In 1982, Miss Rowe moved from Iowa City to Los Angeles, California. Within a week of moving, Miss Rowe did a screen test for the director Donald Disraeli and was cast as the lead, Maggie Burns, in the movie Brilliant Disguise, about a midwestern girl who runs away from home and hitchhikes to Los Angeles to be in the movies.
“It was basically my life story,” Miss Rowe told reporters at the movie’s premiere. “I left Iowa, and I never looked back. I became someone else entirely.”
Miss Rowe has also starred in Charming Joe, Sophomore Slump, Daniella and Charlie, Excuses Excuses, Drought, Dire Emergency, Between the Pipes—for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress—Gypsy Red, Macbeth, Cleopatra on the Nile—for which she was nominated for Best Actress—The Prairie Sisters, The Delta—for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress—Cryin’ to the Devil, Drama Queen, Drama Queen 2, and Bet On It. She guest starred in two seasons of High Street and appeared as Miss Kit Kat in the HBO series Boarding, for which she won the Emmy for Best Actress. Miss Rowe has been the spokesperson for Lululemon since 2006.
Personal Life: Belinda Rowe married Chef Deacon Thorpe in a private ceremony in Beverly Hills in 1990. The couple adopted a daughter, Angela Thorpe, in Australia in 1990. Miss Rowe divorced Thorpe in 2005 and wed Kentucky horse trainer Robert Percil in 2006. The couple has two daughters, Mary and Laura, and they reside in Louisville, Kentucky.
BELINDA
Belinda was hiding in the dim, ascetic cell of Clara’s room when she heard the little girl calling for her. Ellery. Or rather, Ellery was calling out for “Miss Kit Kat.” Belinda considered ignoring her, knowing full well that Ellery wouldn’t dare enter Clara’s room; Deacon had taught all his children to be afraid of it. But Ellery’s voice was clear and sweet, and Belinda missed her own girls—desperately, viscerally—and so Belinda emerged.
“Miss Kit Kat, at your service,” she said, clapping her hands in the crisp, efficient way that Belinda had created for her character, a gesture that meant: Let’s go, girls! Grin and bear it!
The smile on the child’s face was priceless. Sometimes, Belinda thought, it felt good to just be nice.
“If you’d like,” Belinda said, “I can do your hair like Ashland’s on the show.”
“In a double diagonal fishtail braid?” Ellery asked.
“Yes indeed,” Belinda said. “Chop, chop! Let’s find a brush.”
It took the better part of an hour, but in the end, Ellery’s braid didn’t look half-bad.
“I’m finished,” Belinda announced. Back in the last season of filming Boarding, Belinda had asked the show’s stylist, Turquoise, to show her how to do the braids, thinking she would try the style out on Mary and Laura. But the girls were no-nonsense, like their father. They wore their jodhpurs to bed, practically, and were so eager to be on horseback that they couldn’t be bothered with anything more complicated than a ponytail. It was almost as if Belinda had brought the wrong children home from the hospital. She had suffered through tomboy Angie and now had to endure the horsiness of Mary and Laura. Was it any wonder that Belinda was so enjoying this time with girly-girl Ellery in her silver, sparkly dress? Belinda knew that neither of her daughters would be caught dead in such a dress. Belinda cut the hanger straps from her black Stella McCartney and used them to tie up the loose ends of Ellery’s braids. She pulled out her silver hand mirror and showed Ellery the final result.
Ellery clapped her hands in delight. She grabbed Belinda around the middle. “Oh, thank you, Miss Kit Kat!”
“You’re quite welcome,” Belinda said. It was slightly disconcerting the way Ellery seemed to believe that Belinda was Miss Kit Kat. The girl was nine years old. Could she handle learning that the woman she thought was Miss Kit Kat was actually the actress Belinda Rowe, who had been married to her father before her mother was? Could she handle knowing that Scarlett had once worked for Belinda as Angie’s nanny?
No, probably not. Belinda smiled at Ellery in the mirror. Such a pretty little girl, more Scarlett than Deacon, but that might change as she got older. Belinda envied the child for being able to sustain an attitude of make-believe. If she wanted Belinda to be Miss Kit Kat, then Belinda would be Miss Kit Kat. It would be less painful or complicated than being Belinda Rowe, especially under the present circumstances.
“Shall we go look at the dollhouse in Angie’s room?” Belinda asked. She had always thought of the dollhouse as Angie’s, but for all she knew, it had passed to Ellery in recent years.
“I’m not allowed,” Ellery said. “I’m not old enough.”
“Oh, but you are this summer,” Belinda said, and she led Ellery by the hand down the hall.
Belinda looked on as Ellery took all the fancy, delicate furniture out of the house to rearrange it. There was the canopy bed, its mattress the size of a playing card, and the porcelain claw-foot tub and the Venetian double-globed lamp. Belinda could remember sitting in this exact spot watching Angie play with the house—although back then, Belinda always had a script in her lap and looked up only when Angie implored her. Mama, look at this! However, Belinda had paid Nailor, the old caretaker, to keep the house in climate-controlled storage for the winter. And look—the house had lasted!
Belinda recalled what Angie said about Belinda not caring about her own parents, which struck Belinda as painfully true. Belinda’s mother had been an old-school Iowa housewife who made casseroles and put up jars of stewed tomatoes and pickled dilly beans. She always made way too much food, as if confronted with the daily surprise that she didn’t have six children. Belinda’s birth had had complications that precluded her mother from ever having another baby. Belinda’s father was a quiet, balding man who blended in with the woodwork—except for Saturdays in the fall, when he put on his Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt and hat and cheered like a fiend at Kinnick Stadium.
Belinda’s parents had always seemed small to her—not in stature, but in dreams and ambition. They didn’t want anything; they didn’t aspire. It had been their great misfortune to have given birth to a daughter who had wanted to escape them from the moment she could walk. They were strict with her. She wasn’t allowed to date or, God forbid, bring boys home—which had forced Belinda to sneak out. When she was a sophomore, Craig Eskind used to wait for her at the end of Moyers Lane in his pickup. He had taught Belinda how to drive in the green F-100 with the finicky stick shift. Small girl, big truck—Belinda laughed now to think of what she must have looked like behind the wheel. And her parents had never found out!
Belinda left Iowa City right after graduating from high school—ostensibly on a summer road trip with her best friends, Judie and Joanne Teffeteller, from which she never returned. Now that Belinda was a parent, she could see how unspeakably cruel that had been. Angie was right: Belinda had never loved either of her parents the way that Angie loved Deacon.
“Look!” Ellery said, pointing to the commode. It had a pull chain.
Belinda gave her a smile. “That’s funny, isn’t it?” She rarely had time for introspection like this, which was a good thing, she realized, as it nearly always led her to dwell on the ways she had failed the most important people in her life.
Craig Eskind. It had been ten million years since Belinda had even thought of him. She had once cut his lip with her braces.
Belinda clapped her hands. “Downstairs you go, now,” she said in her Miss Kit Kat accent, which was half-British, half–Locust Valley lockjaw. “Find Mummy, show her your new ’do, and ask her to make you some lunch.”
“Aren’t you coming downstairs?” Ellery said. She grabbed Belinda by the hand. “Please?”
Belinda smiled. This was a new feeling: someone in this house wanted to be with her. “Well, if you insist,” she said.
Mummy was nowhere to be found. The only person in the kitchen was Buck, who was sitting at the counter, holding Deacon’s clamshell in one hand, running his finger over the swirl of blue inside.
“Where is everybody?” Belinda asked.
Buck barely looked up. “Laurel and Scarlett went for a bike ride,” he said.