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Hollywood … Montana style: Ranch life puts glitz in perspective for Big Timber woman
The smell of fresh-cut hay drifts through the window as Diane Kamp Clayton juggles phone calls to clients around the globe.
From a modest farmhouse on the Clayton family homestead – a home that has been in her husband’s family for four generations – the Illinois native turned Big Timber rancher is only a phone call away from some of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
By LINDA HALSTEAD-ACHARYA
Of The Gazette Staff
"Oddly enough, you have to call a woman in Montana to get a dialect coach for someone in L.A.," she said. "They love it that I live up here. I’m living their dream."
Clayton has a singular job she created herself. Although not a dialogue coach herself, she manages the first and only co-op of dialect coaches in the world.
So, when Catherine Zeta-Jones wants to sound more Spanish than Welsh for the Zorro sequel or Australian actress Nicole Kidman wants to drop her "down-under" vernacular for a voice from America’s heartland, Clayton gets the call.
"I’m the only one who does this," she said.
A shift in plans
Clayton is a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. In a rapid-fire staccato – accentuated by the flamboyant gestures of a trained actress – she tells how the kid from Illinois ended up working in the movie industry from a ranch in rural Montana. The progression pivots from a decision she made while finishing her doctoral degree at the University of Michigan.
"I was going to be a professor of theater," she said. Then, just as she started her dissertation, she made an "about-face."
"I pretty much got in my car, drove to New York to become an actress and left my Ph.D. behind," she said.
Clayton loved the 15 years she spent in New York City, acting in off-Broadway productions and performing sketch comedy.
"I could have done that forever, but I needed to make money," she said.
She stumbled on a more lucrative career in 1984 when a young actor caught her eye. The young "undiscovered" actor was Bruce Willis.
Clayton introduced Willis to an agent friend the next day and within three months he was starting in "Moonlighting."
"And – boom! – he took off. So, they thought I had an eye for talent," she said.
Within two years, Clayton had become an agent herself and within several more years, from an office in Los Angeles, she was representing such talents as Emma Thompson and Alan Arkin. Besides stars, Clayton counted several dialect coaches among her clientele. It was working with dialect coaches for "A River Runs Through It" and "Far and Away" that she arrived in Montana in 1991.
Road Kill Café
As Clayton traveled between sets, her own life began to play out like a Hollywood script. Clayton and a friend, acting on the recommendation of a local, stopped by the Road Kill Café in Big Timber for a beer. It was there she struck up a conversation with a young man wearing a black cowboy hat, Big Timber rancher Mike Clayton.
"I moved up here nine months later and married him," she said.
Life on the ranch proved a new experience for Clayton.
"You have no introspection when you live in a big city," she said. "You don’t have to. You just go, go, go. But when you live out here, you have to learn about yourself."
Between moving cows and swathing hay, she was also forced to learn new skills to keep her business afloat.
"I had never touched a computer," she explained with a wry smile. "I had an assistant. La-de-dah. They did everything for me as I ran off to fabulous premieres."
The move also forced her to shift the focus of her business.
"You can’t represent actors in Montana," she said. "You have to be there (Hollywood) schmoozing."
Instead, she directed her energy to her talented group of dialect coaches. She gathered half a dozen of them and formed the co-op. The idea snowballed as actors saw their peers benefit from the coaches’ expertise.
The co-op grew from six to 16 and Clayton doubled their salary.
In a panic
Clayton’s job is a mixed bag.
Movie producers call her, and she gives them the names of available coaches and then hammers out a deal.
Due to the nature of the business, Clayton can’t go out looking for work. She has to wait until an actor has been cast. Most often, she gets the call at the last minute.
"They’re always panicked," she said. "They call and say, ‘Our show is coming up in a week and they cast a British actress for the lead.’ They hadn’t planned on that."
She also enjoys visiting movie sets to touch base with her clients.
"Then you get to watch them work, which is exciting," she said. She remembers watching Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt fishing together in "A River Runs Through It."
"That was very exciting – well, for an hour or so," she said with a laugh. Working on a movie set every day, 14 hours a day, loses its glamour real quick."
A moving target
There is nothing typical about Clayton’s days. Last month, as dew still dampened the hay below the house, she was fielding calls from a movie shoot in London. Ralph Fiennes was doing a picture with Vanessa Redgrave in China, and he had requested one of Clayton’s dialect coaches. Half an hour later, she was on the phone to Germany for another production.
"They’re doing a futuristic thriller in which everybody lives in one city and they need a dialect coach to (coach them) to sound like they all live in one place," she said.
"This is where it gets really wacky," she said, explaining how she adjusts her business contacts to time zones around the world. "I start my day with the European people at the end of their day, then I catch the New Zealand people at the end of my day and the beginning of theirs."
Another agenda
As if moving cows and managing dialect coaches weren’t enough, Clayton, an armchair politician, recently dove into the political fray.
"I’ve become the ‘accidental activist,’ " she said with a laugh. "I had no idea I was going to be doing all of this a year ago."
Clayton’s take on politics is not so very different from life on the ranch. "You have to get the hay crop in or the branding done," she said. "I think that really speaks to Montanans. I think we have so much more in common than apart. We need to get back to concentrate on those similarities."
Early last winter, Clayton was struck when then-presidential candidate John Edwards expressed a similar theme.
She was so inspired after watching him debate, she immediately booked a ticket to campaign for him in the Iowa caucuses.
"I’ve never done anything like this before," she said. "I went all by myself."
The fervor grew. Clayton signed on as chair of the Democratic Central Committee in Sweet Grass County, one of the state’s most Republican strongholds, and in June she was selected one of Montana’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Balance and perspective
Balancing such a multifaceted life might overwhelm some people. For Clayton, however, it’s a natural.
"I’ve always lived in two worlds," she said, explaining her diverse background. One of her great-grandfathers was an entrepreneur who invented the bobby pin, while a grandfather on the other side was a hard-working immigrant who worked on the Ford assembly line. "Living on a ranch with a third-generation cattle rancher and working in the movie business. It’s the same thing today."
From Hollywood agent to political newcomer, Clayton counts on ranch life to give her perspective.
"There’s something real about living on a cattle ranch," she said, telling how her Hollywood contacts call her up, complaining of their "life and death" issues. "(I tell them) I’ve got a frozen calf in the kitchen. I’ll get back to you."
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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