January 27, 2025 • 56 mins
Like Shannen, Tracey Gold grew up a child star. But her 'Growing Pains' left some scars.An almost fatal battle with anorexia, being bullied on set, and dealing with rejection from an early agetook a toll on Tracey. Today, she shares her connection with Shannen, her road to recovery, and the realities they faced as young women in Hollywood.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doorney. Hi, my
name is Tracy Gold. I'm so privileged to be here
on Let's Be Clear Shannon's podcast. And she was so
proud of and put so much passion behind. I was
really honored to be asked to do this. Shannon and
I come from a shared experience of being a child actress.
(00:23):
And the interesting thing is Shannon and I. I knew
Shannon in a very like, kind of non actory way
in in a funny world that we were raised in.
And I went to this very Elica small private school
and and very tiny, and it was just a junior
high school, and I was in night and Shannon came
(00:44):
in for seventh grade, and she was like a breath
of fresh air for me coming in that finally somebody
who understood kind of like my journey and what I
was going through and going in and out of school.
And we would just walk around the yard and talk
at lunch, and I mean we really just connected in
such a really great way. She was at both my
(01:05):
sixteen and eighteenth birthday parties, and but you know, we've
lost kind of you know, our careers went kind of
even different directions, so it kind of comes full circle
here that I can fill in today maybe give you
guys a little glimpse of what it's like to be
a child actress. Everybody's always asking me, and I think
there's so many misconceptions, and I think our child actor
(01:27):
gets such a kind of raw deal, like this deal
that like, oh, you're a child actor, that means you're
not a success because you were a child actor and
were able to continue it until you were older. And
I'm always like, I think it's any kind of success
that if you reach that many people as a kid,
you know, so that should be an applause to all
(01:48):
child actors. And you know, I'll start from the beginning
for you guys, But you know, I come from New
York and I not organically was an actress. My dad
was an actor, and I'm coming from a first marriage.
And so my mom and my dad, Harry Harry Gold,
the very very great reputation Harry Gold, but callid agent.
(02:10):
He and my mom came out to California and he
came as an actor for his career. And me and
my sister Missy were like four and five when we
were little kids, like you know, always, my mom was
in advertising. They always approached like, ooh, you learned to
get them in commercials, and my mom was like no.
But then eventually I acoluently kind of fell into it
in New York and started to do a commercial. I did,
(02:31):
like a Lucky Charms commercial. I did, like a print
Dad for PEPSI And we came out to California, and
I'll tell you my first job I ever got was
Roots the miniseries, and I played Missy and the Sandy
Duncan character, and I got to work with Robert Reid
and were beautiful outfit. I was like, I couldn't believe it.
Not that job I was getting the power of it
(02:54):
or the all of that that was behind it. It
was just this one of these beautiful dresses. And I
was my dad from Heady Bunch was playing my dad.
So that was like the start of my kind of career,
you know. And I a lot of people know me
from growing paints, and I became well known at sixteen
for doing growing paints. But my sister and I had
(03:14):
been working steadily since we were kids. We would go
up on auditions together, we would go up against each other.
We would you know, we would go to school it
was really important to my parents put us. They put
us in a regular school that we had to go to.
And when we went into the regular school, and we'd
come out with prepped four or five auditions. And I
was very good at getting auditions, so I would get
(03:36):
a lot of them, and I'll do commercials and lots
of TeV stuff in Missy and I I remember kind
of cutting to like the highlights. We we auditioned for
Benson Together, a series that was on in the seventies
with Robert Robert Yoh, and it was to play the
governor's daughter, and my sister got it. Missy got it.
And you know, the funny thing is I always, you know,
(03:59):
a child after most usually have siblings that are you know,
have to kind of compete against each other or you know,
Missy and I were so close in age that we
went up for everything together. Very few we didn't. And
but you always, most acting families have multiple child actors
in the family, so it's always a balancing act to
(04:20):
make it kind of not a competitive thing. And I
think that Missy and I were so close and my
parents were very very good about that that if one
gets a success, it's the other success, and your turn
will come and this is their turn. What's meant to
be is meant to be and celebrate each other's success
and joys. And so that's kind of how we looked
(04:42):
at it. You know, we went to a regular elementary school.
We would you know, just go on auditions and if
we had to leave, we would go and work and
then we would come home to My parents made sure me.
You know, when we came out here, we were kind
of didn't have a lot of money. So we landed
in kind of like like some air areas that we
were like, you know, or like move quickly. We're from
(05:03):
New York, so it's like, okay, move them, like, oh
this isn't the right area. Oh this isn't the right area.
We finally settled in kind of like the Deep Valley,
which kind of to be said, tended to be our place,
and it's it's about thirty miles away from like Hollywood
auditions and stuff like that, and so you were really
kind of set art back then, and so you could
(05:23):
have like a life of normalcy but also go in
and do the you know, Hollywood stuff. And when Missy
got Benston, that really made Missy like a household name
at eight years old. So Missy and I are eight
and nine and she becomes this you know, household name.
And you know, so many people and people are weird,
(05:45):
especially the kid actors. I think they think they can
ask you anything. And they would come up and be like, oh,
are you see stand in. I'm like no. But I
wasn't like a like pissed off or like I was
just like no. I'm like, I knew my own successes.
I was working with Betty Davis and I was working
with Jane Wyman. I played Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean, and
(06:06):
so I knew my own success and I was confident
in that. But people did like to put us kind
of pit us against each other. And I remember for
me going to Benson was like Shane or La. It
was the most beautiful place. I mean it was the
Benson set was so it was with Thomas Harris and
the production company and it was just so well put together,
(06:29):
the candy, the craft service table. I just I had
such a good time there. So with Missy being on Benson,
that's a lot of fun for me. You know, when
I was eleven, I had a pretty big success in
my career, and that was I got a movie called
Shoot the Moon and that was with Diane Keaton and
(06:52):
Albert Finney. And funny story is I'll tell you. It
was the Friday for Christmas and I finished a movie
with for Keing Nelson. My mom was very impressed. I
was working with Ricky Nelson. I didn't really know who
he was, but I finished it like right before Christmas break.
And I wasn't really a great student. I didn't really
like school that much. Going on a set was sort
(07:13):
of like like my reprieve. I loved it. I loved
going from the set. I loved the crew who I loved,
like I knew. I thrived there and I was good there.
But in school, I was like it always being in
and out. I'm not gonna lie, it's not easy. In
elementary school, it is easier because you have one teacher
as only you get a good teacher that helps you.
You know, you have to You're obligated as a kid
(07:33):
to have three hours of schooling, so you know, you
get a set teacher, you get who access or social worker,
so that balance is always kind of you know. It's
much easier when you're younger, but I was going on
an audition, like two auditions. I had the final audition
for Shoot to Move, and I was in a terrible
(07:53):
car accident and it was the only day of school
I ever wanted to go to because it was the
Christmas party. And I was like, I want to go
to the Christmas party. My mom's like, you could just
miss out on it. You've missed so much. Like no,
I want to go. So we go and I got
into car accident, and you know, I ended up like
sixty five stitches in my face. And I remember them saying,
(08:15):
you know, to Albert park Allen Parker, the director, renowned
Alan Parker, and they said, look at her face is
really messed up, and we don't know what she's going
to look like when these stitches come out. He's like,
are you kidding me? He's like, I want real kids,
and real kids get hurt, so I want to see her.
And so I went in with my face stillstone with
(08:37):
stitches and did the audition on tape for him, and
I ended up getting it, and you know, and that
was kind of proud because he really didn't want professional
children actors. Most of the actor except for the lead girl,
Dana Hill, the wonderful, wonderful Dana Hill with the younger girls.
He wanted to be really natural. So I was privileged
(08:57):
to be a working actress that got in with the
group of girls really didn't know a lot. Tina Yethers,
who went on to do Family Ties, was one of
her first things she had ever done, and she played
one of the sisters, and that was an incredible, you know,
glorious experience, three months in San Francisco working, you know,
doing this kind of really like my first feature film,
(09:21):
and it was It's one of those experiences that you know,
you can't recreate. I remember when it ended, Diane Keaton
gave all these girls these gift baskets of just these
personally picked out gifts that were so nice. And I
mean I had this dollar Skayden for decades until finally
(09:41):
it was stuffed animal. Now it was actually like a
kind of doll in like a kind of gold outfit.
Was very cool. But that was in a great experience.
But in my life at that point, I came home
and we had moved houses, and I think, you know,
as being a child actor and being my nature kind
(10:02):
of a bit of a like I like control, I
like stability, and we had moved, and so that became
a little bit of a difficult time for me in
that part of my life. And I remember it was
the first time. I'd always been a really skinny kid,
never worried about my weight. I always played the wave.
They would say to me, Missy would get her her
(10:22):
clothes designed for her, and like Missy was a tomboy.
She didn't really like it that much. And we were
the same size, so I could wear her clothes and
and she and they would tell me the wardrobe department
and put like this potato sack on me. It was
one part. And they say, okay, go roll around in
the dirt. I'm like, okay, I'm like, we're not quite clamorous.
(10:44):
But that was sort of the parts I played. I
was always the child left behind, chasing after people, you know,
I you know, so it was that was my my
my niche. And so when I, you know, came back
to to California, there was an adjustment because the family
had moved without me doing the transition myself. So I
(11:10):
started to sort of also realize that I was getting
older and hitting puberty, and I think that terrified me
because I had been a child actress and little and
all of a sudden, I was going to hit another
phase in my life, and that is very It was scary.
It was scary for me. So I started to kind
of go on this health food kick. And it was
(11:31):
just one summer, but it was sort of like I
call it my bout with anorexia, you know, because I
was such a kind of people pleaser that I saw
what it was doing to my parents and I it
devastated me, and I, you know, I went to one
(11:52):
therapy session, you know, I went to my pediatrician and
he was like, you know, I think she's having a
bout with anorexia. He's a little anorexia, and you know,
I kind of knew a little bit like the best
little girl in the world, and so with Jennifer Jason Lee.
But I quickly wanted to make my parents happy and
I didn't want to be the burden in the family,
(12:15):
and I wanted I was always a really kind of
happy kid, and I was a little sullen that summer.
So I really quickly tried to get out of it.
And I successfully did, you know, probably not without like
dealing with everything that I needed to deal with, but
It got me through for many, many years, never really
thinking about food, never really thinking about my way, because
(12:38):
I went was always not an issue. And I, you know,
from then on, I continued to work and do different parts.
I was in Gooble of my Children with Aunt Margaret.
I did Another Woman's Child with Linda Lavin. I was
just working consistently. When I was about fourteen fifteen, you know,
(12:59):
I was still working assistantly. The last thing I did
before I got Growing Pains was, Oh, it was Lots
of Luck with a net Frunicello and I I remember
I did that, and I went for Griying Pains, and
all the girls in Hollywood were auditioning, you know. I
don't know if Shannon did, but we were all. We
(13:21):
all auditioned for the same things. We all passed or
cross paths and stuff like that at that time, you know.
