Knock, knock at the door. It’s about 10:30 on a Saturday morning. When I open the door I see two ladies dressed in the conservative style which was typical in the 80’s.
 
Good morning, are you having a good day?
 
Yes I am, in fact a very good day. How can I help you lady’s?
 
We came here to talk about….
And then it hit’s me. Funny, you always know right away when someone you don’t know, knocks on your door on the weekends and then wants to talk to you about… God.
 
Not just God. We have a question for you? Do you think the world would be a better place if we would love and respect each other?
 
What a question.
Yes I do ladies.
But may I ask if you come here on behalf of some kind of religious order?
 
Well yes, as you might have guessed, we are Jehovah witness.
 
Yes I thought so. You always come knocking on someone’s door, unexpectedly.
 
So do you believe that there are a lot of people trying to make this world a better place? Like our president? He’s really trying. What do you think needs to be done?
 
I think women should rule this world. No mother sends her son of to war that easily. That’s what I believe.
 
Well, you seem to be a good citizen of this earth.
 
Well thank you.
 
We would like to inform you more about our religion.
 
Religion….
And then it hits me again.
You see ladies, I do believe. I believe in God. But not in a God that watches over us and tells us how to live. I believe that God is in each an every one of us. We all are a piece of god’s energy. So we should take our own responsibilities in life.
I don’t believe in religion that condemns or excludes my friends.
So thank you ladies and have a good day.

God.

July 8th, 1970 is my birth date.  In less than a month it will be THE DATE. I’m turning 40. The big Four-Oh!

I’m probably the only woman in the world who always wanted to turn 40. Ask my friends. I've been introducing myself to people saying I’m almost 40 for years now. Why?

Not sure. I just felt that I was still too young for some things and being 40 is the perfect 'middle'. No one can tell me I’m too young. Actually I’m getting the ‘you're too old’ line lately. Not liking that.

So what is it about turning 40?

Why is it such a significant number? Is it because you are over the hill? Life expectancy is about 80 so from that angle it makes sense. Is it different for women than men? Yes. We have to consider our clock is ticking. I hate that expression, but it’s true. Are we going to have a baby or do we remain being the best sugar-aunty or godmother?

Did we fulfill our life so far? Did we achieve all we wanted to do while young and restless? Oh hell yeah!

And do we have the pillars of our life set?

Looking around, I’m very happy with how my life turned out. I found the love of my life and we're doing great. I never thought that would happen. I always thought I would end up marrying my gay friend and spending my old days singing Shirley Bessie’s 'This is my life' with a big vodka in my hand.

When I turned 30, I celebrated it BIG.  300 people dancing on the bar, the tables and the beds at the Supperclub in Amsterdam. It was a wild night. (The special MDMA punch might have helped.)

I wanted to do it again this decade (exchanging the punch for one filled with vitamin C and protein) but we moved to the USA and I don’t have 300 friends here (yet).

I do have this vision of a party. With all my friends and enemies. Why not, it’s the perfect time to bury the hatchets. 

Watching photo’s and video from the archives; My first steps, my first performance, my first casting, my first boyfriend or maybe all of them. The strange haircuts and wardrobe through the years. My family, my mother. The people I worked with, lived with, slept with, loved.

Most people receive this retrospective when they're dead. Post mortem celebrations of life aren't fun. I wanna be there.

I want to walk around, champagne in hand, and celebrate youth. Celebrate friendship, all the highs and lows. Yes I want my friends to make funny speeches, completely embarrass me, and believe me they can. They know all! They probably remember things better than I do.

I always lived my life through the eyes of my friends. Without them I would be nothing. Without sharing there is nothing.

40 to me is the beginning of something new. Henry Miller said Life begins at 40  and I believe he’s right.

But I could never celebrate this new life without all the trouble I got in to before this special day.

So thank you dear friends, although you are far away.

I remember.



Ohh the agony of making a head shot.

Why? Because you have to be you!

And…. who am I?

Modeling, taking a cute picture, looking vampy or just happy isn't a big deal for me. I’ve done hundreds of shoots and loved them all. But a headshot requires showing the depth of your soul. You need to capture the casting agent's attention with a single shot. They have to be intrigued, inspired, and most important of all, wanting to call you in for an audition.

So as as you can understand, there's lots of pressure when you arrive at the studio to take your headshot.

The last one I did here in LA didn’t work out so well. First mistake? I went to the local hairdresser and asked her for a wash and blow dry. Told her about my upcoming shoot and asked for healthy shiny hair. Walked out an hour later with strange wings, reminicent of a cockatoo bird. Then I visited a make-up artist that I also never worked with before, but came "highly recommended' by the photographer.

I don’t like lots of make-up. It makes me look old. So I asked her to keep it natural. Found out soon enoth that 'natural' in LA isn’t the same natural as in Holland. So when it was time to see the result, I saw a stranger in the mirror.

Not wanting to hurt her feelings I just went with it. The photographer was pretty old school. He did the big jobs 25 years ago, complaining that in those days he made $3000 a shoot. Nowadays a headshot is goes for $300.

He chose a golden background and asked me to sit in a chair, lean forward and just look natural.

