The Rise and Fall of Kim Webb
Jazz music blared throughout Las Vegas’s Gabi Cafe and Bakery. Yet, the sound could not compare to the excited exclamations of Kim Webb. Dressed in a display of vibrant bright colors contrasting with my own assortment of black, she was meant to stand out. The two girls sat in front of us surely knew as she outwardly glorified their choice of chicken salad, inspiring her to order her own alongside a raspberry white mocha; a harmony of savoury and sweet which seemed to highlight her own aura of baby doll mixed with femme fatale.
Throughout her life, Kim has played many characters, both on-screen and off. But, within the walls of her family’s 40-room Victorian house, she truly learned the trade of star quality. Her father was a photographer with a desire to treat individuals as landscapes. He was old-fashioned, proficient in both art and the practicality of masculinity. “He could fix the roof, your tooth, the baseball bat, and the football field.” Her mother, a proclaimed hippie. The pairing alongside the parties that rattled the household and the smell of weed in the air created an environment of “delicious chaos” that would translate further on. But, still, her father was her inspiration in the effort to express. Within his lens, she peered into the heart of her favorite person. “I was able to have my dad to myself. And, that taught me early on how to be important and how to get people’s attention.”
In college, she officially experimented with theatre. She studied clinical psychology, fascinated by the individualistic puzzle pieces that made up a person. However theatre always stuck, it seemed to be where she felt she fit in. Then, the audition of a lifetime; the 1988 film, ‘Hairspray’. “I’ll never forget, it was pouring down rain and we had to be there at 6AM.” The line featured thousands of people, even going on into the late afternoon. Kim Webb, a self-proclaimed procrastinator who is never on time [“They’ll probably have to helicopter me in my funeral like, ‘here she comes, she’s coming down the runway.’”] was 6th in line. She got the role as Carmelita, a dancer/council member on the ‘Corny Collins Show’. A movie featuring one-in-a-million individuals such as Ricky Lake, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry of Blondie, and herself. Once she gained track of the differences between a clinical psychologist’s salary versus an actress’s: it was goodbye human study, hello Hollywood. It was not the only major acting gig she had scored. She had just landed a role in a rendition of ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’ at Ford’s Theatre. The commitment, at the time, was something that she was unaware of. Theatre, to Kim, was more of a commitment than a relationship. “Whatever small way whether you’ve got one line or 20 or 200, that cast and audience is depending on you.” In the “quintessential struggle between theatre and film”, Kim chose film.
After the production of ‘Hairspray’, Kim had landed a role in the 1990 film, ‘Cry-Baby’ starring Johnny Depp, as Lerona, a love-crazed obsessive of Depp’s title character. The character seemed to have established a need for adoration based out of her physique. Kim’s own curvy, voluptuous body type has seemed to cultivate the roles she had been assigned. “I tend to be the undercover femme fatale. On the surface, I’m the nurse or the librarian but with the series of turning events, I have my own moustache. I twirl my own like the evil guy in the black and white.” In the age of feminism, one might turn away from being viewed purely in the sense of sexuality. However, Kim favors these roles. To be the bad girl, to be the surprise twist with an intelligent, funny edge is a toothsome puzzle her piece fits. “By nature, I’m topsy-turvy, voluptuous, curvy, giggles and bullets.”
Perhaps, this raw sexuality is what inspired a notable director to offer a gracious proposition. He had asked her to pick a choice of some lighter roles in his pre-production film. “And, he said to me, ‘And, you can just make me happy before I leave?’ I said, ‘What’s the manner? You’re not already happy?’” In the end, Kim had not received a role in the film. It brought on the topic of predatory behavior stimulated by Hollywood’s men in power towards up-in-coming actresses in exchange for prominent roles (cue Harvey Weinstein). It was surprising that she felt discomfort with the publicity of these situations. The effort of famous actresses (cue Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow) to “cleanse” themselves afterwards, to Kim, seemed performative. “None of those actresses wanted to bring it up when they were on the up-and-coming and now, of a sudden, they wanna bring it up. You should have spoke up right then and there. You probably would have never succeeded like you did, but you would have stood up for yourself.” But, Kim was not going to receive anything that she did not earn. While there is a thought of “doing much worse for much less”, she could not ethically go that route. “I don’t care whether they gave me a role in ‘Star Trek 89’ ahead of time.”
In 2010, the glitz and glamour of her environment had sparked out her finances. She could no longer support Hollywood prices through the outlet of acting. Desperate, she had turned to stripping. From Thursday to Sunday, Kim performed a show akin with her theatre background and walked out earning around $7k a week. It had surmounted the “walk-on” parts that she had been auditioning for and suddenly acting was no longer worth it. The decision was to move to Vegas, strip for 3 years, and save enough to come back. Then, her boyfriend pushed her down the stairs and tore her ACL. Here she was, surrendering her dreams in turn to be mediocre only for everything to come crashing down. “I ended up killing myself, figuratively speaking.” Kim had gone into a deep depression, falling into substance abuse, accomplishing nothing aside from staying high and out of jail. She became an expert partyer. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone because I’m barely coming out the other side.” She regularly attempts to regain her sobriety however the quest has not been child’s play. “I killed myself for killing myself and then I decided to live.”
