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" As the wife of one of Hollywood&amp;#039;s most successful producers, Gigi Levangie Grazer lived the extreme female version of an old-fashioned American dream\u2014 complete with the whopping 11-carat diamond ring her husband bought for her fortieth birthday.  Brian Grazer&amp;#039;s movies\u2014which include Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and The Da Vinci Code\u2014made billions of dollars and earned him a personal fortune worth hundreds of millions, along with an Oscar. The Grazers enjoyed the lavish life of Hollywood royalty, returning home from red-carpet events to their 20,000-square-foot Pacific Palisades estate\u2014so vast that the master of the house used to get lost in it\u2014with a panoramic view of Los Angeles from its living room and of the Pacific Ocean from its balconies, along with a screening room, wine cellar, and swimming pool. For a change of scenery, the Grazers had a Malibu Colony beach house and a retreat in Oahu.  Gigi&amp;#039;s biceps were rock hard, her famously well-toned derriere was smaller than a 10-year-old boy&amp;#039;s, and fleets of minions danced attendance on her every need. Many women envied her life so much they would have &amp;quot;slit my throat&amp;quot; to trade places, she has said. Any discontent she felt emerged only in her satirical fiction, which portrayed the downside of being &amp;quot;The Wife Of&amp;quot; in a cutthroat world where women are disposable commodities with a short shelf life and no job security. Gigi&amp;#039;s wickedly cynical novels became the ultimate Hollywood beach read, a knowing contemporary version of the popshlock genre that made best-selling authors out of such predecessors as Jacqueline Susann, Jackie Collins, and Joan Collins. Gigi&amp;#039;s books have also proved eminently adaptable. Her 2005 best-seller, The Starter Wife, was made into an Emmy-winning USA Network miniseries starring Debra Messing, which was so successful it morphed into an ongoing television series. Like Gigi&amp;#039;s other work, the show explores the many ways there are to say &amp;quot;Money doesn&amp;#039;t buy happiness&amp;quot;\u2014along with its inevitable corollary, &amp;quot;Successful men can be unbelievable jerks.&amp;quot; (As the studio-executive husband in the TV series exclaims to his ex, thanks to her creative efforts he finds himself &amp;quot;producing a movie about what an asshole I am!&amp;quot;)  For Gigi, combining the irresistible appeal of juicy gossip with a seat at all the best tables and a sly gift for skewering herself and everyone around her was a clever career move that turned her into a Candace Bushnell\u2013like hero for the divorced set. &amp;quot;We love to follow stories of triumph because at the end of the day, it&amp;#039;s wish fulfillment,&amp;quot; says Stephanie Klein, author of the divorce memoir Straight Up and Dirty and a blogger with a large following among that audience. &amp;quot;The appeal of [Gigi&amp;#039;s books] and my memoir is the same: We want to be reassured that if we follow our own passions and do what scares us, in the end we&amp;#039;ll be rewarded for it.&amp;quot; Married or divorced, Gigi&amp;#039;s readers relish her access to an exclusive world\u2014 and her willingness to dish about it. &amp;quot;She has the great quality of being both a player and a voyeur, and she lets you crash the party,&amp;quot; says her publisher, David Rosenthal, the head of Simon &amp;amp;amp; Schuster. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s an equal-opportunity satirist; she is terribly inside, but she also knows the absurdity of her situation.&amp;quot;  That situation got a lot more absurd when Gigi&amp;#039;s life imploded as dramatically as a plot from one of her novels. Despite her jaundiced view of wedded bliss, she was determined to make her own marriage work. But in June 2007, less than 24 hours after being interviewed on the Today show, she learned that her husband had filed for divorce. &amp;quot;The day after I was on with Matt Lauer, telling him how great my marriage was,&amp;quot; she says wryly.  The ironies were excruciating. When Tom Cruise dumped Nicole Kidman right before their tenth wedding anniversary, Gigi had coined a new term to describe such Hollywood casualties: She&amp;#039;d been &amp;quot;Cruise&amp;#039;d.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;In California, after the 10-year mark, the alimony can be lifelong, so the men get scared of losing their money,&amp;quot; explains Gigi, who had been with Brian for 16 years and was three months away from their tenth wedding anniversary when he terminated the marriage\u2014his third. &amp;quot;To file was his decision,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but I knew it was coming. We were having trouble for some time, and we had separated for six weeks the year before that. We had small children, so we tried to make it work, but I think I was prepared for it.