The camera had loved her looks, and with some coaching she had been a decent actress, but what she had fallen in love with was directing. It was what she wanted to learn, and when she went back to college after having Max, she enrolled in USC’s film school and applied herself. Her senior project had been a small low-budget film that she had made on a shoestring, financed with her father’s help, and it had become a cult film, The Truth About Men and Women. It was the start of her career as a director. She had never stopped or looked back since.

Her first few movies did well and got rave reviews, and they started making big money by the time she was in her late twenties. She had become a Hollywood legend and a huge success in her seventeen years as a director. She loved what she did. What she didn’t love, and never would, were all the trappings that went with it, the fame, the attention, the press, the premieres, all the opportunities to show off and be in the limelight. As far as she was concerned that was for actors, not for her, which was why she hadn’t wanted to be an actress and loved being a director, and contributing to each actor’s performance and interpretation of the script. After her one film as an actress, she could see what would happen to her if she pursued acting as a career, and she wanted none of it. Tallie was a worker, a creator, an artist. She was willing to work endlessly on everything she did, but not be a star. It was the one thing she didn’t want, and she was very clear about it.

She’d had to go out and buy a dress for her first Golden Globes when she was nominated; she didn’t own one. All she had were the clothes she worked in, which made her look like a homeless person most of the time. Tallie didn’t care. She was happy just the way she was, and Hunt loved her that way too. He was smoother and more worldly than she was, and more involved in the Hollywood scene, but it never went to his head, and he was always content to come home to Tallie, sprawled out on the floor or the couch, poring over scripts. And when she was on location, he joined her whenever he could. He was more of a businessman than someone involved in Hollywood. Pictures were big business to him, and it didn’t get much bigger than a film produced with and directed by Tallie Jones. And whether she bothered to comb her hair or not was immaterial to him.