THE UNTOLD TORI | [X] |
Out in
the Hollywood, about the only thing Tori Spelling doesn't have is a boyfriend.
The last time she did have one, four years ago, it was the loutish, verbally abusive Nick
Savalas, son of the late lollipop-sucking actor Telly Savalas. Finally she got rid of that
turd. But since then, she has had no one. "I date once in a while, but it just never
clicks", she said over eggs Benedict at an airy Santa Monica, California, restaurant.
"I just don't like anybody. I'm really really picky. And then when I pick them, I usually pick the wrong ones. They're the worst ones I could pick. I ask myself, 'What was I so picky about?'. I mean, I might as well have just got out someplace and said, 'Ok, who's the a--hole here? Ok, I'll take you! " She shook her head and laughed, and her big brown eyes grew ever bigger with a kind of appalled amusement. "Lonely?" she said after a moment. "Hmmm, sometimes, yeah, sure, I go through periods where I'm lonely. But at this point, right now, I really don't care. I don't. I don't even want a boyfriend!" She pushed back several pieces of dangling henna red hair and said she has her reasons, besides the I-only-pick-jerks reason. Mainly, she's just too darned busy for love! All week long, from dusk till dawn, she has her Beverly Hills 90210 television show to tape. Plus, one a week she has a standing dinner date with her father, Aaron "Johnny Ringo - Mod Squad - Fantasy Island - Charlie's Angeles - Family - Love Boat - Dynasty - Vega$ - 9021" Spelling, the TV-show producer, one of the entertainment industry's richest tycoons and a man who calls everyone, both men and women, babe and lover. Then, at her apartment on Wilshire Boulevard, she has her one-eyed car and her "retarded" dog to take care of. And in the morning, she has her naturally curly hair to iron. And she has auditions to go to. And soon she will have to be out pompomming for her new movie, Trick,a gay-themed romantic comedy in which she proved herself a fine comedic talent, just as she did in the 1997's The House of Yes. And tonight she's going where no man is welcome: to a friend's bachelorette party, for which her main, delightful contribution is a piņata - a handcrafted, Tori-made "porno piņata" filled with sexy toys and trinkets, including "10 little peckers that grow in water". So, she's a little to busy for men. Who need men when you have all that? Men, on the other hand, are never to busy for Tori. They have lots of time for her. They show up at her apartment building and tell the doorman they are Prince of Monaco, here for Tori Spelling. The doorman turns them away, having seen their kind before. And yet they persist. They want Tori, not even really knowing Tori. Such behavior, of course, is symptomatic of the current general decline, but the current decline may also be symptomatic of what happens to men in a Tori-deprived environment. For she has so much to offer, should she choose to offer it. And, as it happens, one day she might! "I still love men," she said musingly. "I still believe in the fairy tale you have when you're a kid"."I still believe in the ultimate happiness" She heaved a great big sigh and looked kind of dreamy. She leaned forward, her eyes fluttering and moist. Before this day off got started, Tori lay in
bed She is 25 and made her first television appearance 20 years ago in Vega$, a TV series produced by her father. For the past decade, she has been known primarily as Donna Martin of Beverly Hills, the main issue in her life revolved around being the daughter of this father growing up in a $40 million, 123-room Holmby Hills mansion, the front lawn of which disappeared beneath snow imported just so Tori -"Toto" to her father - could see what the white stuff was like on Christmas Day. The family's wealth embarrassed the teen-age Tori, who sometimes refused to bring kids home from school to play. But it was under these circumstances - being raised the daughter of a loving, filthy -rich father --- that she entered the Hollywood fray., and for that there has been a price. The press in particular loves to pick on her, carping about her nose job (OK, so she had it done -- she still think it's the ugliest part of her body), her quite ample breasts (never done, she said, no matter what the snipers say), her chin ("shovellike", wrote a heartless Time journeyman), her smile ("disconcertingly plastic", wrote an Entertainment Weekly scribe), her stormy relationship with ex-boyfriend Savalas ("a nightmare," Tori