And I had to go up for Growing Pains and
I had multiple auditions and I didn't get it, and
I was a little bombed. You know. I had already
worked with Kirk Cameron because we looked alike, so were
(13:42):
Cassa's brother and sister. We had done McDonald's commercial together. Oh,
and we had also done Best of Times Together, which
was a movie with Kurt Russell and the Dear Robin
Williams and and I had a kind of a small
part that was cut out even have a credit in it.
But I had a lot of time waiting on the set,
(14:03):
so I was in it. I was like a part
of it, but I was kind of in a holding
room most of the time. So like I knew Kirk
and so I hadn't I thought, oh, that would be fun,
but then I didn't get it, and so I quickly
moved on, because that's what you have to do. Like
being an actor at any age or being a child actor,
(14:24):
There's so many things you don't get. There's so many
the things I could tell you that I auditioned for online.
There's a there's a Labyrinth audition that I did, and
because I got clothes to it, but I think I
was wearing like a pink heart puffy sweatshirt, which is
really very Labyrinth of me. And I still had a
kind of stick New York accent. So I've seen the audition,
(14:46):
like other right, Jennifer Connolly, Yeah, you're wing work, so
that would have been cool. So I went about my
way and we are a family of actors at this point.
(15:07):
My dad was an agent. When he became an agent,
he didn't want to necessarily be a kid's agent. He
wanted to be an adult, you know, adult actors agent.
And he eventually opened up an agency, a children's department
with a well known children's agent, Ruth Hansen, and she
(15:29):
came over and that's Missy and I are kind of
early teen years, transitioned into my dad's agency with her there,
and so that's when, all of a sudden, you know,
I became a part of that. So my dad now
is sort of kind of like especially for something like
growing pains, sort of getting involved in it, like, you know,
because he's the head of his agency. And I go
(15:52):
to Chicago because my sister Brandy is who's now an agent,
is working in the movie Wildcats and it was with
Goldie Hahn. And I went to Chicago when I was
having the best time. I just got out of high school. No,
I'm not graduated. For the summer. I was fifteen, and
(16:13):
we get a call they want to see Tracy again
because they're recasting the part of Carol. Sever they'd shopped
the pilot. I'd read about it in the magazine or
in the newspaper before I went to school, they're recasting
the part of Carol sever and me and my infinite
wisdom was like, I'm not going back. Are you kidding me?
No way, so they could tell me they don't like
(16:34):
me again, I don't need that kind of rejection. They've
already rejected me. I've auditioned many times and then all
they want me back, And I said, I was sort
of like not interested and probably naive at that point
in my life that work comes this easily. But my
dad is like, Tracy, I'm so he had to go
back for work. He's like I'm going back. He's like,
(16:56):
I implore you had to come back with me, and I'm like, fine,
I'll go back. So I went back with him, and
I auditioned, auditioned two more times, and the last audition
I had back then they didn't have cell phones, so
we had to have to stop at seven eleven to
see how you know, I had a network, and you know,
(17:19):
nobody knows, you know, in the outside world what network is.
But you have to go to a studio. Basically you're
auditioning for a comedy and you get all like twenty
men in suits who I think are trained not to
laugh at anything you say, because you don't know how
you do when you go in there, and you got
(17:41):
to just throw it out there, and it's like, all right,
I can't tell. So we went, you know, to the
seven eleven to check in with the agency to see
if they've heard anything. And I had gotten it, and
they had told me I need to get a pair
of glasses and head over to a TV Guide photo
sheet immediately, and the rest of the cast was already there,
(18:05):
and so I went over. I got a pair of
like like phony glasses in Hollywood somewhere, went to the
photo shoot, and that's the cover you see, that went
for the cover of TV Guy. That September was that
day I literally auditioned, went to TV Guide photo shoot,
met the whole cast, you know, I know, and and
(18:28):
like I was in a fish out of water. I
was like, I was like what my head was spinning.
I had never done a comedy before. I had only
done dramas, so I wasn't really my natural state to
be broad and kind of over the top and searched
for a joke and all those sorts of things. So
I remember kirks Mont Barbera had the tape of Growing
(18:49):
Pains and a tape well, you know, I put in
my VHS and she uh gave it to me. I
gave it to my mom and dad or with my mom,
and I remember I went home and I watched it.
I put it in and all the whites around I
kind of watched. It felt felt like I was by myself,
and I was like, huh. Opening credits came on and
they were kind of like cheers, and I was like, Oh,
(19:11):
I could do this. This sexually looks really good. And
it was from that moment on I was like, oh
my god, this is a really great thing. And you know,
Growing Pains was, especially in the first few years, just
a great, great fun experience. I mean, Mondays. I couldn't
wait for Mondays. It was so fun. Everybody, you know,
(19:33):
got along. Everybody was just grateful to be there. Duenna
and Allen were both coming out of difficult situations and
you know, so they were really they taught all of
us as kids that this is something to be extremely
grateful about. This is not something that happens all the time.
And they were, you know, kind of bonded us all together.
And we really all just sort of got along very well.
(19:57):
I always say Growing Pains is like lightning in a bottle,
because it's like, you know, when you're going through it,
especially when you're so young and you have no idea
that this is so unique that it's like it's it
can almost just like you can be so naive about it.
And it really was. When people say what was like
(20:17):
to work on Bring Pains, and I'm like, it was
it was like me in a bottle. You know, people say,
do you guys still hang out? You know, if we
see each other, it's like old times. We're not always
seeing each other socially, but we could all pick up
the phone at anytime and call, in which we have.
I think the loss of Alian was a devastating blow
(20:41):
for our family, our Growing Pains family. I'm getting ahead
of myself, but I can't help but think that when
I think about Growing Pains, Growing Pains, especially for those
first few years, and every popular actor came in, from
Hillary's Strike to Brad Pitt to Christy Swanson. It was
a rotating door of just the best of the best
(21:05):
of the young Hollywood and you gub A Gooding Jr.
We just really had fun. You know, on Guaranty Paints.
I noticed, you know, a few years into it, I
probably i'd never oh, Matthew Perry, the great Matthew Perry.
(21:25):
He played Carol's boyfriend Sandy, and the you know, every
we all always had to do episodes of special every
every character would get a uh a very special episode
that ABC would do, and I had one and mine
was a two part with with Matthew Perry, and he
was wonderful in it. And I I remember though the
(21:52):
first three after three seasons, probably there started to become
like like jokes at my behalf. In the beginning, the
Carol Sever and Mike sever relationship was very We were
always putting each other down. We were always I was
calling him stupid, he was calling me brainiact and in
(22:14):
truth he was a match better student than I was.
And I was probably more like Mike's Sever, not wanting
to go to school and doing all that sort of stuff.
And so, you know, it was very lighthearted and it
really had to do with our characters. But then there
became shift where I think the writing became a little edgier,
and I think there's always like to push the button
(22:35):
to be funnier, and I pushed the button to kind
of like, you know, always stay on top of the Unfortunately,
I think in that time it became my expense, and
it became because they started to have Mike's sever make
fat jokes about Carol sever and you know, one or
two would go and you know, one thing you have
(22:56):
to know about being a child actor. I always say
this when I talked to kids, you want to be
child actors, I'm like, you have to be the best
person on that set. You watch the adults messing up.
You watch the adults, you know, laughing forgetting their lines.
They are allowed to do that. You, as a child actor,
(23:16):
you need to get there. You need to know your lines.
You shut your mouth and you do your job. And
that's that's really what the ambiance on a set is
that way. So when these jokes would come in, I
really had no voice, so I would sort of just
be like, I don't think I'm allowed to say anything.
(23:37):
But I had power a little bit because Carol Siver
was all of a sudden, she was mine and I
had created her and I was known for her, so
all of a sudden I also felt protective of her
for a little bit, and I'm like starting, you know,
and I'd be like, okay, I can let one go by.
And I felt a little bit like at that point,
(23:57):
like I didn't feel too sensitive about my weight, so
I was like kind of could brush it off. But
I I went away one summer on a hiatus, and
I came the freshman fifteen basically, and then the jokes
accelerated when I came back and became meaner and mean.
(24:17):
So there are one joke, there were two jokes. There
were three jokes. And I finally tried to find my
voice and go to them these you know, men who
I've known a long time, but they're twice my age
and you know, quite intimidating. And I would say and I,
you know, it was out of my character to speak up,
(24:38):
but it was hurting me and I was sensitive to it.
And I knew I had gained a little bit of weight,
and I had never had that problem before. Never my
innx here before was not about wait, it was about
staying childlike, you know, scared of hitting purbity, what does
that mean? Change all of those things, but not you know,
(25:00):
my weight. It was it was growing up and when
what was happening here in my I had gained weight
I knew I had, and I was trying to kind of, well,
you know what, maybe I'm a little bust here now.
I was trying to like kind of has slide it
in my favor, but it was hurting me. So I
would go to them like, okay, guys, can we negotiate?
(25:22):
I know it hurts my feelings because like Tracy, Tracy,
this was always their manta because I'm the oldest of
five girls and I have no brothers, and they would say,
you don't have any brothers, so you don't know what
this is, like this is what brothers and sisters do
to each other, and so I would sort of take
(25:43):
that for a moment and there would sort of be
that joke of if it was true, we couldn't say it.
It's true, we couldn't say it. And I was like, okay,
but still hurting my feelings. It's still hurting my feelings,
and so I would like, negotiate, could you take out
that joke? And I'd be like a joke like, here
comes why load And you're not talking just about Carol anymore.
(26:04):
You're talking about me, Tracy Gold, And now I have
to be in front of an audience that's lasting at
me and my body and my weight, and it just
it became it became tough, and I would have, like,
you know, just people would give me like unsolicited advice.
(26:27):
You know, oh, don't do that. Don't drink diet coke.
That's what's doing because I continually always I'm a diet
coke girl. And I kept saying, if it was true,
they wouldn't make these jokes. Nobody would be that cruel
to me. Nobody would be that cruel. And my dad's
an agent at this point, and so he gets a
(26:51):
phone call saying, wait on Tracy to lose weight. Well
that was a blow, and I they said a couple
times and I kind of would go, okay, I'm going
to go to the gym more. I didn't take it
as seriously, but then you know, I sit down. Really
(27:12):
happened where I was like, okay, maybe like my thyroid
is off. You know, I'm eighteen now, maybe my thyroid
is kind of messing up. And so I went to
an endocinologist and my mom took me there and I'm thinking, okay,
my weight is you know, like maybe a little high,
because you know, there's just an imbalanced and they did all
(27:33):
the tests and he's like, no, you're fine, You're fine.
