Babylon Confidential

My heart was pounding as Kelly smiled seductively at me across the table.

Kelly and I are still friends to this day. I made pot brownies for her brother when he was dying of lung cancer and went to his memorial service at her home. Kelly is a strong, beautiful woman and a survivor.

We’ve both had the misfortune to star in a movie with her ex-husband, Steven Seagal. I played the part of a federal agent in Half Past Dead and discovered firsthand why Kelly had filed for divorce.

It turned out that my teenage fears of an industry filled with misogynistic bastards were unfounded. I’ve worked with only a few assholes over the course of my career, and Steven Seagal was one of them. He was convinced I was a lesbian, because I wouldn’t sleep with him. Instead of reading his line, “Let’s get in the helicopter and kick some ass!” he’d say to me, “Do you like it up the ass?” His other inspired reinterpretations of the script involved wanting to know if I liked pussy, if I fucked my brother, and if I was into threesomes. The definitive action star, Seagal would sit in his trailer, chowing down on pizza and fried chicken. He refused to jog or do stunts or even be around a running fan for the helicopter scenes. His close-ups had to be tightly framed to crop out his double chin and the “hairline” of his obvious toupee.

* * *

It was 1984 and I was nearing my nineteenth birthday when Berrenger’s came to an end, and I had the idea that I would do some classical theater in between television jobs. I won the role of Lady Percy in Henry IV at the adorable little Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood, but the instant I went into rehearsals my agent called to tell me I’d been cast as the ingenue in a Bob Hope movie that also starred Don Ameche, Frank Gorshin, and Yvonne De Carlo. I was conflicted. I wanted to do the movie, but I’d already agreed to do the Shakespeare, and I didn’t want to break my word. To my relief, the director of the play, Louis Fantasia, told me, “Take the bloody film. The stage will always be here for you.”

The original title for the movie was A Nice, Quiet, Deadly Weekend in Palm Springs, even though it was entirely shot in Vancouver. Thank God, they changed the title to Masterpiece of Murder. It was Bob Hope’s last movie, and I guess he didn’t want a ridiculous title at the top of his list of screen credits.

I ended up becoming friends with the location manager, Christine, because we were about the same age, and I was the only actor on the set who was under forty. After the movie was finished we decided to use the money we’d made to go to Europe over the summer. People in L.A. were telling us, “You’ve got to call Roman when you get to Paris, you’ve got to call Roman.”

We could only afford to stay in a dumpy little hotel in Neuilly, a suburb just outside the most expensive part of Paris, but we did make the call. On our second day we sat for four hours with Roman Polanski at a fancy restaurant on the Champs-Elysees while he ate pricey shellfish and sipped fine champagne. He finished the bottle, announced that he had to go back to editing, and then hurried out the front door. When the restaurant manager presented us with the bill I told him what Polanski had told me, to put the meal on his tab.

“Mr. Polanski does not have an account here,” the manager replied.

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!

Roman Polanski stiffed us for the bill and wiped out our entire summer budget in one fell swoop.

When I got back from Paris, I booked the TV series Blacke’s Magic, with Hal Linden and Henry Morgan. Still nineteen, I was cast as a character in her late twenties with two stepchildren. Around the same time I started dating John Davis. John’s dad, Marvin Davis, had owned 20th Century Fox before he sold the studio to Rupert Murdoch.

One time I was at a lunch at the Davis mansion. It was the day after Barbara Davis’s annual Carousel Ball. John sat on my left, Henry Kissinger on my right. Opposite Kissinger was Gerald Ford. Kissinger was a funny guy. We were joking around in German, and he was very gracious, considering my German wasn’t really up to scratch. After the meal, Barbara gave the signal for all of the women to adjourn to the other room so that the men could talk about important things that apparently could only be comprehended if you owned a penis. Barbara stood in the doorway and looked my way expectantly. I turned to John and whispered, “Forget it, I’m not leaving.” I mean, when was I ever going to be in a room with Kissinger and Gerald Ford again? It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I wanted to stay and listen, and I’m glad I did. They discussed the Greek-Turkish crisis—Greece had reported that one of their warships had been fired on by five Turkish destroyers in the Aegean Sea. Greece had responded by placing its armed forces on alert. Although at nineteen I didn’t have my finger on the pulse of global politics, I did appreciate that these were people who had real power and that the conversation that was taking place in my boyfriend’s dining room could very well have a direct effect on the world events they discussed. It was exhilarating.

