Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story by Rebecca Norinne Caudill Read Free Book Online

college a try and probably would have transferred to Ohio State if I hadn’t been re-discovered, so to speak, by a Hollywood agent when my friends and I served as extras in a comic book movie that was filming in Cleveland.
    His question raised a good point though. If things didn’t start looking up soon, moving home to help out on the farm might be exactly what I’d have to do. Instead of telling him that however, I laughed and said it’d happen when our pigs learned to fly.
    “It’s not a bad life, you know?” he asked, his voice going serious.
    “I know Dad, it’s just not for me. Not right now at least.”
    He was silent for a few beats and then answered my earlier question.
    “We’ve got seasonal help for the animals which helps out a lot, but your mother and I, we’re not as young as we used to be”— he patted his slight paunch with a wry twist of his lips — “and we could really use more help with the produce. I’m working on a deal with the community college to hire out some of their ag students at reduced pay for credit toward their courses.”
    I was about to ask him how that would work when my mom sailed into the room and asked breezily, “Who’s not as young as they used to be?” Leaning down to place a kiss on my dad’s cheek, she turned to me and beamed. “I’m still considered a spring chicken, aren’t I Cameron?” She laughed and I met her in the middle of the room. Grasping her in a tight hug, I swung her around in a circle and put her down with a kiss to her forehead.
    “It’s good to see you mom.”
    With all of my recent soul searching, I’d thought a lot about what I wanted for my future. I didn’t know if it lay in California or back home in Ohio, but I recognized I wanted to spend more time with my family. I wanted a marriage like my parents had. And if I was able to fix what I’d broken, I wanted them to welcome Sarah into the family as one of their own. I didn’t know if I stood a snowball’s chance in hell of making that happen but decided the only thing I could do was give it my best shot. If Sarah never wanted to see me again I’d try to convince her otherwise, but no matter what, I couldn’t stay away from her any longer.
    The past three weeks had been filled with auditions, including the one for Broderick’s movie, but I didn’t have anyone to share my excitement and nerves with. Mike was good for a celebratory beer, but our conversations quickly strayed to whatever new woman he was seeing, and there were many. For the past couple of years whenever I’d had even a small iota of success, Sarah was the first phone call I’d make. She was the only person outside of my agent who truly understood my world and the insight and support I received from her was a large part of what kept me going.
    A few days after The Worst Night of My Life, I’d called up my agent, Julie Wasserman and shared what Sarah had told me about Broderick’s secret auditions for The Ties That Bind . Julie had been surprised I had information she didn’t and pushed for me to give up my source. I told her I’d overheard a group of actors talking about it at one of the workshops I attended since there was absolutely no way in hell the leak could ever be traced back to Sarah. She’d stuck her neck out for me and I didn’t want her getting in trouble for having done so.
    The next afternoon I’d gone to Julie’s office and she filled me in on what she’d learned after calling up Gramalkin Studios and badgering them for further details about the submission process. (The fact that I was still relatively unknown in Hollywood after having been a working actor for so long could never be laid at Julie’s feet. She worked as hard for me as she did for even her biggest clients and I appreciated that she’d stuck by me.) From there we strategized the best approach for my taped audition and filmed four takes of the scene we’d agreed on, choosing the second take as the best of the bunch. Once