Soon after the Banquet Foods commercial, we went back from Tennessee to Toronto, where we spent all our time trying desperately to stay warm. We lived on a lake. The lake was frozen solid almost all of that year. It was so windy that every time we took a walk I thought Baby Noah was about to blow away. We were freezing. But the idea of Big Fish definitely warmed me up.
Big Fish was big budget. It was a movie directed by Tim Burton starring Ewan McGregor, Jessica Lange, Albert Finney, Danny DeVito, and a ton of other well-known actors. The movie was being shot in Alabama. When we got the call that I’d gotten the part, they informed us I had to be there in two days. (YIKES!!)
Mom didn’t bat an eyelash. She said, “Alabama, here we come!” (Mom must have been pretty desperate to get someplace warm, because the minute she hung up she started throwing all of our clothes into the car.) Dad said, “You can’t drive to Alabama! You’re in Toronto!” But Mom was too busy fantasizing about sunny Alabama. Without pausing, she said, “Oh yes we can. We’re crossing the border tonight.”
Mom, Braison, Noah, me, and our nanny, A.J., left that night and drove fourteen hours straight to Nashville. How do you keep three kids under the age of twelve entertained on a more-than-twenty-hour trip? One answer: a DVD player. Mom was against DVD players until we started making those long trips up north and back. Even so, she should be given a Mother-of-the-Year Award for not ditching us on the side of the road.
As soon as we got into Nashville, Mom and I dropped A.J. and the other kids at home, dumped our Canada cold-weather clothes, grabbed some shorts and T-shirts, and kept on—straight down to Alabama.
The movie was being filmed in a teeny tiny town in the middle of nowhere. And coming from me, that’s saying a lot. We got to our hotel late at night and— wow. It was the worst fleabag of a hotel in history. There were cops roaming around outside—something had just gone down—and inside, it was filthy. Mom called Dad in a panic. He said, “Just get through tonight. We’ll work on it tomorrow.”
The next morning we discovered the only upside to the hotel from hell: it was connected to a Waffle House. Mom and I like waffles. But not enough to stay. We moved to a better hotel. Right after breakfast.
In the movie, I was playing a girl named Ruthie. She was with a group of boys sneaking up to a witch’s house to look at the witch’s eyeball. Ruthie was a Goody Two-shoes Southern girl dressed in little Mary Janes, telling the boys not to curse. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? What Mom and I
hadn’t taken into account was that the witch’s house was in a swamp. A cold swamp. A cold, wet swamp. A cold, wet, buggy swamp. And it had been raining for weeks. In our mad rush from Canada, we hadn’t ever stopped to check the weather. Let’s just say we had not packed for cold, or wet, or buggy. And definitely not for swamp.
My call time was late because my scene was supposed to be taking place on a dark and spooky night. The first thing we saw when we got to our trailer were poster-sized pictures of snakes, spiders, and other critters that lived in the swamp. There was a sign that said WATCH OUT FOR THESE CREATURES! THEY’RE ALL VERY DANGEROUS AND THEY’RE ALL RIGHT HERE IN THE SWAMP, WAITING TO ATTACK ANYONE WHO CAME HERE FROM TORONTO AND ONLY BROUGHT SHORTS AND T-SHIRTS—WHAT WERE YOU FOOLS THINKING?! That’s how I remember it, anyway. I was freaking out. Are you kidding me? Bugs? So sketchy! So scary! Bugs are not my thing.
Like I said, the swamp was wet and cold. There were weeds up to our waists. I was convinced the brown recluse spider on the poster was going to hunt us down and attack. Mom said, “Miley, are you sure you want to do this?” After driving all the way from Toronto? Heck, yeah, I was going to do it. Poor Mom. Our farm is one thing, but Mom isn’t very outdoorsy. She was not having fun.
I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life either, but I already knew that show business wasn’t always a cakewalk. I remember watching my dad on the set of Doc on a day when it was really cold out. People were getting frostbite. My dad’s a big old guy, but it was so cold that he was tearing up.
They had to get the shot. Not only that, my dad had to sit by a fountain looking like he was actually enjoying himself. I remember thinking, Dang, I don’t know if I could do it.
Now here I was, on the set of a big movie. A little cold. A little wet. A lot nervous, with plenty of time to sit around and wait. They told us when we could eat, and they told us when we could go to the bathroom. It wasn’t remotely glamorous. And that’s the truth about show business.
You see lots of glamorous moments in magazines, but most of it is plain hard work and little glamour.
But you know what? I wouldn’t trade it for anything! I had definitely gotten a bite—from the acting bug. (Sorry! I couldn't resist that one!)
Bugs or no bugs, I wanted to be really good in my scene. It was Tim Burton. If he liked me, he could put me in another movie. I was praying to do well, and concentrating really hard. In the beginning. But the later it got, the more unfocused I got. I just could not be quiet. When I start talking, there’s no stopping me. I was even annoying myself. But luckily a movie set isn’t the same as school.
Me and my big mouth made it through without getting detention. As for that call from Tim Burton? I’m still waiting.
Back in Nashville, we went to see the movie when it came out. My whole family stood up and cheered when I came on the screen. I loved it. My mom got me the Big Fish poster, and I hung it in my room.
After that I got called back but rejected for the movie The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (but at least I met Taylor Lautner at that audition—we’ve been friends ever since). Then I got called back but again rejected for the TV show The Closer. There was one audition—it was so painful I must have blocked what movie it was for. All I remember is that while I was auditioning for some movie starring Shirley MacLaine, one of my favorite actresses, the casting directors were making phone calls and completely ignoring me. I came out bawling. When something like that happened my sister Brandi always told me, “Positive minds do positive things.” So I embraced that attitude
and moved on.
My mom would see what I went through and say, “Honey, this is so hard. How can you take that rejection?” But they had raised me to be strong. I just came home and went back to cheerleading. I didn’t think of it as failure. I thought of it as part of the route to success.
So you see I’m really not exaggerating when I say that when I started Hannah Montana, I’d done Doc, a commercial, and Big Fish. Period. Oh, and don’t forget those old-woman parts with the wigs.
No wonder Disney had their doubts about me. But I didn’t. All those moments, from the farm to the swamp, had led me to now. I had dipped my toe in the water and knew I wanted to swim. (“Big Fish”
. . .swim. Get it?)