And unfortunately for me, though, he was a doctor who
had just written a book and he was very proactive
in this diet that he had wrote a book about.
And the diet was, you know, you can go on
a five hundred calorie diet for less time, or a
thousand calorie diet. And I was like, well, I'm going
(27:57):
to wrap in a quicker results and be over the diet.
I'd rather do that and you get this done with
And he he said, it's put you on the five
proNT of telorie diet. And it was so extreme. And
he taught me how to put my body into this
thing called ktosis, where your body's basically starving itself and
eating off its own self. So within a month I
had lost twenty pounds easily. And and I did it,
(28:22):
and I did it quietly, and I didn't tell any
anyone I was doing it. I just went and did it.
And all of a sudden, everybody's coming up to me
on the set, you know, everywhere, kind of going, oh
my god, you look good, you look so beautiful, you
look so amazing, and you know, at that time, I
think everybody was meant well, but in my view of it,
(28:46):
it was like, was I that embarrassing before? Was I
absolutely kidding myself that I could go on National TV
be Carol Fever? And I really was that person they
were seeing those jokes about. And I was like, something
hit me, and I'm like, I will not be the
book but anybody's joke again. You will not get that
(29:07):
from me. So I became resolute, and I'm really stubborn.
I'm a Taurus. I became resolute and not letting that happen.
And I stayed on the diet. It's a really hard
diet to stay up because you're basically starving. So I
(29:41):
basically kept going until I couldn't because you can't have
to start yourself continually months or months on end. So
I would do these negotiating acts with my things and like, oh,
I'm eating days and not eating days and things like that,
and you know, and that became an unsustainable thing, you know.
Especially I met my dear beloved husband when I was
twenty years old, and I remember one time I said
(30:05):
we were going out to lunch, and he goes he
would even have him like, it's a Wednesday, I don't eat.
I would not eat all week and I would like
eat anything I wanted to on the weekend, basically, and
he was like, he's from New Jersey and he was
like what, Oh my god. I'm like, are you kidding me?
He's like, that's crazy. So then I would make negotiations
(30:26):
with myself. But as I'm doing this, I'm getting lower
and lower and lower and lower in weight. But you know,
you're in hockeywood, and everybody just kept giving me compliments.
And it was making him furious that everybody was complimenting
me because he knew I was sick. And then all
of a sudden, the jokes came about Carol's working out.
(30:47):
Carol becomes homecoming queen Carol becomes all of a sudden,
I Carol's this and that, and it reinforces all those
things that like having like ten fifteen extra pounds on
you when you're eighteen and figuring it out is really
just bad. And it put me into a tailspin that
(31:07):
I just found I couldn't get out of. You know,
people asked me, did I think it was a cry
for help? No, I don't. I think it was a
really internal thing. I don't think I wanted help at
that point. I wanted to keep myself safe and protected.
It was a self coping mechanism to keep myself safe
and that, you know, you know, whether I like it
(31:27):
or not. The set, it had an element of misogyny
to it because they're always bringing in the beautiful actress
of the week, you probably you know, a few years
older than me and coming in and you know, dolling
them up and sexualizing that and all of those things.
(31:49):
So there was and it was a boys club. It
really was a boys club. So, I mean, there were
some female writers on it, but you know, it was.
In fact, one of the mail writers was one of
my wrote some of the greatest Carol sever scripts. But
it was a very gear towards make all the women
(32:12):
beautiful and the men look and all of that sort
of stuff. As everybody got older, you know, as we
entered it to high school and things like that, and
I became very, very very self protective of myself and
I kept continuing to lose weight. And I remember, and
it was the irony of all ironies. They basically said
(32:35):
to me, they called me Dad once again. This is
a few months later and they say, we need Tracy
to gain weight. She's getting too thin on count she's
looking not healthy. And my dad came and told me.
I'm like, well, this is the all ironies of life?
Are you kidding me? Can I never please anybody? But
(32:55):
at that point I was pretty dug in and pretty
stuck on it and sick. Be very honest, I was
really sick at this point. And so you know, I
tried going to outpatient programs. My husband would take me
there and everything, and I just I just was too
deep in for every restriction I had for myself to undo,
(33:18):
it was doubly as hard and I just couldn't and
I wasn't willing to make myself that vulnerable, especially on
that set. And so Growing Pains was like I loved
Buring pains, and I have the best memories of Buring Pains,
but that was, you know, a hard time for me.
And you know, do I blame the writers? I always
(33:38):
say no, because I was the one that was very
susceptible to it. I think if I had been on
the cheerleading team and a cheerleading coach had said the
same thing to me, I think that would have happened
to me, I would have gone down a road of restriction,
and you know, it was magnified because I was on TV.
Possibly I'll never know, but it definitely I think I
(33:59):
play blame on myself because I'm the one who has
that in my brain that could let that affect me
so deeply where other people can say, like, okay, mister,
I'm all right, I'm awesome, take a step back. But
I just being a child after so long, it was
so ingrained in me that like what all these producers
(34:21):
say and say to me has to be true, you know,
and you listen to them, and their opinion is what matters.
And so I just kept going until they said I
even needs to gain weight. But you know, I had
gone too down the rat far down the rabbit hole.
I remember, i'd you know, I had taken just throwing
(34:41):
up and stuff. And I remember my boyfriend, my now
husband of thirty thirty years. We just celebrate we've been
together thirty fives. I always have to think about that
we've been together thirty five years. And I remember he
came one day to my dressing room and he nailed
the bathroom door shut. He has you went to the
or to the proper department. He said. I He's like,
(35:02):
I need a nail and hammer and then you and
well at this point, because he had been around and
he's there, like why and he's like a man nail
Tracy's bathroom shut. And they're like, thank you, thank you
for looking after her. We're so worried about her. And
you know, he did that, and I screamed and yelled
because you know, when you're an actress, getting your own
bathroom is a big thing. You don't always get it,
(35:25):
you know, especially when you're first starting out and you're
a little kid. You know you have to go to
the public bathroom, but in the winter, bago and things
like that, and so I was like stopping my feet,
but in a big way, I was relieved. I think
many people with eating disorders could probably understand this, because
it took the power away from me. I would now
have to go to a public bathroom and want anyone
hearing me throw up, because there was always somebody who
(35:47):
would come and eat with me at lunch, Like my
husband would come eat with me at lunch, make sure
I ate. He would leave, I'd go throw up, so
you know, and he'd became keen to that that that
was happening, and so somebody taking that power away from
me was helpful, you know. I remember he thought he
could take me away to Florida Santa Belle Island for
(36:08):
the New Year's break, and I was really really given
strict instructions, I need to come back healthier, and I
was like, I'm going to want to I'm going to
gain weight. I will, I promise. Well, it happened to
be very cold winter in Florida. I know, snow, but
very cold, and I got bronchitis, and I came back sick,
and I came back to dinner and he's so sweet.
(36:28):
He thought he could take me out of California or
Los Angeles and I could suddenly eat. But I couldn't
and I had no matter where I was, and I
got sicker, so I had to go into a hospital.
They came to a doctor came to the set to
kind of take a look at me in my dressing
room to check out how I was on your clodt bronchitis,
and they sent me home. I'm like, okay, that's fine,
(36:50):
I'm sick. I don't feel like being there anyway. And
they're like, she needs to go somewhere before she comes
back on the set. And I didn't know this years later,
but it was Joanna turns, God bless her and I
should say something. Joanna introduced me to my husband, Robbie.
So she's played an important part in a lot in
(37:10):
so many ways. She called the studio and she said,
this girl's gonna die on your watch if you don't
step in and do something. And something was done. And
so they didn't give me help though, tell me where
to go. So they had There was one hospital we
knew of and I was admitted into it and it
(37:33):
was the most tough love hospital you could ever imagine
it was. It was. It was terrible. It was really
a psychiatric hospital. It was where I think they would
put Hollywood actresses where they you know, they had a
moment and I I was there and it was like lockdown.
It really was. It was lockdown. And I was there
(37:55):
three days and I said, no way, I'm not saying here.
I am going to find my voice, I'm going to
find my power. I am going to get out of here.
I signed myself out against doctor's advice. I took a
cab home, against anybody's advice. The only person I would
speak to you from a paint pone was my husband.
(38:17):
Everybody else would hang up on me because they were
told to hang up. I mean they thought they were
doing the right thing. And I took a week to
find the right doctor. And I go to doctors, I
tell them what I was going through because it was
so public. He was like living in a fish bowl,
and it broke the news and everything like that became public,
became the govern inchoir all these things, and it was
like my struggle now was it was really like public.
(38:42):
And I had to find a doctor. And I found
ucla Eating Disorder Institute, and I went there and they
seemed to know what they were doing, a specific doctor,
the head of it. And I committed to it. I did,
and I committed to not to go into the patient anyway.
I would not go and pay. Nobody was ever going
to get me into a hospital again. I started to
(39:03):
find my voice, and that is such a powerful thing
as woman, as a child actress, as an actress, and
probably as a woman in any field, to find your voice.
And I remember when I got out and People magazine
called and they said, we want to do a story
(39:24):
on Tracy. What she's going through and I'm like, are
you kidding me? I don't even know what I'm going through.
I'm trying to save my life here and I can't
speak to People Magazine and they're like, don't worry, don't worry.
We'll just stop to other people and we'll still have
a story. But you know, don't bother her at it.
And when I heard that, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
(39:46):
no no. Nobody's going to speak for me anymore. Nobody's
not going to happen to let me have my voice.
I'm going to speak for me. I am going to
tell what's going on, and I will say yes to
the interview and I'll do it. I did not want
for my voice to be the only one not heard.
And it ended up the cover of People magazine and well,
(40:10):
I think the second best selling issue of that year.
And I'm very proud of coming out about it because,
you know, not nobody had in that assistance. And I
had known about I knew about Karen Carpenter, who never
exposed to tell her a little about it. Debbie Boone,
who wrote a book and The Best Little Girl in
(40:31):
the World, which is a book, you know, the very
beautiful Jennifer Jason Lee who I later you know, But
when I was fourteen I did work with he would
miss stones to say, played the hand of Me Down Kid.
I was the hand Me Down Kid and after school special.
But after that, all of a sudden, my voice with
(40:53):
the eating disorder became more powerful. I decided, you know,
I was gone for three episodes. For three Growing Pains
was canceled. It was in the seventh season. I want
to say something that I noticed during the later years
of Growing Pains and when I was in the depth
of my anorexia. And I often think of Shannon when
I think of this, But Shannon was not afraid to
(41:16):
use her voice. I mean, it's like it's one of
her best gifts. You know. She wasn't going to be bullied.
And I allow myself to be bullied too long. I
because I was told to keep your mouth shut and
be a good girl. On a set, I allowed everybody
bring me in the first let me go home, the last.