Just look natural! The echo was screaming through my mind and I just felt awful.

All dolled up, looking nothing like the real me I tried to relax as much as I could but I have never been good in faking it.

But hey I’m an actor so I figured I could at least give it a try.

The result wasn’t that bad. We used a wind machine to save my horrible hairdo. They 'fixed' the make-up in a digital retouch and my agent loved the picture.

I on the other hand, know that I will never be satisfied with *any* headshot. How can I possibly capture the true me in a single shot?

Some cultures believe that when taking your picture, the camera steals your soul. Maybe that’s what happened to me a long, long time ago.

memo to self: make new head shots soon!



My friend Molly told me about her three year old son, who came home from school, extremely upset, because one of his classmates had told him he would NOT come to his birthday party. "It isn’t really your birthday", he told him and walked away.

Seeing her son this upset, Molly felt like going to school, finding the kid and delevring a swift kick in the pants. But of course we don’t do that kind of thing, so instead she focused on easing the pain and trying to explain that sometimes people and yes,even children can be horribly mean.

Doesn’t this take all of us back to our childhood?

My god, how awful can children be? And how to deal with it?

In discussing the ordeal, Molly and I went back to our childhoods. Both of us growing up being the tallest in class. This never went over well with the other kids. "Giant!!! You are huge!!!! Hey, is it cold up there?"

Ohhh how I remember all the bullying.

Being an only child, I was always a bit overly enthusiastic. I was the first in line, and first to raise my hand in class. I was first in everything, if allowed. This didn't go over too well with the rest of the class. "Why do you always want to be so extravagant? Why do you think you can do this? Please act normal like us!!"

My favorite hobby didn't help much either; Dressings up like a princess when going to school. I clearly remember my first day of school, arriving wearing my mothers silk sexy underwear dress over my t-shirt and the obligatory crown on my head.

I believed this to be ultra cool, but soon found out it wasn’t.

Molly and I concluded that after all we'd been through, we actually became stronger and learned how to deal with bullies later in our life.

We also agreed that there's still plenty of people who just don't like being introduced to a tall blond.

But these days it’s all jealousy!!! :-)



Micky Says… twitter friends?

When twitter started I wasn’t interested at first. Another way to communicate?

I already have to update my website, blog and facebook accounts, read my e-mails and maybe answer them. Then there is my agenda, in writing (I still have one of those big file-o-fax things, black leather, smells great and I just can’t part from it) Then I have my ical, iphone and  MacBook to handle. My photo camera and video camera, my alarm….

Pff no! Not one more!

But my fiancée asserted that I could not go to the new decade without it and I listened. Again. :-)

At first it felt very strange to just share my thoughts with complete strangers, and living in the public eye I could not imagine it was going to benefit me to share my location or whereabouts.

But then slowly, I got in to it.

It felt like I was sending out messages to God (or whatever you want to call it). My mother passed away and at the time I felt I had a life-line with her through my twitter account. She didn't respond through twitter of course, she responds through different media. :-)

People started to follow me (again, a strange phenomenon to me at the time). I became tweet friends with total strangers. Last month one of them got sick. Very sick. She sent me a DM telling me about her situation. She had a tumor in her head and was about to go into surgery.

And right then and there I found the true value of twitter. I had made a friend, someone I have never seen but who touched my heart with her funny one-liners, her passion for sports and her total support of my tweets for about six months so far.

I prayed for her every day and just hoped she would get back to her twittering soon.

---------------------------

This is where I left off writing this blog. I had to take a trip to Amsterdam. I didn't want to post it because I hadn't heard from my tweet friend for two days and I was worried she had passed. Arriving in Amsterdam I discovered through a journalist that this twitter "friend" was a hoax. It turned out to be a woman in the south of Holland with about 5000 followers. She apparently told all of them about her cancer and they all believed her, including Lance Armstrong. He even sent her a video message to support her fight.

The weird thing is that she never asked for money, her tweets where funny and accurate, she even had her so called family send me a long e-mails about her situation.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this. I was disappointed and felt really stupid.

And then I felt this empty spot in my heart for someone that wasn’ t even real.

This morning the package with some soap, lip balm and a card that I sent to her at the cancer Institute arrived. 'Return To Sender'.

How low can people go?  Using cancer is such a sick thing to do.

What motivates a person to do this?

Is she that lonely that she needs this attention?

Is she a really good fraudster that wanted to investigate how far she could go?

Is she writing a book on the psychological behavior of people in the cyber age?

In reality she turned out to be a woman about my age, who allegedly defrauded renters of vacation homes and had this as a project on the side. She was arrested the day that she stopped twittering, the day I thought she had passed.

She told the officers she felt sorry for all the consternation she had caused.

Why would you want to use an illness like cancer to get attention? Why would you want to be a part of making people even more afraid of fakes and frauds in a world where every kind word is already put on a scale of thruth?

Trust is a beautiful thing if not abused. The moment you abuse it in such an aggregious way, it has more consequences than you might think. The fear spreads; more people become suspicious about the sincerity of others.

I'll try to stay positive. I'll try to keep on trusting.

I will try. But I've been warned.