SHANGHAI EXPRESS
There is a saying among actors –“buy a plane ticket, get a job.” I guess it stems from the fact that so much of an actor’s life is spent wondering if it’s safe to leave town, or will “that call” for a big audition or an actual job come the minute you’re on the plane, or spreading you beach towel on the sand, or just starting up Mt. Everest. Leaving town always comes with the anxiety of what will be missed. It’s happened to me often enough to know there’s truth to the adage, and this summer it happened three times!
In early July Anni-Ming and I had just arrived at the home of our friends in East Hampton for some fun in the sun, when my agent, Ken called with an audition for a film the following morning, Friday before the 4th! (Lousey time to hold an audition, I’d say!) So I left Anni-Ming with my friends and got on the train back to the city, only a couple of hours after Id arrived. I gave a smashing audition as a real estate agent selling a haunted house, and, as is often the case with auditions, never heard from them again. But that was nothing compared to what lay ahead!
Later that month, I was sitting in a coffee place in Minneapolis on the second day of a two week visit with my family, when…you guessed it, my agent, Alison called! This time is was an offer for a small role in the new Jet (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) Li film, “Fearless.” (Isn’t that funny, putting the title of his biggest film in the middle of his name like that, as if that’s now become his full, given John Hancock! It’s what they do in the real estate section of the L.A. Times. I always got such a kick out of that, “Tom Sleepless in Seattle Hanks and his wife just purchased the mansion on Beverly Drive previously owned by Nicole The Hours Kidman for 75 billion bucks.” I guess in L.A. I would no longer be just plain old “Jill Larson”, I’d be “Jill All My Children Larson!!” I love it!) But I digress… But to do this fillm, Id have to fly to Hong Kong the next day. So the next day I got on the plane to Tokyo, then on to Hong Kong for a visa for Mainland China. A couple of days later I flew with two other New York actors to Shanghai. While Anni-Ming went sailing, swimming and amusement park-ing in Minneapolis, I toured China!! Shooting the movie was of course thrilling, but being back in Shanghai, the city of my daughters birth, was a gift from God.