&amp;quot; Her fiction and social circle are chockablock with such debacles and their victims, the broke, pathetic ex-wives on the wrong side of 40 who stalk A-list watering holes, flashing what Gigi calls &amp;quot;stripper boobs&amp;quot; in a desperate attempt to land another rich husband before it&amp;#039;s too late, because a man is the only source of status or income they know. Surrounded by such casualties, Gigi wants her books to serve as a warning to any female who thinks the best way to achieve a cushy life is to marry it. &amp;quot;I think of them as cautionary tales for young women,&amp;quot; she says. Still, she didn&amp;#039;t expect her personal story to become Exhibit A. &amp;quot;Life imitating art imitating life,&amp;quot; she says with a sigh. But the all-important difference between Gigi and one of her hapless characters\u2014or one of the vengeful castoffs from her thematic predecessor, Olivia Goldsmith&amp;#039;s 1992 The First Wives Club\u2014is that the author faces divorce with a thriving career, financial self sufficiency, and a name of her own. While success may be the best revenge, her husband&amp;#039;s timing might be seen as raising the question of whether Gigi&amp;#039;s success contributed to the failure of her marriage. Through his lawyers, Grazer declined to comment. Loath to say anything that might complicate her ongoing divorce negotiations, Gigi says only, &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s not that easy for a very successful man who&amp;#039;s used to being the star in the room to share the limelight.&amp;quot;  She pauses. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not saying that&amp;#039;s Brian,&amp;quot; she adds. &amp;quot;I just think it complicates things.&amp;quot; Another pause. &amp;quot;But you don&amp;#039;t want to have to dim yourself.&amp;quot; These days, Gigi&amp;#039;s star is shining ever brighter\u2014and that&amp;#039;s not the only contrast with her former incarnation as The Wife Of. A 2005 profile in The New York Times Magazine portrayed her as tense and manic, hiding any real emotional truth behind &amp;quot;a kaleidoscope of bravado and fear. It doesn&amp;#039;t feel easy to be her,&amp;quot; observed reporter Alex Witchel. Things are different now. When I arrive at the Grazers&amp;#039; sprawling compound for our first meeting, the woman who opens the door is a relaxed, unpretentious 45-year-old wearing yoga pants\u2014her hands devoid of bling; her pale, scrubbed face bearing no trace of makeup; her auburn hair hanging in wet, lank strings. &amp;quot;I had a shower for you,&amp;quot; she says brightly.   She ushers me into the kitchen where she&amp;#039;s broiling lamb chops for her assistant and her 23-year-old nephew. (Her sons, nine-year-old Thomas and five-year-old Patrick, are visiting their father in Malibu.) In a few weeks, Gigi will move out of the big estate, which Brian put on the market for $27.5 million, and into a much smaller home in Santa Monica. &amp;quot;I want to be in a place where my kids are in the backyard and I can see them and not need a camera. I&amp;#039;m trying my best to give them a normal childhood.&amp;quot; She flashes me a cheerful grin. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m downwardly mobile.&amp;quot; That depends on your perspective. When we meet for breakfast at a Beverly Hills caf\u00E9 the next day, she&amp;#039;s all made up, wearing a Prada top, size 25 jeans, and Prada open-toe heels; she&amp;#039;s on her way to a meeting at CBS, where she and her boyfriend of nine months, sportswriter Mark Kriegel, are pitching a comedy series they&amp;#039;ve cowritten called Playing Hurt. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about reconstructing a family, postdivorce and postrecession,&amp;quot; Gigi says. Although the heroine of The Starter Wife finds herself instantly crossed off every invitation list after her husband dumps her, Gigi was pleasantly surprised by how nice people were when she and Brian split up. Given her burgeoning array of projects, however, that may reflect her own growing power base rather than Hollywood&amp;#039;s uncharacteristic generosity. At present, her other projects include a pilot she sold to NBC called Wasbands and Wives, about a divorced couple who continue living in the same house for the sake of their children.Lifetime will soon start shooting a miniseries based on her second novel, Maneater (which Paris Hilton told Barbara Walters was a favorite book), about a killer blond who marries for money and then discovers her husband has no fortune after all. Coming in June is Gigi&amp;#039;s next novel, Queen Takes King, which Rosenthal describes as being about &amp;quot;a woman liberated by her husband&amp;#039;s mistakes,&amp;quot; including infidelity. Downward mobility has rarely looked so good. Not that divorce is ever easy. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the end of a dream. The dream is to be a partner and have someone absolutely in your corner for the rest of your life, and to take care of each other when you&amp;#039;re old and wizened. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m hoping for,&amp;quot; she says, suddenly wistful. &amp;quot;The pull of the white picket fence is so strong\u2014the two kids who don&amp;#039;t have ADHD, the husband who comes home on time for dinner every day and is happy to see you, the lawn perfectly mowed, the cars that run well. The reality is that stuff goes wrong every single day. It&amp;#039;s trench warfare; you have to fight your way through and hopefully have a good attitude.&amp;quot; It also helps to have a good lawyer. According to TMZ.com, documents filed in their divorce proceedings state that Brian earns $28 million a year, and Gigi has asked for nearly a million dollars a month in spousal and child support. She&amp;#039;s still trying to maintain an amicable relationship with her soon-to-be-ex: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s welcome here; he&amp;#039;ll come over and have dinner with the kids. It&amp;#039;s as good as it can possibly be, and when this is all done, I think we&amp;#039;ll be even better.&amp;quot; She sighs again. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a good thing I&amp;#039;m a writer; I use the bad experiences in my work\u2014and you know, whatever doesn&amp;#039;t kill you makes you stronger.&amp;quot; Gigi&amp;#039;s writing has always traded on her gimlet eye, acerbic wit, and acid take on the privileged characters around her, but she wasn&amp;#039;t always a part of this milieu. She grew up &amp;quot;on the wrong side of the tracks&amp;quot; in a predominantly Latino neighborhood of East Los Angeles; her mother was an elementary school principal while her dad stayed home with their four daughters. &amp;quot;I feel very lucky about the way I was brought up,&amp;quot; Gigi says. &amp;quot;It was just assumed that I would work. When women work, it benefits everyone. I think it&amp;#039;s better for men, too; they don&amp;#039;t have someone who&amp;#039;s relying solely on them for money and access to the outside world. My father always said, `Don&amp;#039;t look for a man to save you.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s on me to make my life the way I want it to be; it&amp;#039;s not on somebody else.&amp;quot;  In school, Gigi was precocious\u201410 when she entered seventh grade, 16 when she went off to a community college\u2014bookish, and unpopular; she says she learned to be funny as a defense mechanism. After graduating from UCLA with a BA in political science, she got a job with the former network executive Fred Silverman (who green-lit such legendary shows as All in the Family and Charlie&amp;#039;s Angels), starting as his receptionist and working her way up to head of television development. When a brief marriage to a blues musician didn&amp;#039;t work out, Gigi suspected that her own accomplishments were a factor. &amp;quot;I was the major breadwinner, and I felt like that was too difficult for him,&amp;quot; she says. But her income proved invaluable in coping with family troubles; one sister had three children by three different fathers, struggled with gambling and drug addiction, was convicted of drug dealing, and couldn&amp;#039;t sustain the care of her kids, whom Gigi began supporting long before she met Brian. &amp;quot;With children involved, you can&amp;#039;t let the ball drop,&amp;quot; she says.  Gigi was 28 and divorced when she met Brian at a restaurant where each of them was having a business lunch. As the cowriter and producer of Splash, he&amp;#039;d already scored his first big success; during their years together, he &amp;quot;went from being modestly rich to being superrich,&amp;quot; she says. She credits their life together with freeing her to write full-time. That commitment to her own career was rare among Hollywood wives, most of whom stop working as soon as they wed. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t even think they give themselves a chance,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Maybe they worked for a couple of years, but it&amp;#039;s a hard life, and they opt out of it by marrying someone who can provide the life they want. It sounds like a good deal to stay home and raise kids, play tennis, and have at-home manicures and pedicures, instead of doing the hard work and putting in the time to find out who you are and what your dreams are.... You may have the right BMW, but you&amp;#039;re never going to be the person you wanted to be. Do you really want to be trapped in that?&amp;quot; While she is circumspect about the problems that led to her own divorce, she concedes that Brian &amp;quot;might have expected more out of me as his power grew.&amp;quot; That much was clear from the Times profile of Gigi, in which he said that &amp;quot;she won&amp;#039;t keep a calendar weeks in advance filled with activities with other industry families,&amp;quot; and that he wished &amp;quot;she would have more of a conformist personality.