(41:39):
I once said, why am I staying the latest? And
one of the ages was like, because you're at least
two complaint about it, You're the one who's who doesn't
say anything about it. And I'm like thought to myself,
I wait, so wait a minute, I'm being punished for
being cooperative? Are you kidding me? Like my kindness has
(42:01):
turned into like using it against me? Like I'm like
no more. That is like like no more. And I've
read I know so much of what Shannon had to
go through in the nineties, and it was a difficult
world for girls in the nineties and speaking up to
the brass the men, you know, and having your voice
(42:23):
heard and all these things, and it was hard. And
you know, a young guy says something, you know, I know,
the male counterparts and my beautiful counterpart all could have
say things, but like I didn't, and it made it
(42:45):
It made me like almost like mute, you know. And
she fought against that. And I think when you fight
against that as a woman, you're called difficult. And that's
really the bottom line. I think you're found difficult. And
I don't know if that stigma is really goes. I
think we've come a long way. I think it's very
different than it was. But yeah, but I think, you know,
(43:08):
people are speaking out more about mistreatment on sets and
you know, things like that, and using their voice and
their power. I also remember, you know, when I graduated
high school and I didn't have to go to school anymore,
and all of a sudden, I go back to my
(43:30):
dressing room and relax. What I might whitman, I've been
doing the job of two people, because children are doing
the jobs and two people the job. The only job
really was supposed to have as a kid is get
good grades and go to school and get good grades.
That's what you're supposed to do. That's your job. But
when you're a kid actor, your job is to get
(43:51):
good grades. But your job is also to do a
good job on a set. And you cannot work unless
you get a D or a C or above. So
if you get a D, like I was terrible at math,
If I got a D and it came up designed
when a working permit was that I had to be renewed,
I couldn't work until the next cycle the working permit happened,
(44:12):
and the work permit happened, and luckily it never happened.
It always felt safely for me. So that's why many,
you know, parents put their children into these professional schools
so that they can kind of slide them through so
they can keep working. Whereas my parents insisted we go
to regular schools, which I applaud them for, but it
(44:32):
didn't make it any easier to go in and out.
And all of those things, the stability to growing pains helped,
you know, once I got distability and one teacher and
all that time getting through high school that it definitely helped.
It wasn't great going back in March. It's like, you know,
Carol Seefer's here, and you know, but it was okay.
(45:04):
But finding my voice with the anorexia was the really
big thing. And I never intended to be the voice
of anorexia, but you know, I grew into the role
because I think that there were so many misconceptions about it.
Then misconception I think I hate the most as sasidanity.
It's about you know, you know, as much as I
(45:25):
love my People magazine cover, it does see starving for beauty,
which is a little life that's not really the point,
but you know, it was nineteen ninety two, but you know,
just letting people know this is a real disease. And
I became a voice and I did a whole prime
time live thing with Diane Sawyer. She followed me for
(45:47):
a year, and I swear I wanted to quit a
zillion times. They had me have it. It was like
kind of the beginning of reality TV. Like camera and
if I was having a moment where I wouldn't eat,
my dad would pull up the camera. Tracy, how are
you feeling about this? If you put that camera down,
I don't want to talk about it, So tell me
how you're feeling right now. Like that. But in turn,
it really did turn into a great piece and very
(46:11):
monumental for me because at that point, also, you know,
in all my best intentions of getting better, I continue
to lose weight and I got to a dangerous way
to a wait where one night I couldn't sleep and
I thought to myself, oh my god, if I were
to die tonight at twenty three, nobody would have to
guess why. They said. One look at me and they
would know what happened. And I'm like, I can't let
(46:34):
that happen. I don't want that to happen. I had
a boyfriend I was madly in love with you I
wanted to get married to and he was not going
to tolerate an Anarexic wife. He was there and supportive
and helpful, but he needed me to get better and
to work on this and not to stay stuck in
that place. And he loved me enough to push me
(46:56):
to that direction that, like Tracy, this is unacceptable. You
have to fight. And I thought, you know, one of
the things I teach you when you're recovering from anorexia
is you know, what are you losing by staying this thin,
holding onto this beast? A lot of girls name it
and stuff like that. I never do anything like that,
(47:17):
but holding onto this control, what are you losing? And
I thought to myself, well, I'm going to lose the
best thing that star happening to me, and that's my boyfriend.
I'm going to lose my career, which I care so
much about it and I've worked on since I was
four years old. It's the only talent I have, you know.
(47:40):
And I was losing things, and I was losing, I think,
most importantly, myself. And I really started to fight and
I came in and I went to my parents' house
and I said, I guess what, I'm going to get better.
I'm actually going to get better. And I have a
goal weight and it was an eye goal weight. I
have a goal weight, and I'm going to get there
and I will not another pound. And I never lost
(48:03):
another pound. I didn't get to my goal weight, which
was a low waight. I look back and I'm like,
it took me a very long time to kind of
get up there. But every day I was making my
own progress. And my husband was so proud of me
because he's like, you and I know your progress. You
and I know what you're doing. Every day you're breaking
down a restriction, and every day you're doing something that's
(48:26):
a little more out of your comfort. So if I
see you stuck too long, I'll move you forward. And
he helped let me do it at my pace and
in my safety, safe way, so I had complete control
of my recovery. And I think, if I was going
to say anything, you know it's about child actors with
my eating disorder is so you know, identified with my
(48:47):
career as an actress. I can't help but like spend
a lot of time talking about it because it was
such growth, you know, from being a child actors to
an adult old woman, you know, a young woman and
you know, finding my voice and becoming a producer. And
I remember, as I'm still recovering, I'm not fully recovered.
They come to me and they say, we want to
(49:08):
do a movie and we're doing a movie on a
arexia and we want you to be in it. And
I'm like, I can't do that. It's too close. And
they said, can we show you the script? And which
you was a very very lovely producer, Larry Thompson, and
he said, can I send you the script and could
you give me some notes of what you think? And
I went that through that thing with a red marker
dot dot dot dot, and I'm like, this, this, this, this, this,
(49:32):
If you put that on TV, you're leading girls get sick.
And I said, read the script. I lived with it
a bit. I go who else to be it? I
know it the best. I'm not going to glamorize it,
because I think it's glamorized a lot. And I'm going
to make it what it really looks like. It's lonely
and it's hard. And so I did it, and I'm
very proud of it. And uh, it was an incredible
(49:55):
experience and I was very proud of it. It's shown in
school and yeah, you know, I always says I'm talking
about the aner Excae, the recovery. I remember when we
did the last episode of Growing Pains, of course, they
the ultimate sensitivity. They have us all sitting around in
(50:16):
the living room eating pizza and we're doing the dress rehearsal.
I remember one of the producers came running down to
It's like, Tracy, this is looking very fake. We can
tell you're not eating pizza. We need to take a bite.
I looked at him, like, do you think it would
be in this predicament if I could just take a
(50:36):
bite of this pizza. I always used to say, you
might as well just put a dead rat in front
of me and say, hey, eat the tail. Never gonna happen. So,
you know, it showed me the lack of understanding that
was out there about this illness. You know. I always
also say being a child actor, and I started this podcast,
(50:58):
Shannon's podcast with this is that I think the connotation
with child actor and if you can grow into being
you know, an actor as an adult, that's the golden prize.
That's that's the meaning of success. That you're a child
actress and now you can transition into be the in
the adult acting world, diminishing the success. So many people
(51:23):
never get to experience that they had as a child
and why take away somebody's success. It's just not a
sustainable success, you know, it's don't label it, oh, that's
a child actor. And I think too often it is
put that way, and I would like to change that
(51:44):
term to have something a little bit more positive. And yeah,
there are tragedies that have gone on from being a
child actor, and I think as we go on, we're
learning so much of what to do and not to do.
And I think there were very very many mistakes years
before I had the experience. It was worse to the
years I was growing up. Maybe a little better into
(52:05):
the years now hopefully a lot better. But I think
we would all have a shared experience of kind of
being in the system of adults telling you what to do,
and you're a child and adults world, and you're put
into unnatural position of being the kind of the an
(52:29):
adult working with children. You're doing the same thing that
these adults are doing. You're the same expectation and more so,
I always say have grace for child actors. I really do.
And when you say child actor should be a good thing,
should be a good thing because you did something, especially
(52:49):
if their careers are handled correctly. So often it's the
careers that aren't handled correctly. I was very blessed my
parents kept me out of the Hollywood scene. I had
to go home all after set home to my house
in the valley. I didn't go to parties. I was
never allowed to attend any of those you know, kid awards.
I was never allowed tottend any of those alfie parties
they had where you know there was you know, you
(53:12):
could find trouble. And I think there's a lot of
people in our industry that do prey on younger kids.
So I do think always having somebody looking after your
back because you are an adult world is important, and
that's why they try and put safety nets with teachers
on the sets and stuff like that. But you know,
(53:33):
I think if you're kept out of those worlds, I
think that's what kept me out of all of that stuff,
you know that you can kind of go through as
a teenager and a young adult. I think my honor
XIA was kind of my speaking up for myself in
a way, my rebellion. That was my kind of saying
like no. And I was lucky. I consider myself lucky
(53:57):
because I've had a really successful career. Careers go with
Ebbs and flows, and to be in this business you
have to have the thickest skin because for everyone that
likes you, there is name somebody who hates you. I mean,
God help us with the Internet. If I had been
a child act our teen actor with the Internet, I
don't know what I would have done. I might really
(54:17):
be too sensitive for that because I would go to
the newsstand every Tuesday to see what was out, you know,
inquired to see if I was in it or what
they were saying about me. And I was dreading it
and I was so scared. But to think that you
have to wake up every morning and relentlessly out there
is just beyond comprehension. So I just I have a
(54:43):
lot of heart for kid actors in this social media age,
you know. And I consider my career success, you know.
I used to think that when I was a kid,
if I don't win in an Academy award, it'll all
be for knock. Now I still have time, but I
have not come to fuition yet. I never say that.
(55:06):
But I have four beautiful children. I have been blessed
with the most amazing family. My husband is my you know.
People say like, oh, you're lasted in Hollywood all these years,
you know, you know, thirty five years, and it's the secret.
I think it's simple, just finding the right person. And
(55:28):
that's what it was. And I got extremely lucky. And
we have we found each other, you know, and we're
smart enough to know that we have found each other.
And so you know, I'm I'm blessed with a lot
of riches and I I'm so honored to do this
(55:49):
and I think I'm speaking for women and I speak,
you know, on Shannon's podcast and thinking about us, I
could cry, you know, seventh seventh grade and ninth grade,
you know, and where your life would go. And she
should be so proud of herself and the way she
(56:10):
raised the voice for women and this podcast and to
be able to be a part of bringing it to
you and helping keep it alive. I just think that's
a real blessing. And I'm such a talker. I could
tell you so much more. I think I've probably spoken
(56:32):
a lot and I've brought you to kind of my
full circle journey. There's so much more to tell. Maybe
next time, all right, be well,
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doorney. Hi, my
name is Tracy Gold. I'm so privileged to be here
on Let's Be Clear Shannon's podcast. And she was so
proud of and put so much passion behind. I was
really honored to be asked to do this. Shannon and
I come from a shared experience of being a child actress.
