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"  It started because he touched my heart, simple as that. He touched a lot of female hearts that year because he&amp;#039;d starred in a movie configured for that express purpose. I&amp;#039;d gone to see it by myself, though I can&amp;#039;t remember now if I went because I was drawn to him, or if I was drawn to him because I went. What I do recall is sitting in the theater, still as a statue, as I watched him kiss his leading lady while tracing his thumb\u2014ever so gently\u2014along her perfectly rounded cheek. I remember thinking that, for all his machismo, his salient aspect was a quality usually associated with women, one that e. e. cummings described as &amp;quot;intense fragility.&amp;quot;  Entering the theater that day, I was a thirtysomething writer who&amp;#039;d long been obsessed with mastering self-control while maintaining forward motion. In the name of those sometimes dichotomous goals, I learned a new word each day, wrote in a journal every night, jogged three miles by 7 a.m., and finished Christmas shopping in September.  By the time the movie ended, I was simply obsessed, ensnared by images viewed in the sequestering dark on an outsize screen, dreamlike images of unfettered romance and male vulnerability that had claimed me as surely and inexorably as a black hole absorbs a galaxy. For weeks after, those images came to mind unbidden, insistent freeze-frames proffering glimpses of his smile, his tears, his inquiring eyes, his tapering fingers. The movie had accomplished what movies generally set out to achieve: It had presented a star wholly distant from me and left me with the delusion that I knew him.  I discussed this with no one. I would never admit that my waking hours were spent lost in fantasies about a man who was unaware of my existence, a man handsome enough and famous enough and rich enough to have any woman he wanted, and who, if only half the rumors I&amp;#039;d heard were true, had already amassed a run of conquests that read like a list of who got the best tables at Spago. Determined to be sensible, I vowed not to think about him\u2014which was an exercise akin to attempting to lift a board on which I was standing. Finally, it struck me that the only way to right this bizarre and troublesome imbalance was to find a way to make him aware of me.  It would be a long time before I could admit to myself that this particular mission left me not even one degree of separation from midriff-baring girls who wait in hotel lobbies and at stage doors armed with too much mascara and a stash of condoms, the girls for whom life&amp;#039;s promise is temporarily fulfilled by announcing to some burly bouncer, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m with the band.&amp;quot;  But unlike them, I could dignify myself with a purpose that went beyond the merely sexual. For the amazing fact was that I had a perfectly valid way to meet him, to speak with him, to ask him questions, to command his attention, if only temporarily: I could set up an interview and write about him. I thought, with a certain wryness, about the dictate of my college professors who&amp;#039;d exhorted students to write about &amp;quot;what you&amp;#039;re interested in.&amp;quot; Mine was hardly the sort of interest they&amp;#039;d encouraged, but this didn&amp;#039;t deter me from making calls to his agent and publicist that set me on a path to confront the inadmissible question: Could he be interested in me?  For a week before the interview, I tried on everything in my closet. The issue was not simply what to wear but how to masquerade as the supremely confident person I was not and never had been. At moments, I wondered how a person as essentially shy and self-doubting as myself could plunge into such a quixotic venture. But I knew the answer: because obsession trumps reason.  We were to meet on the studio lot where he was shooting a picture. I settled for jeans, boots, a black turtleneck sweater\u2014an outfit neutral enough not to pigeonhole me and studiously casual enough to dispel the fact that I worked a year to earn what he made in a week. It also met my most essential criterion: to avoid the impression that I was trying, even as I attempted to better myself with a haircut and highlights, a manicure, a pedicure, and multiple sessions in a tanning bed. As I left my apartment, I glanced at myself in the mirror one last time. I wished I looked better. I hoped that I looked good enough.  