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kept Zack's household staff, his secretary, and his publicist in an uproar as they tried to cope with her social demands and cover up her more outrageous publicity ploys.
    She was so desperate for fame and acclaim that she despised any actress who was better known than herself and so pathetically insecure about her own 30

    ability that she was afraid to work in any picture unless Zack directed it.
    The optimism Zack had experienced on his wedding day collapsed under the weight of reality: He'd been gulled into marriage by a clever, ambitious actress who believed that he alone held the key to fame
    and fortune for her. Zack knew it, but he blamed himself even more than he blamed Rachel. Ambition had caused her to marry him, and Zack could empathize with her motive, even if he didn't admire her
    methods because he, too, had once felt driven to prove himself. He, on the other hand, had been compelled to commit matrimony out of an
    uncharacteristic and embarrassingly naive streak that had
    actually let him believe, albeit briefly, in a cozy picture of devoted spouses and rosy-cheeked, happy children clamoring for bedtime stories. As he should have known from his own youth and experience, such families were a myth perpetrated by poets and movie producers. Faced with that realization, Zack's life seemed to stretch before him like a monotonous plateau.
    Among those in Hollywood afflicted with a similar case of ennui, the prescribed solution was a line of coke, a variety of drugs, legal and otherwise, or else a bottle of liquor taken twice daily. Zack, however, possessed his grandmother's contempt for weakness, and he scorned such emotional crutches. He solved his problem in the only way he knew how: Each morning, he immersed himself in his work, and he kept at
    it until he finally dropped into bed at night. Rather than divorcing Rachel, he rationalized that, although his
    marriage was not idyllic, it was far better than his grandparents' had been and no worse than many other
    marriages he'd seen. And so he offered her a choice: She could either get a divorce, or she could curb her ambitions and settle down, and he in turn would grant her wish and direct her in another picture.

    Rachel wisely and gratefully accepted the latter offer, and Zack increased his hectic schedule in order to
    keep his part of the bargain. After his success directing Nightmare, Empire was eager to let him star in
    and direct any film of his choice. Zack found a script he loved for an action thriller called Winner Take All, with starring roles for himself and Rachel, and Empire put up the money. Using a combination of patience, cajolery, acid criticism, and an occasional show of icy temper, he manipulated Rachel and the rest of the film's cast until they gave him what he wanted, and then he manipulated the lighting and camera
    angles so they captured it.
    The results were spectacular. Rachel received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Winner Take All. Zack won an Oscar for Best Actor and another for Best Director for his work in it. The latter

    award merely confirmed what Hollywood moguls had already noted: Zack had a genius for directing.
    He
    knew instinctively how to turn a suspenseful shot into a hair-raising scene that gave the audience chills, he
    could coax a belly laugh with what had been written as a mildly amusing remark, and he could steam up the movie screens with a love scene. Moreover, he could do it within the film's budget.
    His two Oscars brought Zack tremendous
    satisfaction but no deep contentment. Zack didn't notice. He
    no longer expected or sought contentment, and he deliberately kept himself too busy to notice the lack of
    it. In his quest to stay challenged, he directed and starred in two more films during the next two years—an erotic action/thriller costarring with Glenn Close and an action/adventure movie in which he teamed up with Kim Basinger.
    He was fresh out of challenges and looking for a new one when he flew to