er learned from neighbors.
When confronted by her mother, Linda ran away from home, convincing a friend to hide her in the basement for three days while Linda's mother and police conducted a frantic search. When she finally returned home, she seemed unaware that she had caused her mother any pain. Telling this story many years later, she seems primarily amused by the fact that her behavior gained her additional freedom to do as she pleased.
She frequently stole money from her mother's purse, reasoning that this was family money to which she was therefore entitled. She used it to buy cigarettes and beer, often seducing the older brother of another friend to make purchases for her. She was sexually active at 14, trading sex for favors and refusing to use birth control. That she managed to finish high school was a surprise to her mother and her teachers.
At her mother's insistence, she enrolled in a local college, but, at the end of second semester, she decided to move to New York to pursue an acting career. Although she had little experience, she was able to achieve some success, primarily because of her fearlessness and her ruthless willingness to use other people to achieve her goals. When she first arrived, she moved in with a man she had met on the train ride there. Within a few weeks, she had left him to live with her acting teacher, having convinced her teacher of her talent and drive to succeed. She regularly stole money from him and became addicted to drugs during this time.
Her teacher encouraged her to attend auditions, and she sometimes "crashed" auditions (arriving without an appointment at private sessions), talking her way past the casting assistants to meet the producers. Because her behavior was often larger-than-life, many producers found her fascinating, and she began to be cast. However, she also began to gain a reputation as being erratic and insensitive. She had real tal
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