Not long after that I suggested to John that we go to Paris for a romantic weekend.

“I don’t wanna go to France. I don’t like the food.”

“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.” I couldn’t believe him.

“It all tastes like stew. How many types of cheese do you need, anyway?”

When I’d go to John’s parents’ house in Palm Springs, I’d sit down to dinner and the servants would lift the lids of giant silver chafing dishes to reveal miniature hamburgers and French fries; that was their idea of fine cuisine. I was beginning to feel a little culturally starved.

One night we went to Playboy model and former Hugh Hefner girlfriend Barbi Benton’s birthday party at Spago. Sitting across from me was a sweet Egyptian billionaire named Dodi Fayed. He was twenty-nine, ten years older than I, though we were both relatively new to Hollywood. He’d just finished working as a producer on Chariots of Fire, which had won four Oscars including best picture, as well as winning awards at Cannes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Dodi was suave, spoke several languages, and loved travel and fine dining. Before the night was over I gave him my number. He called the next day—from Monte Carlo.

“It’s for tax reasons. I can’t spend more than thirty days in any country.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I enjoyed meeting you at the party. Give me a call next time you’re in L.A.”

“Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to join me aboard Nabila. I’m going to sail her to the South of France. I’ve already booked your plane ticket.”

How do you say no to a private cruise on the world’s largest luxury yacht? The whole thing sounded so exciting—a life of international jet-setting. This was just the kind of guy I wanted to be with.

Dodi insisted that I bring some girlfriends, so I’d feel safe, and I invited Tracy Smith, who’d starred in Bachelor Pad and Hot Dog, and arranged to meet a second friend, Lana Clarkson, in the South of France. Lana later starred in Roger Corman’s Barbarian Queen films and was shot dead by record producer Phil Spector in 2003.

Monte Carlo was exciting, an absolute blast. Then we went to Saint-Tropez where Lana and I were to shoot a promo for a movie called Starlets with John Hurt and Tony Curtis. Tony was a friend of Dodi’s, and he joined us aboard the yacht with Highlander star Christopher Lambert. Nabila had been built for Dodi’s uncle, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who was at the time one of the world’s richest men, at a cost of $100 million. It was named for his daughter. The ship was 281 feet long, as tall as a three-story building, and carried crew and staff of fifty-two, including armed security. It had a helipad, a Jacuzzi, three elevators, a movie theater, two saunas, a pool, a disco, a billiard room, and eleven suites with hand-carved onyx fixtures and gold-plated doorknobs. The suite I shared with Dodi had a solid gold sink. When you spat out your toothpaste, you knew you were doing it in style.

I met the girl the yacht was named for at a birthday party that Dodi threw for me in conjunction with an Elle magazine event. They gave away a white Rolls Royce, and I got to wine and dine with movie stars. There were even fireworks. Definitely my best birthday ever.

You can see Nabila the yacht any time you want. She starred as Maximilian Largo’s mobile headquarters in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again, along with Sean Connery. She was well cast. The sun deck was surrounded by bulletproof glass. She contained secret passageways, push-button doors and windows, two luxury speedboats in case a fast getaway were required, and even a three-room hospital. I suppose arms dealers and Bond villains have a lot in common.

I came to love Dodi, but I never felt the kind of attraction that makes you want to stop traffic and do it in the street. As a lover he was courteous, polite, and even a little shy. That uncertainty and hesitation surprised me when I was nineteen, but in the years to come I’d find that quality in a lot of rich men with powerful fathers. The super-