Free Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini, Rebecca Paley

it out loud.
    An acting job represented a way out of poverty for my family and me. It’s a dream a lot of people have when they come to L.A., but I felt particularly responsible to change our living conditions for the better. After we slept on my mom’s friend’s floor in Hollywood for a while, we moved into a house on Los Feliz and Edgemont that looked like a mansion from the outside but inside was a dump. Nicole and I had to sleep in the dining room. We had no money for furniture. My sister had two jobs—everyone was working so hard to contribute toward our food, housing, and Scientology. It was an exhausting life, and all I could think about was moving us up and out. I also felt I had to be something bigger than a Sea Org member to ever regain respect after being a deserter, so I thought the only way to do so wasto become a celebrity, or what Scientology calls an Opinion Leader (one who is persuasive and whose opinion matters).
    If I wanted to do more than just
call
myself an actor, I needed an agent. Even I knew that. So I talked to Sherry, who was now dating actress Juliette Lewis’s brother Lightfield, about getting me an agent.
    Sherry had left Flag and the Sea Org about a year after I did, returning home to D.C., where she got a part-time job at a copy shop and did some door-to-door sales. She wasn’t in school, and she and her mother weren’t getting along. We kept in touch and I knew how unhappy she was, so I told her to come meet me in New York when I went back to visit my dad, and once there, I convinced her to come live with us in L.A.
    George, whom my mom had now married, partitioned off a room within our living room for her, and I got her a job waitressing at New York George’s and then at John’s printing company.
    Sherry was eager to help me, and as promised, Lightfield introduced me to an agent, albeit a children’s agent.
    Natalie Rosson was everything I expected her to be. An older lady with coiffed blond hair, a lot of bracelets, and an office in the valley.
    “So, do you have any experience?”
    “Nah. Zero, but I was
taw-king
to my friend who…”
    “Well, you need to lose that accent.”
    “Totally.”
    “I’m not going to sign you just yet because you’re a little…right-off-the-boat. I’ll send you out on a few auditions to see how you do. But don’t run around saying I’m your agent.”
    “No problem, Nat!”
    “And don’t call me Nat.”
    “Yep.”
    My first audition was for a soap opera. Lightfield talked to me about what to expect. He knew a lot about the business from his family. His sister would later go on to success with films such as
Kalifornia
and
Natural Born Killers
. Their dad, Geoffrey Lewis, was a veteran TV and film character actor and a big Scientologist.Lightfield explained that I needed to get the “sides”—the portion of the script I would be expected to perform at the audition—so that I could familiarize myself with the material.
    In the soap opera audition, one of my lines was, “Do you think I’m a whore?” In my Brooklyn accent “whore” sounded like
“hoo-wha
.
”
    Pointing to the line, the casting director asked, “What is this word you are saying?”
    “Hoo-wha?”
I asked.
    “What’s that?” she asked.
    “It’s a girl who has sex with guys for money.”
    “No, I’m asking in what language are you attempting to speak?”
    I laughed. She did not.
    My non-agent Natalie called and had these words to say: “It is not going any further.”
    I said, “I don’t know what that means. Are we breaking up?”
    “No, I am telling you you didn’t get the part.”
    Next I was sent to see Bob Corff, one of the top voice coaches in the business. After we had worked together for one session, Bob said, “You know, I’m going to go against what your agent is saying. I think you should keep your accent. Your personality is going to get you where you want to go, and your accent is part of that.”
    “Bob,” I said, “I couldn’t agree