Around the dinner table one night Mom asked, “Hey, guys, remember your friend Adam Rich? He’s on a TV show. I thought we’d go to the lady who helps him and see if she would help you get on television, too. Would you like that?”
Mom’s eager face suggested only one correct response: “Yeah!”
Adam was the son of my mom’s friend Fran, a former New Yorker who liked to wear nightgowns and smelled of smoke. Mom had shown Fran a photo of us kids dressed to the nines at our aunt’s wedding. Her son, Adam, had recently become a child star as Nicholas Bradford on Eight Is Enough and she now insisted that Mom consider us for commercials. “They’d be perfect!” she persisted.
Though at first she resisted, Mom let Fran show the photo of us to Adam’s agent, Iris Burton, who was the top children’s agent in town. Shockingly, Iris agreed to see us.
Mom called me into the bathroom last, after making my sisters look really girly. “Kirk,” she said as she brushed my hair and straightened my shirt and jeans, “I want you to be nice to your sisters. No pranks today, okay?” There was an edge to her voice that meant business.
I nodded.
I wanted to trip Bridgette as she ran down the hall, but I practiced restraint. I wanted to thump the girls on their heads as they got into the VW, but I resisted the nagging urge. I wanted to poke Candace until she swatted me, but today I knew better.
As we drove down the freeway in our VW bus, I sat next to the window and stared out, trying to be a good kid. My parents stared straight ahead for a long time, not saying a word. I knew this must be serious business.
Mom read from a map and pointed at street signs while Dad drove on winding roads to an exclusive neighborhood in Hollywood Hills. She tapped the window. “There it is, Robert.”
Dad gave a low whistle and pulled into the driveway of a house. “Bet this gal doesn’t re-use dryer sheets,” he quipped.
I don’t remember much except it was a big house. I guess I was expecting to go to an office building somewhere, but this woman’s office was in that big house.
Mom seemed very nervous. “Be on your best behavior,” she said, popping open her door.
Dad turned around and said in his stern voice, “You know how to behave. If you’re good, we’ll stop by McDonald’s for an ice cream on the way home.” Dad might be strict. But one thing was for sure: Whatever he said, he meant. We four kids looked at each other, making it clear with arched eyebrows and glares that no one was to mess up our chance for ice cream.
Silent as church mice, we exited in single file, trudged up the driveway and followed the sidewalk to the back of the house. A woman and her daughter emerged through a pair of French doors. She gave a smile that seemed forced and Mom motioned for us to go inside.
Inside, the office was even more intimidating. Black-and-white glossies of famous child stars filled the walls. Bridgette saw Adam’s picture, elbowed me and pointed. I nodded, scanning the other photos.
In the back of the room behind a cloud of smoke sat an old Jewish woman, beckoning with what must have been a long, bony finger, her raspy voice saying, “Come in, come in.” She looked like Larry King in drag, speaking in a smoke-scarred voice, “How are ya?” She motioned toward a sofa and some chairs. “Have a seat.”
We obeyed in unison.
Mom could barely speak, so Dad tried to get a little bit of conversation going. We were all terrified of this gruff, powerful woman. She was the most prestigious agent in town. The best. And though at nine I wasn’t sure what an “agent” was, I knew she must be extremely important to make even my parents nervous. Besides, I was afraid of anyone I didn’t know, let alone someone hiding behind a shroud of smoke. My imagination began to get the best of me.
It was like we were in the presence of the Wizard. Instead of “I am the Great and Terrible Oz,” she was the Great and Terrible Agent.
“You,” she said, pointing at me with a demanding finger. “Stand.”
Being on my best behavior meant I obeyed authority—immediately. I popped off that sofa without a split second of hesitation.
She got up from behind her desk and moved to the side, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. My heart bumped around in my chest. She walked around, eyeballing me up and down. She peered at my hair and grunted, “You wanna be an actor?”
I watched her cigarette bounce up and down as she spoke. I tried not to think about how Dad and Mom always told us that smoking would kill us. Focus, Kirk, focus.
I nodded my answer. I must have. I wouldn’t dare move an inch unless she told me to do so.
Iris took a long drag and studied me a bit more. “Well, say this for me: ‘Hey, Mom, I wanna go to McDonalds.’ ”
I repeated her words in an unemotional, parroting way, “Hey, Mom, I wanna go to McDonalds.”
“No, no, no! You have to say it like you really wanna go to McDonalds. Say it with energy.”
“Hey, Mom! I wanna go to McDonalds!” I said with enthusiasm.
“Now try, ‘Hey, Tony, those Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes taste gggrreeeaaatt!’ ”
In my very best monotone I said, “Hey, Tony, those Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes taste good.”
“No, no. They taste grrreeaat!”
“They taste greeeaattt!” I added pizzazz and a smile and hoped that was okay.
“Look at those Hot Wheels go!” she said.
