When Alyce told me over Skype that she was getting married, it took everything inside me not to say "No!"
I told her I was happy for her and I wished her the best of luck, but deep inside I was angry at myself. It could have been me. It should have been me.
I used to tell Alyce she was the hottest woman on two continents. She came to New York from Perth in 2005, filled with aspirations to be the next Nicole Kidman or Cate Blanchett. She had Kidman's beauty and Blanchett's talent: long, gorgeous red hair, creamy white skin, blue eyes, soft lips, an upturned nose and the world's sweetest smile. She was also a natural talent and one of the best actresses I had ever worked with.
She loved the world. She seemed to be an expert on everything—politics, science, art, film and music. Especially music. We would get into long arguments, sometimes lasting hours, over which Prince album was the best (she favored "Sign O' the Times," while I preferred "Purple Rain"). She was brilliant, fiercely independent, and feared absolutely nothing.
She hated ignorance, arrogance, loud people and shortsighted casting directors—something we absolutely had in common. We often shared horror stories about the number of times we had been offered stereotypical roles: it seemed that casting directors couldn't see me playing anything other than a pimp or a gangster, while Alyce was forever being called upon to play bitchy English princesses. "We can do so much more," she lamented, and we often talked about writing our own scripts and making our own films.
Gradually, the roles started becoming more diverse, and our careers began to take off. Alyce never became the next Nicole Kidman, just as I never really fulfilled my goal of becoming the next Denzel Washington, but we did pretty well for ourselves, consistently working in plays, TV shows and films.
