Still Growing: An Autobiography (10 page)

False:
The work is really easy
.

There are long, hard days—sometimes 14 to 16 hours long. They can be physically and emotionally exhausting. On the other hand, the work
is
easier in some respects than many jobs. One director referred to his actors as “meat puppets.” He implied that actors simply stand in front of a camera and deliver the lines someone else has written, performing them under the specific instruction of the director.

False:
It’s a much easier life as a star
.

Financially that can be true. However, the old Beatle’s song says it accurately: “Money can’t buy me love.” Money can create a zone of comfort but it can’t buy happiness, love, true friends or character. The things that matter most in life cannot be bought at any price.

False:
Stars have no self-doubt or insecurities
.

If my reflections on my zit issues weren’t convincing, I’ll add this: Celebrities are the most insecure people I’ve ever met—and for good reason. Actors don’t know if they’ll have a job from one week to the next. They don’t know if their eager, loyal fans will suddenly turn on them. Careers go up and down, and hopefully back up again (see Ben Affleck). Famous people don’t know if the people who hang around them are true friends or just leeches trying to grab a free ride.

Hollywood takes insecurities and shortcomings and conceals them like pimples. False, phony images of “cool” are sprayed in the public’s face like a bad gust of Aqua Net. The town shellacs the idea of “the good life” like it does each Cheerio, with the hope that you will buy what it’s selling.

One day not long after my sixteenth birthday party bash, Mom and Dad—both crying—sat us down in our home office. “Let’s hold hands,” Mom said, wiping tears from her face.

We reached for each other’s hands, forming a group circle. The unusual gesture, along with the tears, caused my mind to race. What could possibly be wrong?

Mom took a deep breath. “We have something we want to tell you . . .” But her crying stole the words.

Dad looked at her, then at us. “Mom’s going to be living someplace else now.”

We sat, stunned.

My family looked idyllic to outsiders. It looked that way to insiders, too. Friends often commented how tight-knit we were. There was nothing that suggested to us that it would ever change. We had rules, curfews and expectations placed on us that clearly demonstrated our parents’ love for us—and for each other. We got disciplined regularly. I look back now and think,
If they didn’t really give a rip about me, they probably wouldn’t have bothered
. It took time and effort for them to sit me down and talk with me before exercising discipline. It was an expression of their love and care for us. (Of course, when I was little, I didn’t believe it for a moment when Dad said, “This hurts me more than it hurts you, son.”
Then why isn’t your butt pulsating, Dad?
)

While other child stars were suing their parents for millions, holding up liquor stores and ODing outside of nightclubs, we felt we were the lucky ones. Candace and I led the most glamour-less lives possible for kids on TV series. Our parents pushed for normalcy in every possible
way. Bridgette and Melissa were the real stars of the family: Bridgette’s dancing and singing talent combined with her charming personality and Melissa’s first-rate brain and individuality made them two of the most well-adjusted teenage girls you could find.

Life suddenly became dreamlike and surreal.
My parents
? It couldn’t be true. I’d heard about people getting separated and divorced, but never fathomed it could happen to our family. The announcement of my parents’ separation didn’t really sink in until I realized Mom had taken her clothes out of the house and was living somewhere else with a different set of furniture. Dad remained behind, miserable and heartbroken.

I lived behind the main house in a cottage Dad had built, so the day-to-day changes weren’t supposed to affect me. But how could they not? My world had been turned upside down and shattered. I couldn’t talk with either of my parents. Mom wasn’t around anymore and Dad walked around in a daze.

I didn’t feel I could talk to people at work, either. They were a nice surrogate family—I know, every actor says that about their cast. It’s a cliché because it’s usually true. The long hours on a sitcom create a familial camaraderie. Still, I didn’t want Joanna, Alan, Jeremy or Tracey knowing about these real-life problems. I wanted to keep the façade that everything was okay. I didn’t want to bare my family’s failures in front of the world.

And, to be honest, I didn’t know what the failures were. In my teenage mind, the Camerons were as ideal a family as the fictional Bradys or Cunninghams.

At first I wondered if my role on
Growing Pains
or Candace’s role on
Full House
were to blame. Had our work ruined the normal dynamic of an otherwise functioning family? Had the force of fame reframed everyone’s lives? These were the very adult questions I asked, lying on my back inside my cottage apartment, becoming more withdrawn every day.

Dad had told Mom in the beginning that this Hollywood make-believe stuff was just that: make-believe. “Hey, Barb, this is great, this is fine, but let’s not think this is going to last forever . . . because it’s not,” he warned. “And then the kids will have to go to college. We are
not
derailing college for a television show.”

Both Mom and Dad told Candace and me that if we
ever
got puffed up about our celebrity, they would yank us from the business before we could say, “Don’t you know who I am?!” Who we were as people was far more important than the perks that came with being on two hit television series.

Before the separation, our parents had attempted to keep life “regular” by having the whole family sit down to eat dinner as many evenings a week as possible.

We all had chores. I even had to keep my dressing room picked up, even though Warner Bros. hired maids to do that for us.

Whenever work demanded travel, Mom exchanged our First Class airplane tickets for as many coach seats as she could get so that one or more of my sisters could come along. If there was a local event, everyone came.

Mom brought my sisters to the set after school where Joanna’s daughter and Alan’s kids also hung out.

Our family vacationed in a cabin at Big Bear Lake where we tried to go as often as possible.

