Hollywood dreams don’t die young

I went to the grocery store for a gallon of milk, cat litter and an emergency sheet of poster paper (it was Sunday night, after all,) but I came home with a plan. I’m going to be a movie star.

You see, as I stood in line at the checkout, speed-reading through a gardening magazine, my Horoscope, The Book of 100 Best Baby Names and a star-filled rag that promised photos of flabby celebrities, I had an epiphany.

While my Cheetos (I don’t remember getting those) the sheet of poster paper and a gallon of milk moved by me, (this would have been a good time to notice I’d forgotten the cat litter) I couldn’t take my eyes off of a photograph of Demi Moore’s knees. The caption said that when Moore saw the photo of what the magazine called her “saggy knees,” she was shocked and hurried off for another round of expensive cosmetic surgery, to have them lifted.

I’ve noticed the women in Hollywood appear to be getting younger instead of older while I’m aging in dog years. This means that by the time forty-something Demi Moore gets twenty-something Ashton Krutcher weaned, she’ll be a week younger than he is. And I’ll be the same age as Jack Valenti.

That’s when it hit me. If all the middle-aged stars are going to get their eyebrows botoxed, have their legs lifted and their faces stretched around to the back of their heads – and in that way look better than they did when they really were young and beautiful – pretty soon Hollywood is going to have a real shortage of old women, or at least women who look older than Mary Kate and Ashley.

But that’s OK. That’s when I’ll step in to guest-star as the rumpled woman next door, or the schleppy co-worker.

Every dog has its day, right? That means someone like me, someone who squints at the sun until the corners of her eyes resemble a satellite photo of the Mississippi River delta; who hasn’t had her teeth veneered or her face peeled; a woman who associates having one’s legs lifted with giving birth — in other words, a middle-aged woman who looks like a middle-aged woman. I can step in and get the roles the movie stars can’t stand the idea of playing — someone their own age. I’ll make a killing.

I’ll play the older sister, an aunt or even the mother of women my own age and I won’t need hours in “make-up” or plastic surgery. I won’t have to do anything but show up.

I can be on the Hollywood A-list without looking any better than a celebrity DUI mug shot.

But here’s the best part of my plan: I’ll be rich and famous and my personal assistant will have to drop what she’s doing to make the poster-paper-and-cat-litter run to the grocery store just before it closes on Sunday night.

I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Tarantino.