jen12

Even though I loved Australia and I was in love with Russell I knew it wasn't going to work out for us.

The relentless publicity machine that seems to be a part of being an actor nowadays wouldn't let us just be us. When it became known that I was visiting him in Oz, the tabloids, the television talk shows, even the legitimate entertainment press began speculating on our relationship. When they couldn't get pictures, they created them by superimposing images of the two of us separately into pictures purporting to be us together. When they couldn't get answers from our press people, they made up stories - all of them far more lurid than the truth - and I began to worry that Kai would be hurt by it. Russell and I were grown ups. We knew what would happen, and we could handle it. Kai is a little boy, and he wouldn't understand it. And anyway, the last thing his father and I wanted was for him to be in the public eye any more than he already was.

When two photographers literally climbed over fences and snuck onto Russell's farm it was the last straw. We didn't even know they were there until days later when the pictures began to appear in the papers and on television. We had been innocently swimming in his wonderful pool - fully swim suited and respectable - yet suddenly there were so-called nude photos of us. Amazing what computer technology can do to doctor photo negatives nowadays - they'd totally erased our swimsuits and even added about ten pounds to me - mostly boobs - and the supposed nude photos of us that would plague us for months to come hit the news.

Try as we and our press agents might, nobody believed our claim that the photos were doctored. For one thing, it was a slow news week. For another, it was just too delicious to contemplate the two of us swimming in the buff there in the wilds of Australia. That the photos hurt me, hurt Russell, and hurt our families even more was not taken into consideration, only the almighty dollar. That it destroyed us as a couple didn't even begin to figure into their greedy minds.

Russell, of course, tried to get me to stay, or at least if I was going home, to continue as we had before I'd come over, but we both knew that wouldn't work since the beans had been well and truly spilled. "I love you," he protested with his heart in his eyes, "let me try to make this work."

"Even you can't do that," I said sadly, and got on the plane that would take me home and back to a single life.

"Jen, please!" The anguish in his face and eyes almost made me change my mind, but I steeled myself, and left. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It nearly broke both of us.

For weeks after, Russell would call and beg me to let him come over, or for me to come there, or meet him in Europe somewhere, try to work it out. "It's killing me," he'd say, and I knew from the pain in his voice that it was. It was, after all, killing me as well. But I was strong and I didn't go. Gradually, the phone calls stopped. We both got on with our lives. Strangely enough, though, after that brief surge with me, nobody reported rumors of him with any other woman. He might as well have become a monk. He never took a date to another awards presentation, he was never seen on a casual outing with another woman other than his mother or his niece or his publicist, and he cut his press appearances down to the bare minimum he could and still meet the requirements of his film obligations.

As for me, I kept my usual low profile and the reporters got tired of shadowing me and tired of being given stock "no comment" type answers to their leading questions. I guess you could say that if Russell became monk-like, I became his female counterpart, Sister Jennifer of the Bare Social Calendar. I devoted myself to raising Kai and taking the best roles that came my way, and time passed.

When Ron Howard approached me about doing "Dancers in Atlantis", based on a huge hit novel, I read the script and knew it would be a wonderful film. I hadn't ever done anything like it, nothing with any kind of stunt work, but I was a strong swimmer so I knew I could handle the diving that this film would call for. Then Ron dropped the bomb on me that Russell would be starring in the film as the lead archeologist.

I nearly turned the picture down. But almost five years had gone by, and we were, after all, still friends if nothing more. Surely, I reasoned, I could make a film with him and not fall back head over heels again.

Life is just full of little jokes, isn't it?

This story will be continued as part of
"And if I tell you. . ."
See the first three chapters of that on
the Storyboard now.
Chapter one here