My first glimpse of him was from a distance, as he ambled off the set where he&amp;#039;d just finished shooting a scene, surrounded by the star&amp;#039;s familiar retinue of publicist, personal assistant, and makeup lady. He was tall but, inevitably, shorter than I&amp;#039;d assumed, for such is the enhancing power of the giant screen. The publicist introduced us, and when we dutifully shook hands I noticed that his face was covered with tan makeup. This was curiously equalizing, and it put me suddenly at ease, for I took it as a sign that someone had determined that his essential self, like mine, required embellishing.  Then we entered the small space where we would enact scene one of this drama of my own making: a studio-supplied trailer, upholstered in crimson velvet, that resembled the drawing room of an 1890s brothel. I sat at a table while he went to the back, opened a door, and went in. A moment later, I heard the toilet flush\u2014a helpful reminder that he was actually a human being.  A good interview plays out like a good conversation. Our first interview was very good. The fact is, it&amp;#039;s not terribly difficult for a female writer to charm a male subject, given that the pair&amp;#039;s interaction revolves around the presumption that the subject is a source of endless fascination to the writer, who wants only to understand him, wishes nothing for herself beyond access to the Great Man, and, in exchange for that precious access, will gladly twist herself into a pretzel to be pleasing and ever ready to disappear on cue.  Yet one is not entirely a supplicant: True, in the real world an endless chasm divides a star from his avid chronicler, but that chasm shrinks precipitously when you factor in the undeniable power that a gently probing writer wields over a subject who has an image to uphold.  We talked and laughed, and he told me about books and people he admired\u2014 choices that turned out to be refreshingly, and interestingly, obscure. Then he allowed that his own commercial success made him uneasy, though he seemed to regret saying that and tried to gloss it over before blurting out that his roles in romantic movies, like the one that had seduced me so thoroughly, left him with the deadening sense that he was a sellout. I remember suggesting that this feeling might stem from the fact that the achievements he seemed to value most were those of people who hadn&amp;#039;t been successful in the usual sense.  &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re paying attention, aren&amp;#039;tcha?&amp;quot; he said. The words caught me off guard, given that\u2014my fantasies notwithstanding\u2014I was there to pay attention. It was startling to see how hungry he was to be heard, to be understood, and it struck me that he regarded me as a neutral party who could view his situation from a distance and make sense of it. I stared at him and his eyes met mine, and in that moment I understood the difference between looking at someone and seeing them.  There are rules for writers, chief among them that you don&amp;#039;t sleep with someone you&amp;#039;re writing about. And generally, because a certain degree of sexual tension is useful to the interview process, this rule is infinitely in one&amp;#039;s own interest and not especially difficult to adhere to\u2014until it is. Crossing that line is a trap that more than a few writers fall into, and sometimes, reading a profile, you&amp;#039;ll note that the narrative of a piece touted as a day-to-day account of some celebrity&amp;#039;s doings is interrupted by an inexplicable gap\u2014a lost weekend, perhaps, in which writer and subject were quite possibly finding each other, so to speak, though they knew they shouldn&amp;#039;t.  This, my first indiscretion, would not be my last, and it would teach me that once a barrier is taken down, it can be difficult to resurrect. That first day, as we became acquainted in his trailer, I did not yet know how much of my life would pass while I accompanied secretly lonely celebrities who ordered off-menu at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, or who put away several bottles of wine in the course of a mediocre meal in the vast, otherwise empty dining room of the one good hotel in El Paso, Texas. These scenarios produced many moments that I like to remember and quite a few that I&amp;#039;d rather forget. I still smile recalling an evening at Bellini on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, where I was fed carpaccio by an all-too-glamorous man who rolled the raw beef around his forefinger, then placed it in my mouth before withdrawing his finger with mind-bendingly slow deliberation as the otherwise blas\u00E9 crowd stared in silence. I look less affectionately on the day that I showed up at the appointed hour on a certain star&amp;#039;s absurdly large yacht, dutifully armed with a tape recorder for an interview that both of us knew I wouldn&amp;#039;t be conducting.  