I Want Your Heaven and Your Oceans Too

Lay Me Down

This piece is connected to Water Under the Bridge, a prequel of sorts. :)

There was a strange sort of disconnect between my heart and my mind. There was nothing novel about it; I know, factually, many people experienced the same. But it was difficult to reconcile that my feelings weren't based on a character bleed nor confusion between what was platonic and what wasn't. To recognize and admit that it had all been real.

I prided myself on living truthfully and honestly, vowing years ago, that that honesty would begin with myself. Holding onto a false sense of who I was had only gotten me into trouble when I was younger. I'd buried all of my despair and my grief and my loneliness, shoved it down into a place where I didn't have to think about it and when it finally bubbled over, it was like a hurricane tore through. I destroyed everything and everyone who was unfortunate enough to come into my path, I numbed the unwanted noise in my brain with alcohol and with drugs, literally banging my head against the floor to silence it. I'd fucked up my marriage, nearly fucked up my burgeoning career, made my mother and sister simaltaneously worried sick and disappointed.

As an actor, people naturally assume that I can easily jump in and out of the skin of another human being, that shedding the parts of what it means to embody the character I'm portraying is as easy as simply moving onto the next project. But it isn't anything that can be explained by logic what A Star is Born meant to me, what Jackson had come to mean to me, what playing him had done.

As a director, too, being truthful was the only choice; if I didn't put all of myself out there, consistently, what right did I possibly have to ask my actors to? They needed to be aware that I was going to ask them to jump in, feet first and that it was going to be terrifying at times. But I let it be known, from the very beginning, I would be making the jump right alongside them.

But the truth, as much as you're led to believe otherwise, is complicated. It isn't always kind or moral. It's not always logical, nor is it practical.

It is always, however, brutally honest.

I couldn't say if it all happened gradually or it was there, lurking under the surface from the moment we met. But what I can say, with absolute certainty was that everything we said in interviews was entirely correct; our connection was so instantaneous, I was positive we must have known one another our whole lives because little else would've served to explain why everything made sense when I was around her.

I hadn't had any time to question the how or when of the matter. The film was all-consuming. We shared the darkest parts of ourselves...ones where the passage of time had made us own the things we were not proud of; the skeletons of the past weren't matters of shame any longer. It came to be that she became privy to things about me that Irina wasn't. Our bond was deeper than either of us were capable of explaining.

The why was simple. She was complicated in the ways that all beautiful human beings are and we shared similar struggles. But her heart was bigger, more open, than I could ever hope mine to be and I watched as she navigated a very demanding role on top of a very demanding career with a grace and a humility that I've never seen before.

And her eyes.

When she looked at you, she saw everything; your childhood and the way you loved and every ambition that you ever had. With once glance at you with deep rivers of green, flecked with brown and gold, she was at once, keeper of all your secrets. And you knew she'd never tell.

There wasn't a solitary day where I woke up and knew that I loved her. I can't pinpoint the exact morning or moment. I don't recall a big moment of recognition in my mind or replay the exact instance on loop.

And it's because just like everything else with Stefani Germanotta, loving her came as naturally as breathing.

Navigating my feelings was decidedly more complex. There were so many times on our press tours for the film, I'd feel the words pressing at the back of my throat as we walked into premieres hand in hand or when she was in my arms, embracing me with all of the strength she could muster. It never seemed right to blurt it out, to not offer her every bit of consideration she deserved, that Irina and Lea deserved. The timing was off and the irony of that wasn't lost on me.