Jenny Wade imagined a long line awaiting her in Los Angeles.
She would have patience, her number would be called and she would have success.
If only reality matched her vision.
At 18, the Eugene native packed her belongings in a U-Haul and drove toward Southern California. She arrived, and without a place to stay, slept in the truck for a week.
The first night, she parked on a busy street and received a ticket. Wade realized quickly that if she parked in front of homes with for sale signs, people assumed she belonged there and for 10 days pulled the trick until she found an apartment.
“I thought I was pretty clever, and looking back I just realized that I was an idiot,” Wade said in a telephone interview. “I could have been killed 100 times over, but I did what I had to.”
The Churchill High graduate spent her first two years in Los Angeles driving from job to job. Often stuck in rush hour traffic, Wade would tilt her car seat back and change uniforms, always late, and always busy with four jobs. In recent years, she has appeared in the independent horror movie “Feast” and starred alongside Hollywood celebs Jennifer Aniston, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jake Gyllenhaal.
She remains humbled, thinking back to her early beginnings and waiting for that breakthrough role.
“I’m kind of the girl that has really big parts in small movies and really small parts in big movies, and I’m kind of waiting for that tide to turn over, so I can be the girl with the big part in the big movie,” Wade said.
Wade, born at the local Sacred Heart Medical Center, is part of a family full of Eugene natives. Her father was from Southern California, but moved up to Eugene during his teenage years.
“Painfully shy” growing up, she discovered an outlet through theater in high school. She auditioned as a freshman for “Once Upon a Mattress” and earned a role as an extra.
“I was in every play throughout high school and was a major drama nerd,” Wade said. “That’s just where I fit in. There was nothing like performing for me.”
Wade graduated from high school at age 17 and considered attending the University, but she was financially independent and would have had to pay her own way. She attended Lane Community College for two terms, holding various jobs around Eugene, whether it was a housekeeper, working at the Bon Marché or serving frozen yogurt at Valley River Center.
Wade turned 18 and, seeking a reprieve from “personal stuff” with family, headed south, thinking she would take a break and visit friends. Wade left without a goal in mind; all she wanted was an escape.
“It just felt good to blend into a new place where I could be anybody I wanted to be,” she said. “It was good for me. I had to grow up fast.”
Surviving meant working several jobs at a time. Some of the jobs included working as a secretary for an extras casting agency, helping at a bookstore, temping at a dentist’s office and waitressing. By 2005, she was able to quit working and focus solely on acting.
And in the same year, she emerged in the horror film “Feast.” As Honey Pie, Wade portrays an anti-heroine who seeks more from life. In a remote bar, patrons are forced to fend for themselves against a group of hostile monsters in the film mixing gore and comedy.
Wade’s character is doused in blood in one scene. The blood’s real-life combination of Tide Laundry Detergent, maple syrup and food coloring left Wade sticky and a “cast pariah.”
“I would eat my lunch holding my plate way out in front of me and throwing food at my face,” Wade said.
The small-scale release has spawned two sequels, “Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds” and “Feast 3: The Happy Finish” with both films going straight to DVD this year.
Wade made a short appearance in “Rumor Has It,” the 2005 drama/comedy starring Kevin Costner, as a screaming bridesmaid alongside actress Jennifer Aniston.
The easy-going Wade, who is just as quick to laugh at herself, fully immersed herself in preparing for her role as a pregnant chef in the 2007 release, “No Reservations,” alongside Zeta-Jones and Eckhart: She moved to New York; had the film’s costume department fit her with a prosthetic stomach suit (and everywhere she went, it went too); and attended culinary school and Lamaze classes.
“I have so much respect for pregnant women now,” Wade said. “My back hurt. My feet hurt. My shoulders hurt. My head hurt. It was awful. Not the best experience of my life. The movie’s cute though, and I was really proud of myself for putting in the work that it took to pull off the role.”
Wade grabbed the attention of her female friends with her latest movie, “Brothers,” featuring Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman and Gyllenhaal.
Initially, Wade’s character, Tina, was involved in a drunken night of making out with Gyllenhaal’s character at a bar, but the context changed, and when the film comes out in December, Tina is now a “smart girl with political views.”
Wade still had fun with it and left messages with her female friends, asking “Guess who I just made out with?”
Acting keeps Wade busy, yet she makes it back to Eugene at least twice a year and imagines living here once again.
“I still think in the back of my mind that I’m going to be in Eugene again… that one day I’ll be able to work out of Eugene. It might be a pipe dream, but don’t crush it for me yet.”
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