&amp;quot; Such issues are familiar to fans of The Starter Wife, in which the husband whines about his wife&amp;#039;s failure to cultivate Rupert Murdoch&amp;#039;s wife as a friend and arrange dinner parties to benefit his career. In Hollywood, Gigi observes, &amp;quot;Some husbands say, `Make friends with that woman because she&amp;#039;s married to so-and-so.&amp;#039; It takes a lot out of you, because it&amp;#039;s fake. Women wind up raising the kids, taking care of the husband, taking care of the house, and then waking up at 50 and saying, `What have I done?&amp;#039; &amp;quot; In the meantime, aging wives terrified of losing their meal ticket typically devote themselves to frantic self-maintenance. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the fear of being obsolete. If you&amp;#039;re not young, if people are no longer attracted to you, if you&amp;#039;re not the fun girl anymore\u2014do you exist?&amp;quot; Gigi says. &amp;quot;Everyone does Botox, fillers, cosmetic surgery. You get highlights and blow-drys, and everyone&amp;#039;s got hair extensions; if you see long hair on a person in L.A., that&amp;#039;s not her hair\u2014she just bought it. You get a manicure and pedicure once a week at home. There&amp;#039;s the self-tanning guy who comes to your house. Your teeth are bleached and bonded; everybody&amp;#039;s got veneers. You laser the hair off your legs, and get bikini waxing and eyebrow transplants and that chemical that makes your lashes grow; who knows what&amp;#039;s in it\u2014I did it, and I&amp;#039;ll probably end up blind, with botulism. Half of my friends in L.A. are doing labiaplasty or vaginoplasty.&amp;quot;  She rolls her eyes. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s tough in L.A. if you&amp;#039;re sitting next to a 22-year-old who has an intact vaginal passageway. But there&amp;#039;s no way in hell I&amp;#039;m doing labiaplasty.&amp;quot; Gigi&amp;#039;s portrayal of contemporary marital and postmarital mores is chilling\u2014but the problems she describes are unique neither to Los Angeles nor to the entertainment industry. From Pacific Palisades to Park Avenue, women who give up their financial self-sufficiency and depend on husbands for support often find that they&amp;#039;ve gambled their entire future on one roll of the dice\u2014 and ended up on the wrong side of the odds. Gigi is appalled at how often she sees women with no income victimized by hardball divorce tactics. &amp;quot;Not only is the husband in the catbird seat in financial terms, but now that fathers are seeking more custody time with their children, these women not only lose financial and social status, they risk losing their children as well,&amp;quot; she reports. &amp;quot;They risk losing the very thing\u2014motherhood\u2014 they sacrificed their security for. If a woman is not financially able to fight a custody battle, she could be out of luck.&amp;quot; She adds, &amp;quot;The more custody time a father has, the less support he pays. If the idea of single motherhood without children\u2014and without financial security\u2014doesn&amp;#039;t scare young women, I don&amp;#039;t know what will.&amp;quot; On this particular day, Gigi has just come from an appointment with her divorce lawyer to meet me for lunch. When she checks her phone messages, she finds a new one from a friend whose husband is divorcing her for another woman. She listens to it and shudders, shaking her head. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve gotta hear this,&amp;quot; she says, handing me her phone and replaying the message. &amp;quot;He wants to leave me with nothing\u2014nothing!&amp;quot; the friend screams into the phone, sobbing hysterically. Gigi seems blessedly free of such rage and panic, and she retains her share of happy memories about Brian, whom she describes as &amp;quot;the most exciting person I ever met.&amp;quot; Their life together was often thrilling and sometimes unforgettable, as when he and his business partner, Ron Howard, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2002. &amp;quot;That was a wonderful night,&amp;quot; Gigi says. &amp;quot;We had been through the Academy Awards where Apollo 13 was up against Braveheart, which won, and so it was really nice to see Brian finally get an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. I was so happy for him.&amp;quot; But even that happiness doesn&amp;#039;t compare to the euphoria Gigi felt recently while driving down Sunset Boulevard, when she looked up and saw a billboard for The Starter Wife. &amp;quot;It made me feel like I could die tomorrow and my childhood dreams are fulfilled,&amp;quot; she says softly. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s such a deep satisfaction; it&amp;#039;s yours\u2014and there&amp;#039;s nobody and nothing that can take it away from you.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a9021/the-upstarter-wife-285017/>