(00:23):
And the interesting thing is Shannon and I. I knew
Shannon in a very like, kind of non actory way
in in a funny world that we were raised in.
And I went to this very Elica small private school
and and very tiny, and it was just a junior
high school, and I was in night and Shannon came
(00:44):
in for seventh grade, and she was like a breath
of fresh air for me coming in that finally somebody
who understood kind of like my journey and what I
was going through and going in and out of school.
And we would just walk around the yard and talk
at lunch, and I mean we really just connected in
such a really great way. She was at both my
(01:05):
sixteen and eighteenth birthday parties, and but you know, we've
lost kind of you know, our careers went kind of
even different directions, so it kind of comes full circle
here that I can fill in today maybe give you
guys a little glimpse of what it's like to be
a child actress. Everybody's always asking me, and I think
there's so many misconceptions, and I think our child actor
(01:27):
gets such a kind of raw deal, like this deal
that like, oh, you're a child actor, that means you're
not a success because you were a child actor and
were able to continue it until you were older. And
I'm always like, I think it's any kind of success
that if you reach that many people as a kid,
you know, so that should be an applause to all
(01:48):
child actors. And you know, I'll start from the beginning
for you guys, But you know, I come from New
York and I not organically was an actress. My dad
was an actor, and I'm coming from a first marriage.
And so my mom and my dad, Harry Harry Gold,
the very very great reputation Harry Gold, but callid agent.
(02:10):
He and my mom came out to California and he
came as an actor for his career. And me and
my sister Missy were like four and five when we
were little kids, like you know, always, my mom was
in advertising. They always approached like, ooh, you learned to
get them in commercials, and my mom was like no.
But then eventually I acoluently kind of fell into it
in New York and started to do a commercial. I did,
(02:31):
like a Lucky Charms commercial. I did, like a print
Dad for PEPSI And we came out to California, and
I'll tell you my first job I ever got was
Roots the miniseries, and I played Missy and the Sandy
Duncan character, and I got to work with Robert Reid
and were beautiful outfit. I was like, I couldn't believe it.
Not that job I was getting the power of it
(02:54):
or the all of that that was behind it. It
was just this one of these beautiful dresses. And I
was my dad from Heady Bunch was playing my dad.
So that was like the start of my kind of career,
you know. And I a lot of people know me
from growing paints, and I became well known at sixteen
for doing growing paints. But my sister and I had
(03:14):
been working steadily since we were kids. We would go
up on auditions together, we would go up against each other.
We would you know, we would go to school it
was really important to my parents put us. They put
us in a regular school that we had to go to.
And when we went into the regular school, and we'd
come out with prepped four or five auditions. And I
was very good at getting auditions, so I would get
(03:36):
a lot of them, and I'll do commercials and lots
of TeV stuff in Missy and I I remember kind
of cutting to like the highlights. We we auditioned for
Benson Together, a series that was on in the seventies
with Robert Robert Yoh, and it was to play the
governor's daughter, and my sister got it. Missy got it.
And you know, the funny thing is I always, you know,
(03:59):
a child after most usually have siblings that are you know,
have to kind of compete against each other or you know,
Missy and I were so close in age that we
went up for everything together. Very few we didn't. And
but you always, most acting families have multiple child actors
in the family, so it's always a balancing act to
(04:20):
make it kind of not a competitive thing. And I
think that Missy and I were so close and my
parents were very very good about that that if one
gets a success, it's the other success, and your turn
will come and this is their turn. What's meant to
be is meant to be and celebrate each other's success
and joys. And so that's kind of how we looked
(04:42):
at it. You know, we went to a regular elementary school.
We would you know, just go on auditions and if
we had to leave, we would go and work and
then we would come home to My parents made sure me.
You know, when we came out here, we were kind
of didn't have a lot of money. So we landed
in kind of like like some air areas that we
were like, you know, or like move quickly. We're from
(05:03):
New York, so it's like, okay, move them, like, oh
this isn't the right area. Oh this isn't the right area.
We finally settled in kind of like the Deep Valley,
which kind of to be said, tended to be our place,
and it's it's about thirty miles away from like Hollywood
auditions and stuff like that, and so you were really
kind of set art back then, and so you could
(05:23):
have like a life of normalcy but also go in
and do the you know, Hollywood stuff. And when Missy
got Benston, that really made Missy like a household name
at eight years old. So Missy and I are eight
and nine and she becomes this you know, household name.
And you know, so many people and people are weird,
(05:45):
especially the kid actors. I think they think they can
ask you anything. And they would come up and be like, oh,
are you see stand in. I'm like no. But I
wasn't like a like pissed off or like I was
just like no. I'm like, I knew my own successes.
I was working with Betty Davis and I was working
with Jane Wyman. I played Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean, and
(06:06):
so I knew my own success and I was confident
in that. But people did like to put us kind
of pit us against each other. And I remember for
me going to Benson was like Shane or La. It
was the most beautiful place. I mean it was the
Benson set was so it was with Thomas Harris and
the production company and it was just so well put together,
(06:29):
the candy, the craft service table. I just I had
such a good time there. So with Missy being on Benson,
that's a lot of fun for me. You know, when
I was eleven, I had a pretty big success in
my career, and that was I got a movie called
Shoot the Moon and that was with Diane Keaton and
(06:52):
Albert Finney. And funny story is I'll tell you. It
was the Friday for Christmas and I finished a movie
with for Keing Nelson. My mom was very impressed. I
was working with Ricky Nelson. I didn't really know who
he was, but I finished it like right before Christmas break.
And I wasn't really a great student. I didn't really
like school that much. Going on a set was sort
(07:13):
of like like my reprieve. I loved it. I loved
going from the set. I loved the crew who I loved,
like I knew. I thrived there and I was good there.
But in school, I was like it always being in
and out. I'm not gonna lie, it's not easy. In
elementary school, it is easier because you have one teacher
as only you get a good teacher that helps you.
You know, you have to You're obligated as a kid
(07:33):
to have three hours of schooling, so you know, you
get a set teacher, you get who access or social worker,
so that balance is always kind of you know. It's
much easier when you're younger, but I was going on
an audition, like two auditions. I had the final audition
for Shoot to Move, and I was in a terrible
(07:53):
car accident and it was the only day of school
I ever wanted to go to because it was the
Christmas party. And I was like, I want to go
to the Christmas party. My mom's like, you could just
miss out on it. You've missed so much. Like no,
I want to go. So we go and I got
into car accident, and you know, I ended up like
sixty five stitches in my face. And I remember them saying,
(08:15):
you know, to Albert park Allen Parker, the director, renowned
Alan Parker, and they said, look at her face is
really messed up, and we don't know what she's going
to look like when these stitches come out. He's like,
are you kidding me? He's like, I want real kids,
and real kids get hurt, so I want to see her.
And so I went in with my face stillstone with
(08:37):
stitches and did the audition on tape for him, and
I ended up getting it, and you know, and that
was kind of proud because he really didn't want professional
children actors. Most of the actor except for the lead girl,
Dana Hill, the wonderful, wonderful Dana Hill with the younger girls.
He wanted to be really natural. So I was privileged
(08:57):
to be a working actress that got in with the
group of girls really didn't know a lot. Tina Yethers,
who went on to do Family Ties, was one of
her first things she had ever done, and she played
one of the sisters, and that was an incredible, you know,
glorious experience, three months in San Francisco working, you know,
doing this kind of really like my first feature film,
(09:21):
and it was It's one of those experiences that you know,
you can't recreate. I remember when it ended, Diane Keaton
gave all these girls these gift baskets of just these
personally picked out gifts that were so nice. And I
mean I had this dollar Skayden for decades until finally
(09:41):
it was stuffed animal. Now it was actually like a
kind of doll in like a kind of gold outfit.
Was very cool. But that was in a great experience.
But in my life at that point, I came home
and we had moved houses, and I think, you know,
as being a child actor and being my nature kind
(10:02):
of a bit of a like I like control, I
like stability, and we had moved, and so that became
a little bit of a difficult time for me in
that part of my life. And I remember it was
the first time. I'd always been a really skinny kid,
never worried about my weight. I always played the wave.
They would say to me, Missy would get her her
(10:22):
clothes designed for her, and like Missy was a tomboy.
She didn't really like it that much. And we were
the same size, so I could wear her clothes and
and she and they would tell me the wardrobe department
and put like this potato sack on me. It was
one part. And they say, okay, go roll around in
the dirt. I'm like, okay, I'm like, we're not quite clamorous.
(10:44):
But that was sort of the parts I played. I
was always the child left behind, chasing after people, you know,
I you know, so it was that was my my
my niche. And so when I, you know, came back
to to California, there was an adjustment because the family
had moved without me doing the transition myself. So I
(11:10):
started to sort of also realize that I was getting
older and hitting puberty, and I think that terrified me
because I had been a child actress and little and
all of a sudden, I was going to hit another
phase in my life, and that is very It was scary.
It was scary for me. So I started to kind
of go on this health food kick. And it was
(11:31):
just one summer, but it was sort of like I
call it my bout with anorexia, you know, because I
was such a kind of people pleaser that I saw
what it was doing to my parents and I it
devastated me, and I, you know, I went to one
(11:52):
therapy session, you know, I went to my pediatrician and
he was like, you know, I think she's having a
bout with anorexia. He's a little anorexia, and you know,
I kind of knew a little bit like the best
little girl in the world, and so with Jennifer Jason Lee.
But I quickly wanted to make my parents happy and
I didn't want to be the burden in the family,
(12:15):
and I wanted I was always a really kind of
happy kid, and I was a little sullen that summer.
So I really quickly tried to get out of it.
And I successfully did, you know, probably not without like
dealing with everything that I needed to deal with, but
It got me through for many, many years, never really
thinking about food, never really thinking about my way, because
(12:38):
I went was always not an issue. And I, you know,
from then on, I continued to work and do different parts.
I was in Gooble of my Children with Aunt Margaret.
I did Another Woman's Child with Linda Lavin. I was
just working consistently. When I was about fourteen fifteen, you know,
(12:59):
I was still working assistantly. The last thing I did
before I got Growing Pains was, Oh, it was Lots
of Luck with a net Frunicello and I I remember
I did that, and I went for Griying Pains, and
all the girls in Hollywood were auditioning, you know. I
don't know if Shannon did, but we were all. We
(13:21):
all auditioned for the same things. We all passed or
cross paths and stuff like that at that time, you know.
