Film Star by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online

It seems to be staring right at her.
POLLY
Well, this one knew a lot about Arthurian legend, Daddy. He said…he said that—that you weren’t my father at all! That you had kidnapped me because I was a child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, which made me perfect for yourevil purposes. He said that you were an evil scientist and worse still the direct descendant of the evil sorcerer Mordred. And that you were planning to resurrect the sleeping body of King Arthur and enslave him with a powerful spell, so that he would show you where the sword Excalibur was hidden, thus giving you the power to conquer the world and bring about an apocalypse!
    PROFESSOR DARKLY laughs. It is a dark and menacing laugh, one that POLLY has never heard before from her beloved and kindly father. She starts to feel afraid of him but is still disbelieving. Professor Darkly leans menacingly over the table.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
And was there anybody else with this boy, my dear?
    POLLY leans back in her chair.
POLLY
He said…he said he had come with my sister. My real sister who had been looking for me since the day you took me. He said her name was Flame Buchanen.
    PROFESSOR DARKLY howls in rage and sweeps the papers off the round table. The mummified head falls into POLLY’S lap. She jumps up and screams.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
That cursed woman will ruin everything!
    Polly creeps gradually further away from her father back towards the open door. She is very afraid and confused.
POLLY
Daddy? What do you mean it will ruin everything? What do you mean?
    PROFESSOR DARKLY narrows his eyes and looks at his retreating daughter. Slowly, slowly he begins to stalk towards her, a terrible smile on his face.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
My dear, I had hoped to keep all this from you until the last moment. But I suppose it is almost the last moment. Everything that boy told you is true. I have raised you and pretended to love you. But our entire life has been a lie—a liewaiting for this day, this very night! For tonight is the night when the ancient prophecy shall come true at last and King Arthur will walk this earth again, but not as a hero to save the world from destruction. Oh, no, he will be my slave. And to make him my slave I need to make a sacrifice to my forefather Mordred. A human sacrifice, my dear. A child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month. A girl descended from Guinevere herself. I think you’ll find that’s you!
    In tears of disbelief and fear POLLY runs towards the open door, but PROFESSOR DARKLY gets there first and slams it shut in her face.

Chapter Six
    As we waited for Anne-Marie to come back from the audition suite, I went over and over the last half an hour again and again, just like I had with the first audition.
    After about five minutes I had forgotten that Jeremy Fort was Jeremy Fort, and started to think of him as my fellow actor, just in the same way I would have thought of Nydia in the school play or Brett on the show. As we looked at the short but emotional scene, I started to feel just as I used to at work: I felt like I knew what I was doing.
    I was wrong though—at least partly.
    Jeremy told me that the first read-through of a scene should be to get the rhythm of the words, so as we read our lines to each other I tried my best to do what he said. But he stopped me and reminded me.
    â€œListen for the rhythm, Ruby; don’t turn it into a musical!” I looked at him. I had no time to bluff my way through.
    â€œI don’t think I understand you,” I said, intently wanting to be able to. Jeremy thought for a moment.
    â€œRuby,” he said eventually. “If you want a career as an actor, you have to be the best of the best. You have to remember that whatever job you are doing, from a toothpaste commercial to a blockbuster movie, you have to treat it as if it were the role of a lifetime—a work of genius that the bard could have written