Sociopath: An LA Love Story

A few years ago, my friend Millie started dating a man who was, at the time, a well-known actor on a successful TV show. He played a character who was deeply pained, who had lost his wife and years later, was still mourning her death. On the show, he was sensitive, self-sacrificing, humble and compassionate, often brought close to tears by the events of his day-to-day life. In nearly every episode, he would be faced with some sort of tragedy or traumatic event; at least once every episode, there would be a close-up shot of his weary (but extremely handsome) face, and if you were on your period or something, it would make you kind of teary. No doubt, this man was a talented actor. Millie met him at a charity fundraiser where he was the MC for the event. She was a fan of the show, and she told him this; they got to talking and soon after, they were dating.

The thing is, while the character he played was complex and sensitive, he was kind of a sketchy character in real life. But it wasn't like he was directly an asshole to Millie; he actually seemed to really like her, but there was definitely a lot of shady stuff going on in the background. And the timing of his douchebaggery was impeccable. Every time something awful happened to him on the show, and you felt really bad for him, we would hear about some really dick move he had pulled in real life, and this left all of us, especially Millie, very confused. Granted, much of his dick behavior happened pre-Millie and was just surfacing now, and it should be noted that Hollywood douchebaggery has a flavor of audacity that civilian douchebaggery doesn't. Or can't, I guess.

Hollywood douchebaggery is like getting caught in your trailer snorting cocaine off a hooker's ass. Or sleeping with all of your female co-workers, including PAs, assistants, and interns. To his credit, he claimed he did this before meeting Millie and not during the time he was actually dating her. I'm not justifying this guy's behavior, but for a lot of Hollywood actors, this is just how you spend a Wednesday afternoon. If your boyfriend who worked at a corporate law firm behaved this way (I mean, unless he worked at The Firm) you would be pissed off and flyer his neighborhood with pictures of him and a tag line informing his neighbors that "This man has syphilis," but when a Hollywood actor behaves this way, you make excuses for him, say he's just behaving a little badly and he'll grow out of it, or assume he's just a small-town boy who's gotten sucked into the Hollywood machine. He doesn't know better; he's really a good, but very lost person requiring reform, and love and support. That with the right kind of encouragement, he can find other ways to access his creativity. At least, this is what Millie and I and all our girlfriends discussed over very long Wednesday evening dinners. But it was the canyon of disparity between the classy and evolved old-soul character that he played on TV and the cheesy, tabloidy stories about him (really, snorting coke off a hooker? It was so 80s Hollywood cliche) that perplexed and intrigued all of us.

Millie had gotten some early red flags - when they met at the charity event, he told her a sob story about how his girlfriend of three years had just dumped him. It turned out that his girlfriend had dumped him because he had slept with her assistant. But he could be really sweet too - his mother would sometimes accompany him to awards ceremonies and he was in the Big Brother program and would do things like take his little brother to the zoo and let him hang out on set during shoots. And he was really romantic with Millie, and would remember things like six-month anniversaries and notice when she got her hair cut and take care of her when she got sick. And he would claim that she had reformed him, and tell her that the hooker was just a friend of another cast member, and nothing actually happened aside from the cocaine snorting part.

Either way, we made all kinds of excuses for for this guy for a handful of reasons, but looking back, some of it had to be because we really liked the character he played on the show. But at the time, we couldn't reconcile the stories Millie told us with the way he seemed, because he was so nice to us whenever we met him. He remembered our names and what drinks we liked. He remembered our dietary restrictions, he told us what he was planning on getting Millie for her birthday and asked us if we approved. He was so nice. And reluctantly, we admitted it - actors weren't like the rest of us. They lived by a different set of rules. They didn't understand our rules. And weren't a lot of actors just insecure people whose parents never loved them? I'm just saying. I mean a lot of writers are just people who believe their parents never loved them, even if they did.

