Well, greetings from the Sunshine State, and boy, is it hot.

After a couple of days driving about uninsured in my ’85 Mercedes diesel, her steering pipes started spewing red oil out of the bonnet onto the windscreen and I was forced onto the public transport system, where I found unexpected relief.

I took the metro to Union Station, the glorious library-like train station and daydreamed for two hours in the leather-upholstered chairs of the cool vaulted waiting room. Even LA once had civic dreams. On the metro back home I was in a city I understood, with people standing in aisles and sharing transport.

“Home” however is a house that Cecil B de Mille and Bette Davis both lived in and the basement has a furnace emblazoned by the manufacturers with the Nazi swastika.

My days consist of meetings, driving and parking, near wordless exchanges with Mexicans at every port of call. Everything is weirdly familiar even to a first-time visitor. My first visit here 10 years ago I was in my early twenties and I had no designs on the city – I just happened to be here and they gave me promise after promise.

It’s harder now. My age means they are less prone to gush, Back then I noticed the lushness and friendliness of the city and the solid edifices of a movie industry – the place meant business and in my innocence that was all good. 

CAA, the most powerful agency in LA, has a huge black building off Santa Monica Boulevard that people call the Death Star. I didn’t really take the hint – LA was dark; in fact it was incredibly seedy, with everything in a state of decay, but it was also too curious to dismiss. It has what sexy people have – you want to get involved even though you know you’re going to get hurt. Fatal allure. I’m now a better actor with good credits, but it all feels a tougher sell and that’s as it should be. 

This time, instead of lushness, I see how arid LA is and how strung out and hopeless people seem. The mountains above the city with their weird bank of white cloud are threatening, on the verge of an attack, although rain is just a wet dream for Californians.

California now holds the same economic position in the United States that Greece does in the European Union – they’re both failed states on the western fringes. Someone said it feels like the end of days and there are plenty of religions here to cater to the apocalyptically inclined. Today a homeless man read the warning on the metro platform as though he were a prophesying angel. “Beware of death, keep away from the edge…” he kept incanting to us.

Now I feel death is always just out of sight. The roads terrify me, though I have better command of them than before. My insurance agent, after trying to sell me on Mormonism, said the roads in my neighborhood have the worst statistics in the whole of the US.

I took a walk in Griffith Park and as we climbed towards the Hollywood sign we joined another English couple and talked about rattlesnakes and black widows and how to treat their poisons.

Brittany Murphy, that sweet actress who I once met, died near here from God knows what toxic brew. Nothing has changed since Jean Harlow succumbed to renal failure and drowned in her own urine at the age of 26…

But still, I really want this place to like me.

More Actor X:

Fandom – on BBC drama The Hour

On set – film vs theatre acting

See all of Actor X’s previous columns.

Image: Adam Kesher by djenvert, available under a CC BY-NC-ND license.