Ollie Quain - How To Lose Weight And Alienate People

‘Don’t worry, you’re doing okay. I wasn’t expecting to arrive and find you setting up for a game of Twister. But I suppose if I was being really picky, you could have said “hello”.’

He rubs his head with his towel and I notice a small ‘Z’ tattoo on the inside of his wrist. I’m surprised he didn’t have it lasered as soon as he found out Zoe had cheated on him.

‘Didn’t I even do that? Fuck … sorry. Let me get you some tea or something.’

‘What’s the “something”?’

He goes over to the fridge – I can almost taste the trail of Issey Miyake he leaves in his wake – and opens the door. Every shelf is packed with row after row of Fiji water, each bottle placed perfectly in line with the label turned out.

‘Is that the only choice for “something”? I ask.

‘Yes, this would be the “something”.’

‘Well, you’ve redeemed yourself a little bit in the pretentious wanker stakes. I was fearing coconut water.’

He starts opening cupboards randomly, briefly reminding me of Luke in Adele’s kitchen.

‘Bet I lose points for not knowing where the glasses are kept, though … the housekeeper usually leaves some out.’

‘I’m fine with the bottle,’ I tell him, although I am intrigued to see what he keeps in those cupboards; whey powder, protein bars, supplements … no real food. Interesting.

‘Who the fuck drinks coconut water, anyway?’ asks Maximilian.

‘Celebrities. It’s the showbiz refreshment of choice … especially post work-out. You must know that? Everyday there’s a picture on the TMZ website of some ambitious personality vacuum leaving a West Hollywood studio gripping on to a yoga mat and a carton of the stuff.’

He shrugs. ‘I’ve never used the internet.’

‘You what ?’ I try to imagine the self-control and the complete indifference to modern culture that must require. It is mind blowing. ‘Aren’t you remotely curious?’

‘No. Barb does my official site, but I’ve never looked at it. Occasionally, I look at a computer screen when my financial advisor is here … but I don’t even have an email address.’

‘And you’ve never Googled yourself?’

‘Why would I need to do that?’ His eyes focus directly on mine for the first time. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of who I am.’

I’m still considering how to reply to this when Barb clip-clops in. She winks at me, then nudges her client in the stomach and pretends she has hurt her knuckle on his rock-hard abdominals.

‘That’s what you call marketable goods, right, kiddo?’ she gushes. ‘Bet you’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Him,’ mutters Maximilian. ‘Him.’

‘Yeah, you, er … must have a really good team of trainers,’ I say casually, in a bid not to sound as if I am agreeing too wholeheartedly. ‘Or do you just have one really mean one?’

‘I don’t have any ,’ he says, his voice flattening again.

Barb’s BlackBerry vibrates. She checks the caller ID and immediately answers it.

‘Yeah, it’s me. Shoot … uh huh. I’m listening.’ She covers the phone with her hand and glances over at Maximilian. ‘It’s JP. I’m going to take this in the study and put him on speaker with Nicholas. FYI, Maxy, Vivian was telling me she also acts.’

As she leaves the room, I shake my head at him. ‘When she says I “act”, she doesn’t mean I act in the way that you act.’

‘What way would that be?’ he asks, indicating to me to sit down at the large glass table in the centre of the room. ‘Acting is acting. Either you are or you’re not.’

‘I mean, I haven’t hit that level … doing movies and stuff,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve appeared in lots of commercials. Have you ever been in an ad?’

‘No,’ he says emphatically. ‘I don’t do advertising.’ He adds this in the same tone as Martha Stewart might insist she has never bought pancake mix. ‘We’re talking about you, though. What about television drama … done any of that?’

‘Yeah, a fair bit.’ I sit down in a Perspex dining chair. ‘The best role I’ve had was the first one I landed after college: a prostitute in Prime Suspect . I featured prominently in the first two-hour episode but then I was garroted and dumped in a lock-up.’

‘You got to work with Dame Helen Mirren?’ comments Maximilian. ‘Many actresses would kill to work alongside her …’

‘… and more often than not pretend to have been killed too,’ I laugh, but he only reciprocates with another tiny flicker of a smile. ‘Have you ever died on screen? I mean, acted as if you were passing away, not been crap in the role.’

‘I nearly died in A Son and a Lover of pneumonia.’

‘Oh yeah, I remember. You were skeletal …’

All the papers reported on Maximilian’s dramatic weight loss for the role, especially as he was still only a teenager. It seemed extreme then, but not so much now. Since then, actors such as Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Fassbender … they’ve all been allowed to damn nearly starve themselves to death to play a movie character. It’s weird how actresses never get to go that far on screen. (They’re expected to look skinnier in real life.) Even when supposedly suffering from malnutrition in Les Mis , Anne Hathaway merely looked as if she was on the Attack phase of the Dukan.

‘How did you reach your target weight?’ I ask casually. But specifically so.

Maximilian shrugs at me. ‘Incredibly, I ate less and exercised more. It wasn’t a big deal. I’ll do whatever a role requires to convince an audience I am that character. I love what I do and get paid stupid amounts of money to do it. Ultimately, total dedication is what the crew who surround me and the audience who pay to come and see me deserve. It’s no more or less fucking complicated than that.’

‘Wow, that’s a particularly un-pretentious and nonwankerish thing to say. Didn’t you mean, I believe in becoming one with my art ?’

He ignores my quip and sits down opposite me, his eyes focus on mine again. ‘So, tell me, Vivian, how far would you go?’

‘Erm … oh, I er … well …’ I look at my lap. ‘To be honest, the sort of parts I audition for don’t require too much application.’

‘There’s your answer, then.’

‘Answer to what?’ I ask, suddenly noticing a loose thread on the bottom of Adele’s vest. Shit. I must have snagged it on something.

‘Why you haven’t hit “ that level”,’ explains Maximilian. ‘Decent casting directors can sense a lack of commitment. They can smell it the moment you walk in the room. You should approach every part wanting to feel that person; give everything, do everything, be everything that they are … because that’s what acting is. The ability to reach inside yourself and pull out a truth …’

He pauses. I glance up. He is staring at me. I stare back.

‘But you won’t be able to do that until you know the truth,’ he continues, his eyes penetrating mine. ‘Until you know your truth … who you really are, you can’t pretend to be someone else.’

‘O-kay . Thanks for the career advice. I’ll bear that in m—’

He interrupts me. ‘Oh, that wasn’t just career advice, Vivian. That was advice for life.’ He holds my gaze for a few moments longer, then his eyes dart to the side. ‘Barb?’

I twist round to see her head cocked round the door. She is chewing her gum even more vigorously.

‘Maxy, we need to have a quick pow-wow with Nicholas.’ She beckons at him with a heavily jewelled hand and then beams at me with an overly generous smile, one that I haven’t seen yet. ‘Apologies, kiddo. We won’t be long.’