Unqualified - Anna Faris

Скачать книгу

the voice of reason in uncomfortable situations regarding our lack of anonymity. When approached by fans and photographers, she smiles and shows kindness. As do I, although my annoyance and bubbling anger with paparazzi tend to be more thinly veiled.

      Anna is graceful with strangers and fans because she is actually wildly interested in every person she meets. She asks great questions. She communes with anybody and makes an instant connection with each person she meets, which lasts … a VERY SHORT TIME. Like a “goldfish, three seconds, turn around and you’re strangers” kind of way? Almost like Dory from Finding Nemo? Or the movie Memento? And that person, that nameless, forgotten person, knowing full well the moment is over, still somehow walks away feeling charmed and deeper in love than before. That’s just how intoxicating she is.

      Being TV and film stars, we live a circus lifestyle, pulled this way and that by jobs, strangers, lives on the road, all in service of the crowd. I see it as a calling in terms of the platform I’ve been given and a job that keeps me from breaking my back doing construction. For Anna, acting is a passion. She simply loves it. More than maybe anyone I know. There are home videos of her playing made-up characters from as early as eight years old. She started younger than that and really hasn’t stopped since. On set and off she is constantly slipping into character, often her go-to clown: the awful party girl you may have seen in Just Friends (perhaps the greatest supporting role in a comedy by anyone ever—no hyperbole), as well as many more with our son. She lives to entertain.

      And finally, more than anything, Anna deserves this book. I can promise you it will be a great and interesting read. A face-first dive into the mind and person that I spent one amazing decade with, and will, for the rest of my life, amicably coparent a human. She is the amazing, effervescent, former short girl, theater nerd, camp counselor, crossing guard, headgear-wearing, feistmeister, character-playing Anna Kay Faris, the “I was such a late bloomer I had to actually learn social skills to survive and developed wit to get by and then turned hot later” fan of Real Housewives, good times, extravagance, prudence, herself, her family, podcasts, books, white guilt, neurosis, great foods, repeated deep musical moments, mornings with the newspaper, small bites, feminism, and more.

      And in all the years we were together, I don’t think I smelled her farts once. They’re probably not too bad.

      Enjoy.

       I Rote a Book!

      I’m not qualified to write a book.

      I might as well have woken up one morning and thought, What can I do today that I have no experience doing, that I’m sure to make an ass out of myself while doing, and that will test a population’s patience with my mental ability? Rite a book! So I called my agent and got a book deal. Bingo, bango! Anyone can do this!

      Truthfully, though, I’m terrified. I should have done a better job of thinking this through. You know how the biggest decisions in your life never appear as the lightbulb flashes you see in cartoons but instead germinate in the deepest crevasse in your brain and slowly take root until suddenly a blossom emerges in the forefront? That’s pretty much what writing a book was for me. An idea I toyed with now and then, which eventually became more now than then, and suddenly I was pursuing literary agents and, before I had a chance to come to my senses, I was documenting my life (or at least my life in relationships) in writing.

      As my mom keeps reminding me, I do have a degree in English from the University of Washington, a school that after five long, hard years taught me that I am unpleasant to be around after smoking weed out of a four-foot bong. But I don’t think anyone, in my seventeen years of living in Hollywood, has ever actually asked me about my education. That’s kind of the beauty (or horror?) of LA. No one gives a shit about any credit outside “the industry.” So writing a book seemed like a fun, exploratory journey into the literary world, and a nice way to flex those English-major muscles.

      But now the train has left the station and I feel as though I’m bound to disappoint many people in my life, including you, dear reader. I’m an actor, and have been since I was nine, so I should point out that I have been hiding behind characters and other people’s words for a long time. There is always an out. Writing a book and putting my own words into the world is terrifying in the very way that performing in front of a camera will never be. In 2011, I naively and arrogantly agreed to be the subject of a profile in the New Yorker. It was written over the course of six months and when the fact-checker called me a few weeks before publication to read my own words back to me—words that I had spoken and completely forgotten—I knew I had to leave the country for good. My own vanity was about to destroy all I had worked for in Hollywood. Ultimately that didn’t happen, but I did have to make a couple of apologetic phone calls.

      Other small points of concern: I haven’t used a computer properly ever, in my entire life. When you have a job where you make faces and say other people’s words, you don’t have to learn technology. Sometimes you don’t even have to learn how to dress yourself, ’cause nice Lara is there to zip you up. So anyone at your neighborhood nursing home is more qualified to be punching these little buttons on this here keypad.

      In fact, I think I might even have a typo in the title of this chapter.

      Also, I don’t know why I can’t nap. I know that’s not related, but it sort of is in that I want you to know everything about me, dear reader. You and I will be best friends after all this is over. I would like it if you would send me your autobiography, too.

      Oh, and I’m really bad at social media. Why do I need to record everything online? Can’t I just keep it in my brain? But I’m told that it’s necessary to sell a book these days.

      So, just so we understand each other, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

      That’s never stopped me before, though. Actually, that’s not true. Until I was nineteen, I thought I was supposed to know everything. I didn’t, obviously, but I accepted that there was a universal understanding that we all faked it, and the polite thing to do was quietly continue the charade. I knew to lay low and keep quiet so I wouldn’t get made fun of. Then one day during my sophomore year at UW, I was sitting in the back of Intro to Something (Psychology? Sociology? I can’t remember. I was miserable at the beginning of college. I sat in the back of giant lecture halls writing letters to Dustin, the “just a friend” I was in love with, who was studying abroad in Spain), when this good-looking fraternity guy raised his hand. I don’t know what the professor was even talking about, just that the dude with his hand up said, “I don’t know what that means.” I remember a record scratch in my head: Somebody just confessed they didn’t know something? There was so much bluster—everyone was always pretending they had all the answers. So it came as a shock to me that it was okay for someone—especially a hot frat type—to say, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re all going to think I’m stupid, and maybe I am, but I don’t understand.”

      There’s liberation in admitting you don’t know what you’re doing. For me, it took years of comedy acting to get there. When you’re shooting a film like Scary Movie you have to constantly confess that you have no idea if something is going to work, and it turns out it feels good to say, “I don’t know how to do this.”

      So let me say it again: I have zero qualifications, and no one should be listening to me.

      And yet, I want to help you with your love life. I do. I have advice to share—who you should date, who you absolutely shouldn’t—and some cautionary tales, too. Plus, I’m fascinated by other people’s relationships. In fact, I’m fascinated by other people’s lives. What they ate for dinner, who they slept with last night; it’s all equally interesting to me. And while I don’t like to butt in, I do love to offer helpful, if sometimes unsolicited, wisdom. (That’s butting in, isn’t it? I’m the worst. I’m a horrible person.)

      I’ve been doling out romantic advice

Скачать книгу