And I had to go up for Growing Pains and
I had multiple auditions and I didn't get it, and
I was a little bombed. You know. I had already
worked with Kirk Cameron because we looked alike, so were
(13:42):
Cassa's brother and sister. We had done McDonald's commercial together. Oh,
and we had also done Best of Times Together, which
was a movie with Kurt Russell and the Dear Robin
Williams and and I had a kind of a small
part that was cut out even have a credit in it.
But I had a lot of time waiting on the set,
(14:03):
so I was in it. I was like a part
of it, but I was kind of in a holding
room most of the time. So like I knew Kirk
and so I hadn't I thought, oh, that would be fun,
but then I didn't get it, and so I quickly
moved on, because that's what you have to do. Like
being an actor at any age or being a child actor,
(14:24):
There's so many things you don't get. There's so many
the things I could tell you that I auditioned for online.
There's a there's a Labyrinth audition that I did, and
because I got clothes to it, but I think I
was wearing like a pink heart puffy sweatshirt, which is
really very Labyrinth of me. And I still had a
kind of stick New York accent. So I've seen the audition,
(14:46):
like other right, Jennifer Connolly, Yeah, you're wing work, so
that would have been cool. So I went about my
way and we are a family of actors at this point.
(15:07):
My dad was an agent. When he became an agent,
he didn't want to necessarily be a kid's agent. He
wanted to be an adult, you know, adult actors agent.
And he eventually opened up an agency, a children's department
with a well known children's agent, Ruth Hansen, and she
(15:29):
came over and that's Missy and I are kind of
early teen years, transitioned into my dad's agency with her there,
and so that's when, all of a sudden, you know,
I became a part of that. So my dad now
is sort of kind of like especially for something like
growing pains, sort of getting involved in it, like, you know,
because he's the head of his agency. And I go
(15:52):
to Chicago because my sister Brandy is who's now an agent,
is working in the movie Wildcats and it was with
Goldie Hahn. And I went to Chicago when I was
having the best time. I just got out of high school. No,
I'm not graduated. For the summer. I was fifteen, and
(16:13):
we get a call they want to see Tracy again
because they're recasting the part of Carol. Sever they'd shopped
the pilot. I'd read about it in the magazine or
in the newspaper before I went to school, they're recasting
the part of Carol sever and me and my infinite
wisdom was like, I'm not going back. Are you kidding me?
No way, so they could tell me they don't like
(16:34):
me again, I don't need that kind of rejection. They've
already rejected me. I've auditioned many times and then all
they want me back, And I said, I was sort
of like not interested and probably naive at that point
in my life that work comes this easily. But my
dad is like, Tracy, I'm so he had to go
back for work. He's like I'm going back. He's like,
(16:56):
I implore you had to come back with me, and I'm like, fine,
I'll go back. So I went back with him, and
I auditioned, auditioned two more times, and the last audition
I had back then they didn't have cell phones, so
we had to have to stop at seven eleven to
see how you know, I had a network, and you know,
(17:19):
nobody knows, you know, in the outside world what network is.
But you have to go to a studio. Basically you're
auditioning for a comedy and you get all like twenty
men in suits who I think are trained not to
laugh at anything you say, because you don't know how
you do when you go in there, and you got
(17:41):
to just throw it out there, and it's like, all right,
I can't tell. So we went, you know, to the
seven eleven to check in with the agency to see
if they've heard anything. And I had gotten it, and
they had told me I need to get a pair
of glasses and head over to a TV Guide photo
sheet immediately, and the rest of the cast was already there,
(18:05):
and so I went over. I got a pair of
like like phony glasses in Hollywood somewhere, went to the
photo shoot, and that's the cover you see, that went
for the cover of TV Guy. That September was that
day I literally auditioned, went to TV Guide photo shoot,
met the whole cast, you know, I know, and and
(18:28):
like I was in a fish out of water. I
was like, I was like what my head was spinning.
I had never done a comedy before. I had only
done dramas, so I wasn't really my natural state to
be broad and kind of over the top and searched
for a joke and all those sorts of things. So
I remember kirks Mont Barbera had the tape of Growing
(18:49):
Pains and a tape well, you know, I put in
my VHS and she uh gave it to me. I
gave it to my mom and dad or with my mom,
and I remember I went home and I watched it.
I put it in and all the whites around I
kind of watched. It felt felt like I was by myself,
and I was like, huh. Opening credits came on and
they were kind of like cheers, and I was like, Oh,
(19:11):
I could do this. This sexually looks really good. And
it was from that moment on I was like, oh
my god, this is a really great thing. And you know,
Growing Pains was, especially in the first few years, just
a great, great fun experience. I mean, Mondays. I couldn't
wait for Mondays. It was so fun. Everybody, you know,
(19:33):
got along. Everybody was just grateful to be there. Duenna
and Allen were both coming out of difficult situations and
you know, so they were really they taught all of
us as kids that this is something to be extremely
grateful about. This is not something that happens all the time.
And they were, you know, kind of bonded us all together.
And we really all just sort of got along very well.
(19:57):
I always say Growing Pains is like lightning in a bottle,
because it's like, you know, when you're going through it,
especially when you're so young and you have no idea
that this is so unique that it's like it's it
can almost just like you can be so naive about it.
And it really was. When people say what was like
(20:17):
to work on Bring Pains, and I'm like, it was
it was like me in a bottle. You know, people say,
do you guys still hang out? You know, if we
see each other, it's like old times. We're not always
seeing each other socially, but we could all pick up
the phone at anytime and call, in which we have.
I think the loss of Alian was a devastating blow
(20:41):
for our family, our Growing Pains family. I'm getting ahead
of myself, but I can't help but think that when
I think about Growing Pains, Growing Pains, especially for those
first few years, and every popular actor came in, from
Hillary's Strike to Brad Pitt to Christy Swanson. It was
a rotating door of just the best of the best
(21:05):
of the young Hollywood and you gub A Gooding Jr.
We just really had fun. You know, on Guaranty Paints.
I noticed, you know, a few years into it, I
probably i'd never oh, Matthew Perry, the great Matthew Perry.
(21:25):
He played Carol's boyfriend Sandy, and the you know, every
we all always had to do episodes of special every
every character would get a uh a very special episode
that ABC would do, and I had one and mine
was a two part with with Matthew Perry, and he
was wonderful in it. And I I remember though the
(21:52):
first three after three seasons, probably there started to become
like like jokes at my behalf. In the beginning, the
Carol Sever and Mike sever relationship was very We were
always putting each other down. We were always I was
calling him stupid, he was calling me brainiact and in
(22:14):
truth he was a match better student than I was.
And I was probably more like Mike's Sever, not wanting
to go to school and doing all that sort of stuff.
And so, you know, it was very lighthearted and it
really had to do with our characters. But then there
became shift where I think the writing became a little edgier,
and I think there's always like to push the button
(22:35):
to be funnier, and I pushed the button to kind
of like, you know, always stay on top of the Unfortunately,
I think in that time it became my expense, and
it became because they started to have Mike's sever make
fat jokes about Carol sever and you know, one or
two would go and you know, one thing you have
(22:56):
to know about being a child actor. I always say
this when I talked to kids, you want to be
child actors, I'm like, you have to be the best
person on that set. You watch the adults messing up.
You watch the adults, you know, laughing forgetting their lines.
They are allowed to do that. You, as a child actor,
(23:16):
you need to get there. You need to know your lines.
You shut your mouth and you do your job. And
that's that's really what the ambiance on a set is
that way. So when these jokes would come in, I
really had no voice, so I would sort of just
be like, I don't think I'm allowed to say anything.
(23:37):
But I had power a little bit because Carol Siver
was all of a sudden, she was mine and I
had created her and I was known for her, so
all of a sudden I also felt protective of her
for a little bit, and I'm like starting, you know,
and I'd be like, okay, I can let one go by.
And I felt a little bit like at that point,
(23:57):
like I didn't feel too sensitive about my weight, so
I was like kind of could brush it off. But
I I went away one summer on a hiatus, and
I came the freshman fifteen basically, and then the jokes
accelerated when I came back and became meaner and mean.
(24:17):
So there are one joke, there were two jokes. There
were three jokes. And I finally tried to find my
voice and go to them these you know, men who
I've known a long time, but they're twice my age
and you know, quite intimidating. And I would say and I,
you know, it was out of my character to speak up,
(24:38):
but it was hurting me and I was sensitive to it.
And I knew I had gained a little bit of weight,
and I had never had that problem before. Never my
innx here before was not about wait, it was about
staying childlike, you know, scared of hitting purbity, what does
that mean? Change all of those things, but not you know,
(25:00):
my weight. It was it was growing up and when
what was happening here in my I had gained weight
I knew I had, and I was trying to kind of, well,
you know what, maybe I'm a little bust here now.
I was trying to like kind of has slide it
in my favor, but it was hurting me. So I
would go to them like, okay, guys, can we negotiate?
(25:22):
I know it hurts my feelings because like Tracy, Tracy,
this was always their manta because I'm the oldest of
five girls and I have no brothers, and they would say,
you don't have any brothers, so you don't know what
this is, like this is what brothers and sisters do
to each other, and so I would sort of take
(25:43):
that for a moment and there would sort of be
that joke of if it was true, we couldn't say it.
It's true, we couldn't say it. And I was like, okay,
but still hurting my feelings. It's still hurting my feelings,
and so I would like, negotiate, could you take out
that joke? And I'd be like a joke like, here
comes why load And you're not talking just about Carol anymore.
(26:04):
You're talking about me, Tracy Gold, And now I have
to be in front of an audience that's lasting at
me and my body and my weight, and it just
it became it became tough, and I would have, like,
you know, just people would give me like unsolicited advice.
(26:27):
You know, oh, don't do that. Don't drink diet coke.
That's what's doing because I continually always I'm a diet
coke girl. And I kept saying, if it was true,
they wouldn't make these jokes. Nobody would be that cruel
to me. Nobody would be that cruel. And my dad's
an agent at this point, and so he gets a
(26:51):
phone call saying, wait on Tracy to lose weight. Well
that was a blow, and I they said a couple
times and I kind of would go, okay, I'm going
to go to the gym more. I didn't take it
as seriously, but then you know, I sit down. Really
(27:12):
happened where I was like, okay, maybe like my thyroid
is off. You know, I'm eighteen now, maybe my thyroid
is kind of messing up. And so I went to
an endocinologist and my mom took me there and I'm thinking, okay,
my weight is you know, like maybe a little high,
because you know, there's just an imbalanced and they did all
(27:33):
the tests and he's like, no, you're fine, You're fine.
And unfortunately for me, though, he was a doctor who
had just written a book and he was very proactive
in this diet that he had wrote a book about.