We all spent a lot of time trying to walk in his shoes. We speculated about his childhood. We wondered if he had been ruined by circumstances. Like, remember in Dirty Dancing when Jennifer Grey hears about Patrick Swayze's philandering past and says, "That's alright, I understand. You were just using them, that's all," and then Patrick Swayze turns to her and says, "No, no that's not it. That's the thing, Baby, see it wasn't like that. They were using me," and then they make out? And you feel so bad for him, and you want to make out with him because he's just this poor working-class guy, trying to survive in this world that he's gotten sucked into?

At least weekly, Millie found herself in similar situations with the actor. And he would throw out these "I'm so sad and messed-up and broken and I couldn't help it when the intern threw herself at me and I had to sleep with her" lines and it was all Johnny Castle and Baby in real life. He lived in such a false world and he needed Millie because she was the only one who truly understood him, who saw who he was. The rest of these people were phonies but he and Millie were soulmates. And he really did want to change. And he was really really, for the first time in his life truly in love. Sigh. We all recognized it for how beautiful and messed-up and romantic and sociopathic it was.

And he did sound very much like a sensitive sociopath. And sociopaths can be interesting people. And with a few years of committed therapy, they can even be reformed. And perhaps the role he had chosen to play on this show was telling - maybe he was playing an aspirational identity - the character he played was simply the man he was trying to be in real life, despite falling extremely short time after time again.

And let's be honest - certain professions attract sociopathic personalities - really intelligent criminals, politicians and actors are often sociopaths. It's practically a requisite if you want to succeed in any of these areas. I mean, just look at John Edwards. He's practically the dictionary definition of sleazy SP. He told his mistress that he was acting out of propriety in waiting for his wife to drop dead before he could even entertain the idea of nuptials with said mistress, with Dave Matthews Band providing entertainment at the reception (Not surprising that Dave Matthews Band is endorsed by a sociopath, btw). And this guy didn't seem nearly as bad as John Edwards.

But back to Millie. She is in love. And he is a little sketchy. And she is really really kind, and empathetic and keeps giving him the benefit of the doubt, but she keeps hearing these stories that she can't reconcile with who he is around her. And sometimes she meets people who have worked with him in the past and they look at her strangely and say, "You're dating that guy?" And yet, he has these introspective moments where she can tell he still has some semblance of a conscience that maybe can be excavated from under that big pile of cocaine and hookers and scandalous weekend trips to Vegas and inappropriate relationships with interns. There is potential here. If he can play the role of a really really good and self-aware and reflective man on TV, maybe he can access that character in real life. Maybe it'll just take time.

Anyway, after three seasons, the network decides to kill his character off. Apparently something deeply unpleasant has surfaced about a former intern on the show and alleged date-rape. Really awful. It could be true, but it may not be. No one really knows for sure. Millie sticks with him for a while, but after a couple of weeks of this, even she can't bring herself to stick around any longer. She breaks up with him, spends months recovering. He tries to get back together with her, sends her care packages in the mail, tells her that she is the love of her life. To no avail. This is it. Goodbye, Johnny Castle.

Anyway, a few months ago, he was cast to play an injured Iraqi War veteran who returns to America only to learn that his girlfriend doesn't want to be with him anymore and he can't connect with any of his friends who didn't go to war. We know that he is probably going to be nominated for an Oscar for this role, because we know he is talented. And we know that a new generation of women will fall in love with the character he plays and mistake it for the person he is. Or maybe this is a chance at redemption. Maybe he has already become/will soon become a really decent individual. This is upsetting to Millie, who doesn't like the idea of some other woman enjoying the fruits of her committed attempts to reform this man. This has raised a lot of questions among us about sociopaths and actors, about the Venn diagram between these two entities, about the path to reform, about acting being a way of accessing true parts of yourself versus using roles to dupe people into believing that you're something you're not. Do we want this man to become the part he once played on TV? Are we rooting for his reform? Or do we vindictively want him to remain a douchebag so we can hang on to our constructed narrative about him, and righteously tell our girlfriend that she made the right choice leaving him? And more importantly, what part was real, and what part was illusion? Has he changed? Will he change? What's the story he tells himself about that experience? Was he playing a role for Millie, and to a smaller degree for the rest of us that whole time? No one knows. Except maybe the hooker who allegedly had cocaine snorted off her ass.