LISA EDELSTEIN HOW TO

It taught me that celebrity is not a goal. “In the end, the shock of the article really propelled me into the life that I truly wanted. “And because of the Maureen Dowd piece, people were curious enough to want to see what I was made of and it enabled me to produce my play at an incredible theater - La MaMa - and work with remarkably talented people.” I ended up writing my AIDS awareness musical ‘Positive Me,’ about the denial of the existence of the illness, denial of care for the sick and the self-denial one fought when trying to incorporate safe sex into the new reality of life. I volunteered with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, visiting ill patients who were isolated from any family, because that’s what AIDS did to a lot of people, and I started writing. It seemed like you were either at an ActUp protest or a prayer circle hoping for a miracle. I mean, people were dying all around us (from AIDS), there were much more serious things going on.

I stopped going out very much and got super into some pretty silly New Age stuff.

LISA EDELSTEIN HOW TO

“I had zero clue how to deal with it or how to even talk about it. In those days, you could check your messages from a pay phone, but you couldn’t fast forward, so I’d be standing at a pay phone in Times Square between classes, waiting for the guy to, you know, ‘finish his message,’ as it were, just so I could hear who else called. Men were showing up to my building and waiting for me, others were leaving me messages that were - well, I’m sure you can imagine. So, in addition to the resentment, I also inherited about 40 stalkers. I suppose I should explain what that means to your younger readers: There’s a book, it’s called a phone book and it was sent to every household with everyone’s info in it unless you requested your info be private, but what 20-year-old would think to do that? Not me. “On top of that, my phone number and address were listed. But suddenly I was hearing stories about myself that weren’t true at all I had lost control of my own reputation and people were more than happy to believe whatever was said. But she really wrote a caring article and, on that level, I was safe. People were making up stupid stories about me that weren’t true - nothing even interesting enough to write down - and losing control over your own reputation is deeply upsetting. I mean, I wasn’t suicidal, but I was hovering around that drain pipe.

and for a little bit, I wanted to disappear out of existence. “But there was a certain amount of resentment that came with the publication of the article. So why celebrate this young girl with no money, no fashion sense, no family name? I really don’t know beyond my absolutely genuine and overflowing enthusiasm for being there. There were people around me doing extraordinary things that no one will ever see outside that world - performing artists who were cutting edge, designers whose names hadn’t reached brand recognition yet, artists who were established but still struggling. “For one thing, I really hadn’t earned the attention I was getting. Alan Arkin and Lisa Edelstein in 'The Kominsky Method.' (Mike Yarish)

Lisa edelstein