Not all of these encounters ended up in bed, but they all violated an invisible yet altogether discernible line, veering into a mutual pretense of intimacy as the days and weeks went by\u2014for these were the years when magazine pieces could easily run to 10,000 words and reporting them was an undertaking apt to extend over several months. Invariably, the men would offer damning confidences that I&amp;#039;d agree would never be printed. I was never quite sure why they entrusted these toxic secrets to me, though it must have had something to do with the fact that their favorite topic was themselves and that I&amp;#039;m comfortable assuming the classic interviewer role in which one is cast as both therapist and priest. They all seemed to be seeking absolution for transgressions committed in a milieu that had granted them license to do whatever they damn well pleased, a realm in which they were referred to, without irony, as Hollywood royalty, in which the world&amp;#039;s posh stores stayed open for them so they could shop undisturbed after hours, and in which they interacted principally with adoring people who wanted something from them or were on their payroll.  To spend time with these men is, invariably, a journey to the heightened state that derives from being in the presence of a star, an intoxicant that requires talking yourself down, issuing silent cautions to be careful, to stay level, to maintain balance and a sense of self. The fact is, you&amp;#039;d be a fool if you failed to remember that every interview is a manipulation and that, as a rule, this person is letting you in not because they are blown away by your irresistible charms but because they&amp;#039;d calculated that doing so is in their interest. Yet it&amp;#039;s surprising how many savvy journalists forget this and, having enjoyed the requisite flirtation in the course of interviewing a Rob Lowe or a Kevin Costner, would encounter their subject at a future date, in a different setting, and be hurt and astonished when it turned out that he had no recollection of having met them.  But then, once in a very great while, you meet someone with whom you forge a genuine connection, and these situations are exhilarating and hazardous, for both of you become submerged in a make-believe world where there is only the intense, abrupt closeness of adults with time on their hands and no painful history.  I returned to the set the next day, at his suggestion, then the next day, and the next. By the close of the third day, it seemed a good idea to leave my car on the lot and be driven home by his driver. I had never seen him out of costume, and it was startling to suddenly behold him in his Gucci leather jacket seated in the back of a Mercedes sedan. When we pulled up at the fourplex where I lived in Santa Monica, he told the driver to wait and followed me inside.  What can I tell you about that night? Perhaps it is enough to say that the intimacy was as sweet as it was impassioned, and that, new as we were to one another, there was an overwhelming sense of comfort and familiarity.  &amp;quot;Do you believe in other lives?&amp;quot; he asked.  &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;but I do now.&amp;quot;  So it began, and afterward there would be other such evenings, nights when I could reach out and touch his hair, and it would feel as soft as feathers in my seeking fingers. When we kissed, he would rub his thumb gently along my cheek, and because I knew what it felt like, just as I knew how it looked on-screen, I was both in the moment and magically outside it. These occurrences made me believe in serendipity, in fate, and in the possibility that all my life I&amp;#039;d unwittingly been on the path that would bring me to him.  I could never quite separate the man himself from the idealized roles he&amp;#039;d played. Perhaps I could have if I&amp;#039;d wanted to, but, in truth, I didn&amp;#039;t want to. What I wanted was to exist in a dream. There were things I&amp;#039;d see him do that he&amp;#039;d done on-screen\u2014little things, like the way he brushed his hair off his forehead with the back of his hand or narrowed his eyes ever so slightly when listening. I cherished these gestures, which submerged me even further in a storybook romance that could vault me out of my usual life, an existence that had seemed eminently satisfactory until now, when\u2014 compared with the chimera in which we were living\u2014it seemed suddenly flat and earthbound and terrifyingly dismal. So I clung to the sense of make-believe-madereal that suffused our encounters, and I allowed them to seem at once eternal and fleeting. I still find it hard to believe that I was naive enough to presume that there would be no real-life price to pay for this extraordinary adventure. There&amp;#039;s an expression that originated on Broadway: &amp;quot;He loved her, but the show closed.