first time I had ever had it, and if it had taken me by surprise, then it certainly would my mum.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I’m tired and in a muddle.”
“OK, Rubes,” Mum said and she ruffled my hair exactly the way she knows I hate and kissed me on the forehead. “Well, at least you can stay up with and see the new year in with us. We’ve got hot chocolate all round.”
“That sounds nice,” I said. “Although I might not make it to midnight after all.”
Mum put her arm around me as we walked together to find Jeremy and the hot chocolate.
“You know what, Ruby,” my mum said. “I think this New Year is going to be the most amazing one yet.
It’s Your Life!
The magazine for girls that have really got it going on
WHAT MAKES A HOT CHICK HOT?
Top five tips on how to be fabulous and fiery like some of our favourite teen stars.
1 BE FABULOUS! Take actress Adrienne Charles who plays Natalie Green, the meanest girl in hit TV series Hollywood High. Adrienne’s character might be cruel, unkind, unscrupulous and unhinged, but in real life this girl is a sweetie. 5he always knows just what fabulous thing to wear and when to wear it, and Adrienne’s work with animal welfare charities shows us all her fabulous true colours.
2 BE THE BEST! While we’re talking about Hollywood High, how about Nadine Navarro? There’s a girl we can all take a tip from. Nadine might play feisty and fun cheerleading heroine Sabrina Silkwood in the show, but in real life she still plays competitive soccer to the highest standard for her school and is tipped to be picked as one of the national team’s under-eighteen side. You rock, Nadine!
3 NEVER GIVE UP! Sometimes life is hard. Just look at new-to-the-big-screen actress 5unny Dale. 5unny couldn’t have had a worse start to life, losing both her parents in a tragic accident when she was only three years old. Growing up poor was hard for Sunny, but she overcame it all with her strength and determination to follow her dream. And It’s Your Life! has heard that Sunny is tipped to be at the top after her amazing performance in the new Brit flick A Very English Affair, due to hit our screens later this year. Way to go nailing that British accent, Sunny!
4 BE FIERCE! You know it’s true, it doesn’t matter what sort of day you are having as long as you give it fierce attitude. Take this month’s cover girl, Samaniha Haven. Her heart must have been broken when her rumored boyfriend, super-hoi 5ean Rivers, disappeared last year, announcing his retirement from the movie indusiry. But do you see a miserable girl before you? No, you see a fabulous, fierce lady giving life her very best shot!
5 THINK BIG! You’ve seen all of the greai girls we’ve featured in this week’s issue of It’s Your Life! None of them ever had small dreams. They wanted to get to the top from the very start, and through hard work and talent they are making it. And you can make it too, in any walk of life you choose, as a surgeon, an explorer or maybe even an actress too. Bui you have to think big and dream big and never let those dreams go!
I picked up a copy of It’s Your Life! on the way to the studio with Jeremy when he asked his driver to stop on the corner so he could get a copy of The Times from a newsstand. Not the LA Times, but the London Times. Jeremy told me he misses it when he’s not living in Britain. He likes the rain, the rude and miserable people and the buildings. I looked out of the window with my big sunglasses at the faultless blue sky and I wondered what on earth he was going on about.
I wondered who all these actresses they were talking about were. I hadn’t seen an episode of Hollywood High although before we left home Channel 4 were trailing it as coming up on UK TV in the spring. I looked at the pictures of the featured actresses. All were about my age. Each one looked amazingly glossy. I mean their hair, their lips, their skin, their teeth, their nails and even their clothes seemed to shine. It was a sort of perfect finish that most TV actors, especially teens, just don’t have in Britain (except some on Hollyoaks, maybe).
And then I read the bit about Sunny Dale. Jeremy was acting in a film with her and he had never even told me. When I asked him what A Very English Affair was about, he said it was really just about old people’s love lives. Not a mention of Sunny or any part in the film for a thirteen-year-old British girl that perhaps the daughter of his girlfriend could have at least auditioned for.
“So what’s this Sunny Dale like then?” I asked him. “Apart from having a name that makes her sound like a brand of yoghurt.”
Jeremy looked up from his paper and thought for a moment.
“Sunny? Well, I can’t say I know her. I only have a few scenes with her. But she struck me as a very determined young lady. She used to live on a trailer park, you know, but now she and her aunt live in a great big place not far from mine. Funnily enough, her career did start out with advertising dairy products.”
“I thought you were supposed to name stuff after actresses, not the actresses after stuff,” I said sarcastically.
There she was again, that Ruby who was not Ruby, being really quite jealous and rude about a girl for no good reason.
“Well, she’s a big name in TV over here and everyone relates to her story. And she’s a really hard worker.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling rather stupid.
Jeremy smiled at me over the top of his reading glasses. “It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, hasn’t it?” he said. “I hope that your mum being with me doesn’t make you unhappy, Ruby?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t. It’s not you, Jeremy, although it is kind of odd seeing someone as famous as you hanging out with my mother. I’m not even unhappy. It just takes a bit of getting used to I suppose, all of this…” I gestured at the cream-leather interior of his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. “And I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Jeremy said. “Be happy. You only have a few days left here, Ruby, so make the most of them, OK? Your life will be back to normal before you know it.”
I showed Jeremy the photos in the magazine, of Sunny Dale and the rest. “I’m glad it will be because I’ll never look like that,” I said. “They are so polished and perfect and I’m…” I looked down at myself in my white jeans that had a bit of breakfast on them and my pink cardigan that had the buttons done up all wrong. “I’m me,” I said with a shrug.
Jeremy smiled and shook his head. “Trust me, Ruby, none of those girls look like that either, not in normal life. Magazines like to do two things: find photos of normal-looking people and make them look terrible, as you and your mum both unfortunately know, or they airbrush celebrities until they become the media’s version of perfect, with no flaws or extra weight. And as for TV and film, well, you know, Ruby – it’s all about lighting and make-up.”
I thought about Brett Summers, my former TV mother. It was true that while I was working on Kensington Heights with her, it did always take much longer to light her sets and do her make-up then anyone else. And whenever she appeared on the front of the TV guide she did always look about ten years younger.
Suddenly, the car slowed down and I looked out of the window. We had stopped at the security gate of Wide Open Universe Studios. It looked, from the outside at least, like a giant whitewashed Arabian castle, with a line of palm trees growing along the perimeter.
“From the 1930s to the late 1960s this place was the hub of the movie world, literally the centre of the film universe,”