And the diet was, you know, you can go on
a five hundred calorie diet for less time, or a
thousand calorie diet. And I was like, well, I'm going
(27:57):
to wrap in a quicker results and be over the diet.
I'd rather do that and you get this done with
And he he said, it's put you on the five
proNT of telorie diet. And it was so extreme. And
he taught me how to put my body into this
thing called ktosis, where your body's basically starving itself and
eating off its own self. So within a month I
had lost twenty pounds easily. And and I did it,
(28:22):
and I did it quietly, and I didn't tell any
anyone I was doing it. I just went and did it.
And all of a sudden, everybody's coming up to me
on the set, you know, everywhere, kind of going, oh
my god, you look good, you look so beautiful, you
look so amazing, and you know, at that time, I
think everybody was meant well, but in my view of it,
(28:46):
it was like, was I that embarrassing before? Was I
absolutely kidding myself that I could go on National TV
be Carol Fever? And I really was that person they
were seeing those jokes about. And I was like, something
hit me, and I'm like, I will not be the
book but anybody's joke again. You will not get that
(29:07):
from me. So I became resolute, and I'm really stubborn.
I'm a Taurus. I became resolute and not letting that happen.
And I stayed on the diet. It's a really hard
diet to stay up because you're basically starving. So I
(29:41):
basically kept going until I couldn't because you can't have
to start yourself continually months or months on end. So
I would do these negotiating acts with my things and like, oh,
I'm eating days and not eating days and things like that,
and you know, and that became an unsustainable thing, you know.
Especially I met my dear beloved husband when I was
twenty years old, and I remember one time I said
(30:05):
we were going out to lunch, and he goes he
would even have him like, it's a Wednesday, I don't eat.
I would not eat all week and I would like
eat anything I wanted to on the weekend, basically, and
he was like, he's from New Jersey and he was
like what, Oh my god. I'm like, are you kidding me?
He's like, that's crazy. So then I would make negotiations
(30:26):
with myself. But as I'm doing this, I'm getting lower
and lower and lower and lower in weight. But you know,
you're in hockeywood, and everybody just kept giving me compliments.
And it was making him furious that everybody was complimenting
me because he knew I was sick. And then all
of a sudden, the jokes came about Carol's working out.
(30:47):
Carol becomes homecoming queen Carol becomes all of a sudden,
I Carol's this and that, and it reinforces all those
things that like having like ten fifteen extra pounds on
you when you're eighteen and figuring it out is really
just bad. And it put me into a tailspin that
(31:07):
I just found I couldn't get out of. You know,
people asked me, did I think it was a cry
for help? No, I don't. I think it was a
really internal thing. I don't think I wanted help at
that point. I wanted to keep myself safe and protected.
It was a self coping mechanism to keep myself safe
and that, you know, you know, whether I like it
(31:27):
or not. The set, it had an element of misogyny
to it because they're always bringing in the beautiful actress
of the week, you probably you know, a few years
older than me and coming in and you know, dolling
them up and sexualizing that and all of those things.
(31:49):
So there was and it was a boys club. It
really was a boys club. So, I mean, there were
some female writers on it, but you know, it was.
In fact, one of the mail writers was one of
my wrote some of the greatest Carol sever scripts. But
it was a very gear towards make all the women
(32:12):
beautiful and the men look and all of that sort
of stuff. As everybody got older, you know, as we
entered it to high school and things like that, and
I became very, very very self protective of myself and
I kept continuing to lose weight. And I remember, and
it was the irony of all ironies. They basically said
(32:35):
to me, they called me Dad once again. This is
a few months later and they say, we need Tracy
to gain weight. She's getting too thin on count she's
looking not healthy. And my dad came and told me.
I'm like, well, this is the all ironies of life?
Are you kidding me? Can I never please anybody? But
(32:55):
at that point I was pretty dug in and pretty
stuck on it and sick. Be very honest, I was
really sick at this point. And so you know, I
tried going to outpatient programs. My husband would take me
there and everything, and I just I just was too
deep in for every restriction I had for myself to undo,
(33:18):
it was doubly as hard and I just couldn't and
I wasn't willing to make myself that vulnerable, especially on
that set. And so Growing Pains was like I loved
Buring pains, and I have the best memories of Buring Pains,
but that was, you know, a hard time for me.
And you know, do I blame the writers? I always
(33:38):
say no, because I was the one that was very
susceptible to it. I think if I had been on
the cheerleading team and a cheerleading coach had said the
same thing to me, I think that would have happened
to me, I would have gone down a road of restriction,
and you know, it was magnified because I was on TV.
Possibly I'll never know, but it definitely I think I
(33:59):
play blame on myself because I'm the one who has
that in my brain that could let that affect me
so deeply where other people can say, like, okay, mister,
I'm all right, I'm awesome, take a step back. But
I just being a child after so long, it was
so ingrained in me that like what all these producers
(34:21):
say and say to me has to be true, you know,
and you listen to them, and their opinion is what matters.
And so I just kept going until they said I
even needs to gain weight. But you know, I had
gone too down the rat far down the rabbit hole.
I remember, i'd you know, I had taken just throwing
(34:41):
up and stuff. And I remember my boyfriend, my now
husband of thirty thirty years. We just celebrate we've been
together thirty fives. I always have to think about that
we've been together thirty five years. And I remember he
came one day to my dressing room and he nailed
the bathroom door shut. He has you went to the
or to the proper department. He said. I He's like,
(35:02):
I need a nail and hammer and then you and
well at this point, because he had been around and
he's there, like why and he's like a man nail
Tracy's bathroom shut. And they're like, thank you, thank you
for looking after her. We're so worried about her. And
you know, he did that, and I screamed and yelled
because you know, when you're an actress, getting your own
bathroom is a big thing. You don't always get it,
(35:25):
you know, especially when you're first starting out and you're
a little kid. You know you have to go to
the public bathroom, but in the winter, bago and things
like that, and so I was like stopping my feet,
but in a big way, I was relieved. I think
many people with eating disorders could probably understand this, because
it took the power away from me. I would now
have to go to a public bathroom and want anyone
hearing me throw up, because there was always somebody who
(35:47):
would come and eat with me at lunch, Like my
husband would come eat with me at lunch, make sure
I ate. He would leave, I'd go throw up, so
you know, and he'd became keen to that that that
was happening, and so somebody taking that power away from
me was helpful, you know. I remember he thought he
could take me away to Florida Santa Belle Island for
(36:08):
the New Year's break, and I was really really given
strict instructions, I need to come back healthier, and I
was like, I'm going to want to I'm going to
gain weight. I will, I promise. Well, it happened to
be very cold winter in Florida. I know, snow, but
very cold, and I got bronchitis, and I came back sick,
and I came back to dinner and he's so sweet.
(36:28):
He thought he could take me out of California or
Los Angeles and I could suddenly eat. But I couldn't
and I had no matter where I was, and I
got sicker, so I had to go into a hospital.
They came to a doctor came to the set to
kind of take a look at me in my dressing
room to check out how I was on your clodt bronchitis,
and they sent me home. I'm like, okay, that's fine,
(36:50):
I'm sick. I don't feel like being there anyway. And
they're like, she needs to go somewhere before she comes
back on the set. And I didn't know this years later,
but it was Joanna turns, God bless her and I
should say something. Joanna introduced me to my husband, Robbie.
So she's played an important part in a lot in
(37:10):
so many ways. She called the studio and she said,
this girl's gonna die on your watch if you don't
step in and do something. And something was done. And
so they didn't give me help though, tell me where
to go. So they had There was one hospital we
knew of and I was admitted into it and it
(37:33):
was the most tough love hospital you could ever imagine
it was. It was. It was terrible. It was really
a psychiatric hospital. It was where I think they would
put Hollywood actresses where they you know, they had a
moment and I I was there and it was like lockdown.
It really was. It was lockdown. And I was there
(37:55):
three days and I said, no way, I'm not saying here.
I am going to find my voice, I'm going to
find my power. I am going to get out of here.
I signed myself out against doctor's advice. I took a
cab home, against anybody's advice. The only person I would
speak to you from a paint pone was my husband.
(38:17):
Everybody else would hang up on me because they were
told to hang up. I mean they thought they were
doing the right thing. And I took a week to
find the right doctor. And I go to doctors, I
tell them what I was going through because it was
so public. He was like living in a fish bowl,
and it broke the news and everything like that became public,
became the govern inchoir all these things, and it was
like my struggle now was it was really like public.
(38:42):
And I had to find a doctor. And I found
ucla Eating Disorder Institute, and I went there and they
seemed to know what they were doing, a specific doctor,
the head of it. And I committed to it. I did,
and I committed to not to go into the patient anyway.
I would not go and pay. Nobody was ever going
to get me into a hospital again. I started to
(39:03):
find my voice, and that is such a powerful thing
as woman, as a child actress, as an actress, and
probably as a woman in any field, to find your voice.
And I remember when I got out and People magazine
called and they said, we want to do a story
(39:24):
on Tracy. What she's going through and I'm like, are
you kidding me? I don't even know what I'm going through.
I'm trying to save my life here and I can't
speak to People Magazine and they're like, don't worry, don't worry.
We'll just stop to other people and we'll still have
a story. But you know, don't bother her at it.
And when I heard that, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
(39:46):
no no. Nobody's going to speak for me anymore. Nobody's
not going to happen to let me have my voice.
I'm going to speak for me. I am going to
tell what's going on, and I will say yes to
the interview and I'll do it. I did not want
for my voice to be the only one not heard.
And it ended up the cover of People magazine and well,
(40:10):
I think the second best selling issue of that year.
And I'm very proud of coming out about it because,
you know, not nobody had in that assistance. And I
had known about I knew about Karen Carpenter, who never
exposed to tell her a little about it. Debbie Boone,
who wrote a book and The Best Little Girl in
(40:31):
the World, which is a book, you know, the very
beautiful Jennifer Jason Lee who I later you know, But
when I was fourteen I did work with he would
miss stones to say, played the hand of Me Down Kid.
I was the hand Me Down Kid and after school special.
But after that, all of a sudden, my voice with
(40:53):
the eating disorder became more powerful. I decided, you know,
I was gone for three episodes. For three Growing Pains
was canceled. It was in the seventh season. I want
to say something that I noticed during the later years
of Growing Pains and when I was in the depth
of my anorexia. And I often think of Shannon when
I think of this, But Shannon was not afraid to
(41:16):
use her voice. I mean, it's like it's one of
her best gifts. You know. She wasn't going to be bullied.
And I allow myself to be bullied too long. I
because I was told to keep your mouth shut and
be a good girl. On a set, I allowed everybody
bring me in the first let me go home, the last.