We didn’t buy a huge mansion. We didn’t put in a pool. We didn’t drive flashy cars—although my mom once splurged on a vanity plate that read “STRZMOM.” We didn’t buy fancy furniture or clothes. We ate turkey tacos almost every night.

Though Mom and Dad had seemed to stand in unison on all moral issues, I started to realize they had some fundamental differences.

When it came to religion, Dad had told Mom he wanted his children to choose their own religious paths in life. That statement laid the foundation for my earliest religious choice: to be a full-fledged
atheist. I was convinced that God didn’t exist, and my dad was fine with that conclusion.

Mom, on the other hand, believed in God. Yet she never really brought the subject up, except once. When I was a young teen I came home from school ravenous. I looked in the refrigerator. It was empty. I think I said “G—damn it” and kicked the fruit drawer.

“
What
did you say?” Mom asked.

“What?”

“What did you say?”

I just looked at her. I knew she’d heard me.

“Don’t you
ever
disrespect God’s name again,” she instructed.

I was stunned. I thought,
That’s weird . . . come on
. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her mention God. No one talked about God in our family—ever. But the ferocity of her conviction made an impression on me and I never took God’s name in vain again—at least not within earshot of my mother.

As I retreated from society both in my cottage at home and in my dressing room at work, I reflected on other things that could have caused “cracks” in my parents’ marriage.

Dad didn’t struggle speaking his mind. He spoke bluntly and plainly, often demonstrating an inappropriately critical personality. Before the separation, Dad criticized Mom and the girls a lot. He talked about their weight, even keeping a chart where he marked their weekly weights and monitored their food intake. His harsh words tore into them continually. His tone with Mom often insinuated she was simple-minded and fat. No matter what Mom did, she didn’t feel she could measure up to what he wanted.

And so she left to try her hand at a new life.

It was a brutal six months for all of us. It doesn’t sound like a long time, but in the life of a splintered family, it’s an eternity.

My dad, shattered by Mom’s exit, began to work hard at becoming the husband who could be kind and caring toward his wife.

Through many months of counseling with Rick, our family friend, my dad began the process of self-examination and rethinking what it means to love someone. He began to put his time, energy and resources
into his relationship with Mom—planning special trips alone together, listening to her as she shared her thoughts and feelings, and learning to support and encourage my mom instead of demeaning and criticizing her.

When
Growing Pains
filmed in Hawaii for a second time, Dad gave Mom a new wedding ring set, asking her to rejoin him. All of us were astonished by the change in Dad. He grew to be much more loving and tender with Mom. He bought her gifts and spoke to her in a sweet voice. He became a different husband—and we all reaped the benefits of his maturity.

Today my buddies came up to Big Bear Lake and we had a great snowball fight! We played pool at the Gold’s and Pictionary at the house. The girls made dinner and the guys had to clean up.

So reads my teen journal. I wrote a lot of things down as a kid (something that would come in handy one day when writing my autobiography). The thing that strikes me most, re-reading these old diaries, is how mundane and ordinary my life was during the crazy period.

We played cards . . .

We slid down the mountains on our brown lunch trays! Fun! Fun! Fun! Oh, and the night before we bought matching sweatshirts.

I got in a fight with my dad . . .

My down time was filled with talking for hours on the phone, caring for my snakes and tarantulas, working out at the gym and getting grounded for talking back to my parents.

Of course, my life wasn’t completely run-of-the-mill.

December 13, 1987

Went to breakfast at Jack’s Deli . . .    We [a friend and I] talked for a while before we had to go to the parade in Chatsworth. I was the Grand Marshal. I rode in a white ’57 Rolls Royce. It was fun. After the parade, I wrote Christmas cards and went to dinner.

January 24, 1988

Went to do the “Phil Donahue Show.”

January 30, 1988

Strange day! This morning went to traffic school. Very good learning but the other kids couldn’t care less. That lasted to 3:00 p.m. I came home and tried to find a white shirt to wear for the award show tonight . . . I ended up wearing a black suit and tie and cummerbund. We had to pick up Tracey and Jeremy on the way down to the American Cinema Awards.

In some ways I was more mature than kids my age, and in others, I lagged behind. I had traveled all over the world, met and hobnobbed with the famous, managed my own career, hired my mother as my employee, bought a house at a very young age, and negotiated deals with my agents who, in turn, negotiated with studios on my behalf. From early on, I dealt with most adults on a level where I had more power than they did. I held down a job that required long hours. I got there on time, responsibly, and did the best job I could.

On the other hand, my reality was skewed. My immaturity resulted from a sense of importance laid on me by nearly everyone I encountered. I lived in a closed world where my words were scripted. I was told
where to stand, when to move, how to look, what to wear. I was told when to arrive on the set and when I could leave.

I spent the bulk of my days with a pretend family whose issues always worked out in less than half an hour. We always dealt with conflict in a funny, heartwarming, positive way.

These don’t transfer to the real world of relationships.

As much as I tried to be a kind, generous listener, I’m sure my social skills were lacking. I imagine I was clumsy, abrupt, selfish and moody. I’m sure I made some quick decisions, oblivious to the consequences.

I wasn’t always sure how to deal with difficult relational situations because I had been shielded from so many. People in my professional life never dared to oppose me. They gave me whatever I needed whenever I asked for it. If I spoke, they listened. I was always right. Whatever made my life on the set more comfortable, I could have.