Babylon Confidential

over. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. When someone has that sort of power over you, you’re constantly pulled in two directions—one part of you is still chattering away, trying to convince you that it can still all work out, while deep inside, every cell is screaming out to end it.

I felt as if I were standing on a rock in the middle of the ocean, waves crashing all around me. I had to cling to the idea that I was going to leave, so that it wouldn’t be suddenly ripped away from me and lost forever—I was living Dylan Thomas’s hell wind and sea. When he came with his friends to pick up his things, I hid in my bedroom. That’s how rattled I was. I watched him through a gap in the shutters.

* * *

As soon as word got out that I’d broken up with Angus I was surrounded by family and friends who couldn’t have been happier at the news. I felt as if I’d been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card. I had my health back. I quit the social smoking and the excess drinking. I was reborn.

Angus went on to shoot Titus in 1999 with Anthony Hopkins. The veteran actor was by then a recovering alcoholic, and I heard that he recognized that Angus had a problem. Hopkins tried to help him stop drinking but failed. Angus was too tormented to stay sober for long. I wish I’d had Tony Hopkins at hand. I’m sure he’d have noticed that I had a problem, too, though I couldn’t see it at the time.

With Angus out of my life, I thought that things would get better. I didn’t realize that I was only just now starting down the road to hell. By joining Angus in his own downward spiral I’d opened a Pandora’s box. Angus had given a voice to my fears and insecurities that I’d previously kept under control. Hell, he’d even discovered new ones. His own inner monster had spoken to the darkness inside me, and now that sought to rear up and displace my previously confident inner voice, the voice that had always served as my guide.

I’d drunk with Angus nearly every night, but had never imbibed during the day. That would change.

* * *

I’ve never seen Angus again, except for one occasion years later when I was sitting at a studio waiting to audition for a commercial.

He was chubby and dressed in an old suit and cowboy boots, a faded fedora perched on his head.

He walked right by me. Caught up in whatever shit was going on in his head, he didn’t even notice I was there. I chose not to confront him, because I knew that if I did it would have been as Lord Byron predicted—with silence and tears.

10. THE MONSTER’S GAMBIT

The day of the Playboy shoot arrived. I was slightly hesitant about being photographed naked, but there were two factors that helped drive me on.

In 1999 I did a film called The Haunting of Hell House, based on a Henry James story, with veteran British actor Michael York. During the shoot his wife Patricia McCallum, a photographer who specializes in nudes of celebrities, asked me if I’d take off my clothes and walk through the fields on Ireland’s Connemara coast. Michael and Pat were a very cool couple, and I didn’t want to seem like a prude, so I ended up standing knee high in grass, a script in hand, wearing nothing but a corset and a pair of boots. In another shot she had a topless wardrobe woman pretending to fit me for a dress. It was all very shocking for the local community, but Pat was a great persuader and managed to convince them not to run us out of town. Her exhibition went on tour, and my photos, along with a host of other celebrities’, ended up on the walls of some of the world’s best galleries. God only knows how many people saw my nether regions, but I figured I was in good company. I knew Playboy would be a different kind of experience but once you’ve taken your clothes off in public and the sky doesn’t fall on your head, it makes it easier to entertain the idea again.

The second factor was much more practical—economic reality. My Babylon 5 residuals were still coming in, but I had a sizable mortgage, had spent a lot of money on renovations, and had my assistant’s wage to pay. The bills were mounting up, and Playboy was offering very decent money.

As a working actress you can’t help but have body issues. It’s not as bad as being a model, but it’s a pitiless industry when it comes to weight.

A few weeks after yet another miscarriage with my then boyfriend (yes, I was on birth control and yes, I wanted to keep it), I got work as the guest lead on a TV series called She Spies. I went to wardrobe for fitting, hoping they could hide some of the pregnancy weight I was still carrying, only to discover that they wanted me to squeeze into a catsuit. I plodded through the mediocre dialogue, ignored the disparaging looks from the thin girls in the show, and went home satisfied that I’d done my best. I later found out that the casting director told my agent that he would never hire me again because I was “chunky.” That’s Hollywood. No one gives a shit about you or your feelings. You’re a product, a storefront mannequin. Ordinarily I’d have been fine with that, but with the pregnancy hormones still raging through my system I was reduced to a sobbing lump.

I heard a whispered voice, coming to me from the darkness.

You’re fat, you’re disgusting, your career is over.

I recognized the voice and wasn’t concerned by it. It was my monster, the little devil that sits on everybody’s shoulder. It had always been there, throwing in its two cents’ worth for as long as I could remember, but since my breakup with Angus it had gotten a little louder. Angus had made me particularly sensitive about my appearance, and the monster was keen to make hay while the sun shone.

I was going to appear nude in a glossy magazine that would be seen by millions of people around the world. I’d been anxious about my butt appearing on a fifty-foot screen in The Hidden, but that was nothing compared to a permanent, published record of my naked form.

What are you worried about? Seriously, you’re prepared. You’ve trained hard, you’re in the best shape of your adult life. Playboy shoot? Bring it on.

Ah, there was my angel, my armor, the strength and confidence that had carried me forward into a successful international acting career. And it was right. I’d done a million lunges, I had buns of steel, I was beautiful, and the next time a casting director called me “chunky,” I’d roll up a copy of my issue of Playboy and use it to smack him upside the head.

The shoot ran over four days, and I can tell you right now that being a nude model isn’t anywhere near as easy as it looks. I’d have to sit in one spot for hours and then climb a steel wall and hang there with the photographer yelling, “Stick your butt out a little more. Suck in your gut!” It’s a surreal experience. In one pose they had my head on the floor and my ass up on a divan, which I suppose looks sexy in the photos but in reality nearly ripped all the muscles in my already-injured neck. The suffering paid off, though. When I saw the Polaroids, I was thrilled.

Wow. Good job, Claudia, you look fantastic. You worked so hard, all that exercise and dieting. You deserve a treat. It’s time to party and let your hair down.

Sometimes the devil on your shoulder has the best ideas, and now I saw no danger in indulging. She was right; it was time to party.

I flew to the UK for work, gave up on sit-ups and lunges and hit the pubs and restaurants with abandon. Beer and chips, wine and desserts, I let myself go and loved every minute of it.

Then Playboy called. The photos weren’t “edgy enough.” They wanted a reshoot. I had to get back on the plane to L.A. and do the shoot within twenty-four hours of landing. I was a blob, completely bloated from flying and living it up. I drank nettle tea and prayed. The shoot they published was disappointing. To me, the original shoot was fresher and far more beautiful. Luckily, I was able to secure the rights to both sets of negatives, but what should have been a naked triumph after all the training I’d done failed to have the curative effect on my self-image that I’d hoped for.

See, I told you. You’re fat. Your career is going down the gurgler. You’d better go on a starvation diet or something. Now that’s going to be tough, so get yourself a good stiff drink.

I waited for those words to bounce off my armor, for my angel to knock the monster down a peg or two with some devastating comeback, but all was quiet on the angelic front. While I was waiting for her to show up, I