a stylist named Colin and his magic bottles, I’m a sun-streaked golden blond.

Only my face gives me away.

The lines around my eyes are faint, but they’ve begun to arrive. The words “revitalizing moisturizer” hover at my vocabulary’s doorstep like unwelcome house guests. I’m even starting to notice my mother when I look in the mirror.

But I work as an actress; whether I like it or not, my face is my livelihood. And a face of 32, even if it can pass for 26, is a decade too old.

There is a contradiction that I need to make sense of: I needed to live 32 years’ worth of late nights and hard lessons to become an honest actress. I needed to study with gifted teachers, work with wise directors and grow as a person to grow in my work. Having accomplished that, though, I’ve edged past the age when agents jump to return my calls.

And there are people just like me all over the city of New York.

We serve up $4 lattes in the morning and $40 steaks at night. We’re the college-educated adults who smile behind reception desks. Maybe you wonder why we’re answering phones or waiting tables when, given the economic climate, we could be earning three times as much at a “real job.”

Believe me, we never expected to be asking whether you want fries with that.

By now, we thought, we’d be doing more than appearing three faces from the left while Denzel Washington chases the bad guy through the crowd.

Please understand, I’m not complaining. I chose this career. I get loads of moral support from friends and family, and some days, I get to do things that civilians only dream about.

Picture yourself on the Hudson River on a cool October night, dressed like it’s 1929--spit curls and all--under Woody Allen’s watchful eye. Granted, working as an extra is hardly an artistic challenge, but it’s the ultimate costume party.

Imagine walking into a warehouse that’s a scale replica of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then spending the day playing a museum-goer during the theft scene that opens “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Or how about scurrying around an auction house dressed in a cardigan and pleated skirt as one of Hugh Grant’s employees in “Mickey Blue Eyes”? (In the words of “Rocky” star Burt Young after we’d finished dressing: “Oh, I’m lovin’ dis. Youse look just like Cat’lic schoolgirls.”) My parents made their way to Brooksville, Fla.’s only multiplex four times to catch this movie. I can be seen for almost a full minute.

Now, consider watching Sam Waterston try a case on “Law & Order.” It’s far more fun to be sitting in the jury box watching him in person, feeling his character’s passion and getting a master class in acting to boot. It’s an incredible rush, even if the final cut allows only a blink-and-you-miss-me appearance as the trusty court stenographer.

Better still are the days when “Law & Order” hires me as a stand-in simply because I happen to be the same size and coloring as a guest star. Not my own role, true, but I can hardly complain.

While the actress in question is being powdered and lipsticked, somebody has to run through her scenes for the director and crew. So there I sit in the interrogation room, being asked about my whereabouts the night the crime went down. (I’ve been innocent each time, thank you very much.) On my last trip there, I testified from a wheelchair that my husband really didn’t mean to kill me. Twenty minutes later, I watched Lindsay Crouse play the same scene--and learned something about the power of a well-chosen pause.

This stuff won’t get me recognized in the frozen-foods aisle. But a director might notice that I know my way around a set.

I meet actors on sets who’ve come to stargaze. They get a rush from being near celebrities, so they accept eight hours of stale coffee and waiting rooms for one hour on the set. It’s different for me: I’m there to watch the process and remind myself that their work is no different from mine.

My real acting takes place in theaters and on the sets of low-budget indie films (you can see some of it on-screen next summer in Kevin Smith’s “Vulgar,” if you’re not too put off by the title), so my experience is hardly the same as Gwyneth’s or Cameron’s or Sarah Jessica’s. In terms of paychecks and power, we’re from different species.

But the industry becomes far less daunting when I see the mechanics are the same. That levels the playing field. We all prepare emotionally, run lines with other actors, crack jokes with the crew. Then we hit our marks and allow our feelings to flow. It’s also comforting, I must confess, to see that some soap stars look downright plain at 8 a.m. before coffee and makeup have done their thing.

One-day film and TV jobs are the easy side of it; I simply show up at my call time, do my work, then leave. Theater is more time-consuming--and pays less. It’s not uncommon to rehearse one play while running in another. Add a scene-study class and head shot mailings, and that’s 40 hours of work each week on top of the survival job. (Mine is being an administrative assistant at the Associated Press.)

If my own theater company is producing the show, I’ve also got to find a few hours for building sets and scouring thrift shops and dollar stores for elusive props. Plastic bok choy and legs of lamb are not easy to find, even in New York.

Usually, I’m earning a total of exactly $0, except perhaps the three bucks per day that the actors union mandates. So far, though, my luck’s held. Around the time the hours and sorry lack of cash have me muttering about getting a “real” job, I feel an audience listening.

You learn two different kinds of silence on stage: the “beware, black hole ahead” kind of silence, and the “they’re completely with me” kind. The latter feels like the warmest hug your mom ever gave you.

There’s nothing like sitting in a restaurant at 11 p.m. and realizing that the people at the next table are debating the play you just did. You’ve made them think, made them question, opened a dialogue. Multiplied, that’s how the world changes.

I’m not claiming satisfaction. For me, this isn’t enough. The fun of shooting indie films is tempered if most of them never get beyond screening the final cut in the director’s apartment. I want to be heard. I want more than stolen moments to study my lines. I want time to really research a role and to give it all of my energy.

I wouldn’t mind being recognized in aisle 7 once in a while. Fame surely doesn’t make life permanently blissful, but I’d appreciate having my work recognized by a group of people that couldn’t all fit in my apartment at once.

Time’s passing quickly, though. I’m twice as old as Hollywood would like me to be. I’m as likely to change that system as I am to get a call from ICM tomorrow.

I’ve lived more than a decade of early-morning alarm clocks and late-night parties, good books and bad movies, falling in love and enduring divorce court. That’s what life is. But we’re inundated with the advertising-fueled myth that women are meant to live their adult lives looking like their fresh-faced 16-year-old selves.

I do know friends who’ve traded mud masks and massage for acid peels and breast implants. They look great, but I’m not sure the stuff injected into their lips will bring a three-picture deal--or happiness.

For now, I’m sticking with herbal moisturizer and a decent night’s sleep now and then.

I’m determined to sign with an agent, and it’s going to be a good one, despite the fact that I’m a full-grown adult.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got head shots I should be mailing.