Good Riddance: Crossing Paths with Ghosts, Revisited

On Michelle Trachtenberg, the haunting deaths of child actors, and a whisper in an audition room.

Last week I was on a walk in Brooklyn when a text came in from an old friend: I’m so sorry to hear about Michelle. My condolences. I know only a small handful of Michelles and started to name them in my head as I tried to figure out who the text was about. I was shocked to learn that it was someone so young—someone I had worked with and, in many ways, always felt an innate, deep bond with as a fellow child actress growing up in the public eye: the actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who was just thirty-nine years old.

Michelle and I first met many years ago on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was the first guest starring role I landed after I left General Hospital around the age of seventeen. It was the Halloween episode, and I played a teenager in a crop top who gets bitten by a vampire (obviously). My character was a friend of Michelle’s character, Buffy’s sister, Dawn.

On my first day of shooting, I entered the hair and makeup trailer and sat down next to the star of the show, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who sighed as she flipped through the pages of her sides. (Script sides are the scenes you will be shooting on that particular day.) “I can’t believe we’re doing eight-and-a-half pages today. That's a lot.” At the time, I found this odd, as I had come from the world of soap operas where it was normal to shoot a whole episode (roughly seventy-five script pages) in one day. Eight-and-half pages seemed like so little to me. But as I continued to work in primetime television and film more, I came to understand the significant difference between shooting in the single-camera format compared to the multi-camera format, and I learned just how much work those eight-and-a-half pages were for everyone involved in the day’s scene.

On Buffy, I watched Sarah Michelle and Michelle Michelle masterfully work during the long, sixteen-hour work days (daytime TV could never), and I took my cues from their tenured experience working in a single-camera format (both of them started acting around the age of four). Michelle had a big, undeniable personality and an open heart. There was nothing coy or demure about her—she spoke her mind, and would make you her friend, fast. She had a pure talent and her performances pierced through the television screen, as did her hauntingly beautiful eyes—the biggest and bluest eyes I had ever seen.

Michelle and I didn’t stay in touch much after we shot that episode together, but over the years I was always happy to see her at premieres or industry parties, and several times on the set of Gossip Girl, when I would visit my little-sister-from-another-mister, Blake Lively. There’s a connection that those of us who were child actors during the same era share—a unique understanding of each other’s journeys, however different. We shared the same objectifications, the same roadblocks, and the same horrible expectations placed on our bodies and ambitions. We both knew what it felt like to love the craft of acting in an industry that did not love us back.

I wrote an essay on this topic in the book Listening in the Dark, titled, “Crossing Paths with Ghosts,” which looked at that particular era of the ’90s and early 2000s, and the actresses I grew up around and often auditioned against, most notably, Brittany Murphy. I was haunted by Murphy’s death and recounted the last time I ever saw her in person when we were auditioning for the same role in 8 Mile. Brittany had just finished her audition and was walking out as the casting director called my name. We crossed paths briefly as she exited and I entered the room, and as we did, she warmly and sincerely whispered, “Good luck in there.” Brittany got that part in 8 Mile which took her career to new heights; everyone was excited to see what she would do next. She died several years later at the age of thirty-two.

Brittany Murphy as Alex in 8 Mile.

When I heard about Michelle Trachtenberg’s death, it felt again like a path I was crossing, this time with a different ghost of someone I grew up with and shared so many similarities with. The sad truth is that there are few women who make it out of the child acting career path as fully realized adults or successful women beyond Hollywood—or even just, alive, in general. (This might sound hyperbolic, but it isn’t. See Dark Sparkler for those devastating receipts.) So when I do see one of those women I grew up around make it out on the other side, I feel a deep sense of happiness and pride. No matter how different we are or what we each went through in the industry as young women, we share the experience of fighting to find ourselves through it, to regain our autonomy and freedom not just in our careers, but in our personal lives too.

But when I see one of those actresses gone too soon, like Brittany or like Michelle, no matter the circumstances, I feel a particular kind of sadness, for all they never got to become or fulfill. Like me and most child actors, Michelle spent her childhood working. It bears repeating, that she, like so many of us, no matter how much we loved it at times, unknowingly gave up the innocence of our childhoods and most vulnerable years of our adolescence to work schedules, navigating powerful people on sets, and all that comes with being in the public eye. And then to die young on top of that? To have given those formative years away to the entertainment industry only to have the rest of them taken away by death? It’s heartbreaking and haunting.

This week for Good Riddance, I’m saying a heartfelt goodbye to Michelle Trachtenberg and good riddance to all that is placed on young women who grow up in the public eye. Like Brittany Murphy, and all the other performers who left this world too young, those I knew and those I didn’t, I will forever keep her kindred ghost close.

What are you saying goodbye to or letting go of this week?

For your calendars, I have a few exciting events (both virtual and in person) happening this month, including some extra special perks for our paid subscribers:

• Meet the Moment, TODAY, 12pm ET (Brooklyn, NY): This is late notice, I know, but if you’re in New York, come by the Brooklyn Museum from 12pm-6pm (come for all or part of the day’s programming) to celebrate International Women’s Day with The Meteor’s annual summit, Meet the Moment. There will be amazing conversations, panels, and readings, featuring women like designer Diane von Furstenberg; former director of the White House Gender Policy Council, Jen Klein; and yours truly, among many others. I’m giving away two free tickets to one of our paid subscribers. Email us at LITDsubstack@gmail.com. (Please include your full name.) Tickets will be given to the first person who emails. Click here for tickets and more info about the event.

• Five Things I’ve Learned, March 18, 8pm ET (virtual): Join me for this live, two-hour conversation with Matthew Zapruder and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about how to harness our emotions into the full force of our creative work—and how to put all that we’re feeling about the state of the world to good use. Click here for tickets and more info.

• The Short and Sweet on March 20, 12pm ET (virtual): Our next edition of The Short and Sweet, our monthly creative and cathartic gathering live over Zoom for paid subscribers will take place on Thursday, March 20th from 12pm-1pm ET. We’ll be joined by my ethically-minded and brilliant friend, journalist, founder of the newsletter The.Ink, and NYT bestselling author of The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas. We’ll talk politics, fighting fascism in America, and what we need to do next. The Zoom link will be emailed to paid subscribers about thirty minutes before the start of the Zoom.

• AWP Awards Reception, March 26, 6:30pm PT (Los Angeles, CA): If you’re planning on attending the AWP conference this month in Los Angeles, I’ll be hosting their Awards Reception & Benefit for LA Fire Recovery on Wednesday, March 26. Come say hello if you’re there! Tickets are $15 by suggested donation. For one of our paid subscribers, I’m saving a seat just for you! Email us at LITDsubstack@gmail.com (include your full name) and I'll make sure you get a seat at the gala. Click here for more info.