(41:39):
I once said, why am I staying the latest? And
one of the ages was like, because you're at least
two complaint about it, You're the one who's who doesn't
say anything about it. And I'm like thought to myself,
I wait, so wait a minute, I'm being punished for
being cooperative? Are you kidding me? Like my kindness has
(42:01):
turned into like using it against me? Like I'm like
no more. That is like like no more. And I've
read I know so much of what Shannon had to
go through in the nineties, and it was a difficult
world for girls in the nineties and speaking up to
the brass the men, you know, and having your voice
(42:23):
heard and all these things, and it was hard. And
you know, a young guy says something, you know, I know,
the male counterparts and my beautiful counterpart all could have
say things, but like I didn't, and it made it
(42:45):
It made me like almost like mute, you know. And
she fought against that. And I think when you fight
against that as a woman, you're called difficult. And that's
really the bottom line. I think you're found difficult. And
I don't know if that stigma is really goes. I
think we've come a long way. I think it's very
different than it was. But yeah, but I think, you know,
(43:08):
people are speaking out more about mistreatment on sets and
you know, things like that, and using their voice and
their power. I also remember, you know, when I graduated
high school and I didn't have to go to school anymore,
and all of a sudden, I go back to my
(43:30):
dressing room and relax. What I might whitman, I've been
doing the job of two people, because children are doing
the jobs and two people the job. The only job
really was supposed to have as a kid is get
good grades and go to school and get good grades.
That's what you're supposed to do. That's your job. But
when you're a kid actor, your job is to get
(43:51):
good grades. But your job is also to do a
good job on a set. And you cannot work unless
you get a D or a C or above. So
if you get a D, like I was terrible at math,
If I got a D and it came up designed
when a working permit was that I had to be renewed,
I couldn't work until the next cycle the working permit happened,
(44:12):
and the work permit happened, and luckily it never happened.
It always felt safely for me. So that's why many,
you know, parents put their children into these professional schools
so that they can kind of slide them through so
they can keep working. Whereas my parents insisted we go
to regular schools, which I applaud them for, but it
(44:32):
didn't make it any easier to go in and out.
And all of those things, the stability to growing pains helped,
you know, once I got distability and one teacher and
all that time getting through high school that it definitely helped.
It wasn't great going back in March. It's like, you know,
Carol Seefer's here, and you know, but it was okay.
(45:04):
But finding my voice with the anorexia was the really
big thing. And I never intended to be the voice
of anorexia, but you know, I grew into the role
because I think that there were so many misconceptions about it.
Then misconception I think I hate the most as sasidanity.
It's about you know, you know, as much as I
(45:25):
love my People magazine cover, it does see starving for beauty,
which is a little life that's not really the point,
but you know, it was nineteen ninety two, but you know,
just letting people know this is a real disease. And
I became a voice and I did a whole prime
time live thing with Diane Sawyer. She followed me for
(45:47):
a year, and I swear I wanted to quit a
zillion times. They had me have it. It was like
kind of the beginning of reality TV. Like camera and
if I was having a moment where I wouldn't eat,
my dad would pull up the camera. Tracy, how are
you feeling about this? If you put that camera down,
I don't want to talk about it, So tell me
how you're feeling right now. Like that. But in turn,
it really did turn into a great piece and very
(46:11):
monumental for me because at that point, also, you know,
in all my best intentions of getting better, I continue
to lose weight and I got to a dangerous way
to a wait where one night I couldn't sleep and
I thought to myself, oh my god, if I were
to die tonight at twenty three, nobody would have to
guess why. They said. One look at me and they
would know what happened. And I'm like, I can't let
(46:34):
that happen. I don't want that to happen. I had
a boyfriend I was madly in love with you I
wanted to get married to and he was not going
to tolerate an Anarexic wife. He was there and supportive
and helpful, but he needed me to get better and
to work on this and not to stay stuck in
that place. And he loved me enough to push me
(46:56):
to that direction that, like Tracy, this is unacceptable. You
have to fight. And I thought, you know, one of
the things I teach you when you're recovering from anorexia
is you know, what are you losing by staying this thin,
holding onto this beast? A lot of girls name it
and stuff like that. I never do anything like that,
(47:17):
but holding onto this control, what are you losing? And
I thought to myself, well, I'm going to lose the
best thing that star happening to me, and that's my boyfriend.
I'm going to lose my career, which I care so
much about it and I've worked on since I was
four years old. It's the only talent I have, you know.
(47:40):
And I was losing things, and I was losing, I think,
most importantly, myself. And I really started to fight and
I came in and I went to my parents' house
and I said, I guess what, I'm going to get better.
I'm actually going to get better. And I have a
goal weight and it was an eye goal weight. I
have a goal weight, and I'm going to get there
and I will not another pound. And I never lost
(48:03):
another pound. I didn't get to my goal weight, which
was a low waight. I look back and I'm like,
it took me a very long time to kind of
get up there. But every day I was making my
own progress. And my husband was so proud of me
because he's like, you and I know your progress. You
and I know what you're doing. Every day you're breaking
down a restriction, and every day you're doing something that's
(48:26):
a little more out of your comfort. So if I
see you stuck too long, I'll move you forward. And
he helped let me do it at my pace and
in my safety, safe way, so I had complete control
of my recovery. And I think, if I was going
to say anything, you know it's about child actors with
my eating disorder is so you know, identified with my
(48:47):
career as an actress. I can't help but like spend
a lot of time talking about it because it was
such growth, you know, from being a child actors to
an adult old woman, you know, a young woman and
you know, finding my voice and becoming a producer. And
I remember, as I'm still recovering, I'm not fully recovered.
They come to me and they say, we want to
(49:08):
do a movie and we're doing a movie on a
arexia and we want you to be in it. And
I'm like, I can't do that. It's too close. And
they said, can we show you the script? And which
you was a very very lovely producer, Larry Thompson, and
he said, can I send you the script and could
you give me some notes of what you think? And
I went that through that thing with a red marker
dot dot dot dot, and I'm like, this, this, this, this, this,
(49:32):
If you put that on TV, you're leading girls get sick.
And I said, read the script. I lived with it
a bit. I go who else to be it? I
know it the best. I'm not going to glamorize it,
because I think it's glamorized a lot. And I'm going
to make it what it really looks like. It's lonely
and it's hard. And so I did it, and I'm
very proud of it. And uh, it was an incredible
(49:55):
experience and I was very proud of it. It's shown in
school and yeah, you know, I always says I'm talking
about the aner Excae, the recovery. I remember when we
did the last episode of Growing Pains, of course, they
the ultimate sensitivity. They have us all sitting around in
(50:16):
the living room eating pizza and we're doing the dress rehearsal.
I remember one of the producers came running down to
It's like, Tracy, this is looking very fake. We can
tell you're not eating pizza. We need to take a bite.
I looked at him, like, do you think it would
be in this predicament if I could just take a
(50:36):
bite of this pizza. I always used to say, you
might as well just put a dead rat in front
of me and say, hey, eat the tail. Never gonna happen. So,
you know, it showed me the lack of understanding that
was out there about this illness. You know. I always
also say being a child actor, and I started this podcast,
(50:58):
Shannon's podcast with this is that I think the connotation
with child actor and if you can grow into being
you know, an actor as an adult, that's the golden prize.
That's that's the meaning of success. That you're a child
actress and now you can transition into be the in
the adult acting world, diminishing the success. So many people
(51:23):
never get to experience that they had as a child
and why take away somebody's success. It's just not a
sustainable success, you know, it's don't label it, oh, that's
a child actor. And I think too often it is
put that way, and I would like to change that
(51:44):
term to have something a little bit more positive. And yeah,
there are tragedies that have gone on from being a
child actor, and I think as we go on, we're
learning so much of what to do and not to do.
And I think there were very very many mistakes years
before I had the experience. It was worse to the
years I was growing up. Maybe a little better into
(52:05):
the years now hopefully a lot better. But I think
we would all have a shared experience of kind of
being in the system of adults telling you what to do,
and you're a child and adults world, and you're put
into unnatural position of being the kind of the an
(52:29):
adult working with children. You're doing the same thing that
these adults are doing. You're the same expectation and more so,
I always say have grace for child actors. I really do.
And when you say child actor should be a good thing,
should be a good thing because you did something, especially
(52:49):
if their careers are handled correctly. So often it's the
careers that aren't handled correctly. I was very blessed my
parents kept me out of the Hollywood scene. I had
to go home all after set home to my house
in the valley. I didn't go to parties. I was
never allowed to attend any of those you know, kid awards.
I was never allowed tottend any of those alfie parties
they had where you know there was you know, you
(53:12):
could find trouble. And I think there's a lot of
people in our industry that do prey on younger kids.
So I do think always having somebody looking after your
back because you are an adult world is important, and
that's why they try and put safety nets with teachers
on the sets and stuff like that. But you know,
(53:33):
I think if you're kept out of those worlds, I
think that's what kept me out of all of that stuff,
you know that you can kind of go through as
a teenager and a young adult. I think my honor
XIA was kind of my speaking up for myself in
a way, my rebellion. That was my kind of saying
like no. And I was lucky. I consider myself lucky
(53:57):
because I've had a really successful career. Careers go with
Ebbs and flows, and to be in this business you
have to have the thickest skin because for everyone that
likes you, there is name somebody who hates you. I mean,
God help us with the Internet. If I had been
a child act our teen actor with the Internet, I
don't know what I would have done. I might really
(54:17):
be too sensitive for that because I would go to
the newsstand every Tuesday to see what was out, you know,
inquired to see if I was in it or what
they were saying about me. And I was dreading it
and I was so scared. But to think that you
have to wake up every morning and relentlessly out there
is just beyond comprehension. So I just I have a
(54:43):
lot of heart for kid actors in this social media age,
you know. And I consider my career success, you know.
I used to think that when I was a kid,
if I don't win in an Academy award, it'll all
be for knock. Now I still have time, but I
have not come to fuition yet. I never say that.
(55:06):
But I have four beautiful children. I have been blessed
with the most amazing family. My husband is my you know.
People say like, oh, you're lasted in Hollywood all these years,
you know, you know, thirty five years, and it's the secret.
I think it's simple, just finding the right person. And
(55:28):
that's what it was. And I got extremely lucky. And
we have we found each other, you know, and we're
smart enough to know that we have found each other.
And so you know, I'm I'm blessed with a lot
of riches and I I'm so honored to do this
(55:49):
and I think I'm speaking for women and I speak,
you know, on Shannon's podcast and thinking about us, I
could cry, you know, seventh seventh grade and ninth grade,
you know, and where your life would go. And she
should be so proud of herself and the way she
(56:10):
raised the voice for women and this podcast and to
be able to be a part of bringing it to
you and helping keep it alive. I just think that's
a real blessing. And I'm such a talker. I could
tell you so much more. I think I've probably spoken
(56:32):
a lot and I've brought you to kind of my
full circle journey. There's so much more to tell. Maybe
next time, all right, be well,
Host
Shannen Doherty
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