&amp;quot; A few weeks into our affair, his movie was set to wrap, and he became caught up in preparations for a new film, a new location in a distant state where there would be a new trailer and, possibly, a new journalist.  Our last ride from the studio to my apartment was filled with silences. We&amp;#039;d had silences before, but they&amp;#039;d been the kind of mutual silences that you fall into when words become unnecessary, as opposed to the kind of silence we were enmeshed in then, when words are hard to come by.  Once more, he walked me to my door, but this time he kissed me quickly and backed away, saying, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry, I&amp;#039;m sorry.&amp;quot; I told myself that it was all right, now the pressure was off, I didn&amp;#039;t need to fret anymore about being clever enough or about what to wear, it no longer mattered how I looked or what I weighed, which meant that I could get myself three giant pieces of fried chicken and eat every bite, and this made me feel remarkably better until I realized that I didn&amp;#039;t have the slightest interest in eating fried chicken.  The chasm lay between us once again as he did what stars so easily do when they don&amp;#039;t want to face a mess: He retreated behind the sheltering gates of his home to the safety of that always-approving retinue whose unspoken task was to safeguard him from people like me, who saw him on the screen and were swept away by fantasy.  Funny, I thought: We had existed at a pinnacle of emotion and had never done any of the normal things. We&amp;#039;d never had a meal together, or watched the news, or walked on the beach. It had been a decidedly lopsided affair: I had gotten to know him, yet he had never gotten to know me. Now I had been ingloriously returned to my cats, my computer, the beige and white rooms in which I lived my life, like a package marked return to sender because it had never actually been opened. Well, I told myself, you wanted a dream; now you&amp;#039;ll just have to make peace with the waking-up part.  I wrote the piece, of course, because I had to, both for him and for me. It was a surreal experience. It didn&amp;#039;t feel like writing: Every word I committed to paper felt like penance. But it read well enough, and though I wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend my &amp;quot;interviewing&amp;quot; technique to freshmen taking Journalism 101, I have to confess that it yielded certain advantages, given that reporting celebrity profiles is a shell game that requires putting your subject at ease in order to catch him in an unguarded moment\u2014for, ultimately, revelations come not from what people are willing to tell you, but from what they reveal unintentionally.  In this particular case, the intimacy allowed me to present my erstwhile &amp;quot;subject&amp;quot; as what he was then: capable of deep joy and sorrow, eager and anxious, reckless and circumspect. It allowed me, in other words, to bypass the star and describe a man who was as compelling as he was conflicted, who&amp;#039;d had his share of darkness and triumph.  I still think about him, though the sadness and regret that haunted me dissipated long ago. At first, I felt bereft, yet somewhere along the way I accepted the fact that his many virtues do not include fidelity and that, had we stayed together for any length of time, he&amp;#039;d have been unfaithful to me, and I wasn&amp;#039;t built to handle that. Given our respective natures, what we did have was perfect.  Did the liaison mean anything to him? I&amp;#039;ve always thought it did, though I&amp;#039;ll never know for sure, because, before he was anything else, he was an actor. Still, I believe that ours was not an affair of convenience but an affair of the heart, one that exemplified Shakespeare&amp;#039;s admonishment &amp;quot;to love that well, which thou must leave &amp;#039;ere long.&amp;quot;  In the intervening years, I&amp;#039;ve never ceased to wish him well, and each time I&amp;#039;ve seen him on the screen I&amp;#039;ve been intrigued by the glimpses I get of that alluring mix of qualities that drew me to him initially. As the years have passed and I&amp;#039;ve watched him age, he&amp;#039;s come to seem far more real than he seemed in his glory days when I was with him for that brief time. I know now that I will never see him again, yet I like the world better with him in it. Lately, I&amp;#039;ve come to dread the possibility that some day I&amp;#039;ll open the paper and read on the front page that he has died. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a11223/access-hollywood-romancing-a-movie-star-447693/>