once said, "telling me 10 times a day how ugly I was - I cried all the time") and her way of ending up on her dad's shows - the whole nepotism thing.It's a lot to put up with, and it has caused her great pain. But in a way it hasn't been all bad. "It sucks that people have to view her like that," says her younger brother Randy, also an actor. "She's pretty good with it though. She's like 'You know what? F---- everyone. If they're going to look at it like that, I'm going to prove them wrong!' " And that is pretty much what she has done, first in The House of Yes and now in Trick, in a supporting role as a wannabe musical-theater actress that calls for some not really-great singing and dancing and basically allows her to steal the show. "You gotta love her", says director Jim Fall. "This is just one really funny girl. There's a lot of humor in her and a lot of untapped potential". Untapped largely because Beverly Hills, 90210, once
so cool and in the news, is hardly noticed by mainstream Hollywood movie people, so gaga
are they over the newer teen show. And does this ever trick Tori off!"It's funny,
because our show was, like, the first teen hit show," she said, once she got to the
breakfast spot. "Then Party of Five, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's
Creek come along, and it's suddenly trendy to cast them in movies. So at 90210 we're
all like, 'Oh,cool!' But the casting people are like, 'Oh, no, you're past. We want the
new one'.She frowned, bouncing her nails off the tabletop. "I mean, I worked really
hard to overcome being Aaron Spelling's daughter," she said. "And now I've got
this whole 90210 thing to overcome?" Someone looking at Tori from afar, someone "I've only been with a handful of men," she
said forthrightly. "Not even two handfuls. You see, to me, numbers have always been a
big deal. It's a numbers thing with me. I always thought if you were with too many men,
then men wouldn't respect you. So I'm very aware of the numbers - and making sure I can
count them on one hand." "Some guys going to get very lucky one
day!" she proclaimed. "I always think, because I don't really date and I don't
sleep around. I always say to myself, especially now since I haven't been with someone in
a long time, I'm like, 'The next boyfriend I have, wow, he's in big trouble! Big trouble!'
Ha-ha. I mean, he better be aerobic!" She sat back in her chair, the food on her fork
trembling. "Oh, gosh," she said after a while. "It's been a long time." Of course, it won't be all fun and games for
her And yet, for the most part, how can her next
boyfriend not be charmed by the nuances of her character? Her most favorite line of
dialogue ever comes from a 90210 episode and isn't so much a line of a dialogue
as the grunt she emits while ejecting a piece of food that turns out to be cow brains.
"It's nothing spoken, but I always liked that, "she said pleasantly.She tends to
panic when a credit-card purchase is denied. Not long ago, for reasons unknown., America
Express blocked her from charging $230 worth of clothes --even though her face is
plastered all over current American Express billboard! Tori got on the phone to a company
representative who proceeded to ask her all sort of questions that she suddenly couldn't
answer. She is a pack rat. She has 80 pairs of shoes, many of which she got for free and will never be worn --and still they can't be thrown away! Her makeup counter is littered with lotions and face products that she can't bring herself to chuck, Her shower is crammed with half empty bottles of hair crud. It's all there, all this stuff, accumulating around Tori, surrounding her as if she were some kind of turtle and it's her shell. Regrets? Oh, she has a few. She regrets
hearing Out on the Coast, Tori is trying to stay
sane. "Sucker", she said about herself, laughing. "Loser!" But the assessment is too harsh, and it's so untrue,
even though things do have a way happening to her. She went to a pet shop with a friend
who was buying a pug and ended up with a pug herself, which she named Mimi Larue. She took
Mimi to the vet, and the vet told that the dog was retarded. And they left it at that, father living in a charmed world where dogs can't be retarded, Tori living in a different but equally weird place with a wall-eyed, retarded pug that walks funny because of bad hips and can't be housebroken. How did these things happen? Why? What's it all
about? She leaned forward where she sat.
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