This time I knew I was supposed to be excited, so I pretended I was saying it to Uncle Frankie.
“All right. Sit. You,” she motioned to Bridgette. “Stand.”
The Great and Terrible Agent went down the line asking us all the same questions, looking at all of us the same way—like the type of jungle cat that eats her young. When she finished her perfunctory interviews, she looked at Mom and Dad, pointed to us and said, “I’ll give him a try for a year.” She skipped Bridgette and pointed to Melissa, “I’ll take her. Bring the little one back in a year; she’s too young.”
“What about Bridgette?” Mom asked, surprised.
“Nope,” Iris said in her blunt way.
“Why?”
Iris didn’t answer Mom. We had all thought she would take Bridgette, the one always performing at home, singing and dancing like a woodland creature in her own private Disney flick. Every photo we had of Bridgette featured the biggest smile—one that made her nose and eyes disappear into her cheeks.
“I’ll need headshots,” she barked, as though we knew what she meant. “Black-and-white glossies.”
“Can I take them?” Mom asked.
Iris exhaled. “Sure.”
Inside the car, Bridgette leaned between the seats and asked Mom, “Why didn’t she want me? Why didn’t she pick me?”
I played with the seatbelt as Mom tried to answer a question she didn’t have the answer to. I secretly wished that Iris lady had picked Bridgette instead of me. Life would have been simpler for me. But how could I tell my mom? She looked so excited.
But these fears were eclipsed once we pulled into the drive-thru. Everything changes under the glow of the golden arches.
It wasn’t too many days later when Mom got her first call from Iris Burton telling her the location of my first audition. “Kirk!” she said the moment I dropped my book bag on the floor. “You’re going on your first acting try-out!” (She hadn’t yet learned the lingo.)
I had no idea what that meant, but I was quickly carted off to Adam Rich’s hair stylist upon the insistence of Fran. It seemed exciting, driving to the studio the first time. Would we get lost? Would we make it on time? Would the studio lot be cool? I was living in my own reality show montage—I just needed a rap song to underscore the drama.
We made it on time, and it was fascinating—but not in the way we expected. The building looked a lot like any old office building. We walked down a long hallway that looked pretty much like any hallway—scuffed walls, bad neon lighting, chipped ceiling tiles. Whether Mom chatted the whole way or was quiet, I don’t remember. I’m sure I didn’t say anything.
“Here it is,” she said, a little breathless. She turned the knob and opened the door.
Fran had told her what to expect, so she headed toward a counter that had a sign-in sheet and a stack of photocopied scripts (called “sides”). I followed her, feeling every eye on me. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want people looking at me, but they quickly turned back to their conversations.
The weird thing is that all the kids looked just like me: curly-haired Caucasians in dork-tastic clothes. I don’t know if Mom noticed. She was busy filling out the sign-in sheet.
We didn’t have headshots yet, so Mom handed the lady a Polaroid she’d taken of me in front of the house. She had written “Kirk Cameron, Age 10, Iris Burton Agency” on it and stapled it to my résumé—which probably should just have listed playing, eating and torturing as the skills I’d mastered thus far.
Mom took a copy of the sides and said, “Look, hon . . . this is for a chili commercial.” She scanned the room and led me to a couple of vacant chairs. “Let’s practice!” she said at a volume I’m sure everyone heard.
“This chili is better than my mom makes!” Mom said, cheesily.
I looked at her like she was nuts, because she was—especially if she thought I would say the line like that. “This chili is better than my mom makes,” I repeated.
“No, Kirk, be happier.”
She said the line again. I noticed other moms doing the same thing, until the door opened and a new mother-son combination walked in. It didn’t take long to see the games the other mothers played. It was a catty battle of “My kid is better than yours.” Even at nine, it was incredibly obvious.
Over the next 40 minutes, I watched the door open at least six times. All the moms did the same thing: When they signed their kid in, they paused at the sign-in sheet to scan the names above theirs. I later discovered they were trying to see which kid had which agent. Everyone knew the top agencies. And if Iris Burton represented a kid, everyone knew the competition.
If a recognizable kid walked in, you could almost hear the groans: “Oh, great. River Phoenix is here.” We quickly learned it didn’t take long to predict who would get the jobs.
When the mothers talked to each other, they spoke ridiculously loud so that the rest of the room could hear. “Oh, yes,” one would say in faux-humility, “My son just got off the set of a Richard Donner film. He only had three lines, but we’re hearing a lot of early buzz.”
“Well, it’s not hard to see why,” the other would reply, not meaning a word of it.
“I’m sure it’s just a matter of time for your little guy,” the first would say with utmost insincerity.
Some moms used the phone on the counter to call their child’s agent, speaking loudly if there was good news. “Oh, he needs to be at Disney tomorrow at one? Of course, we can be there. With bells on. . . . Oh, in overalls? No, ‘bells on’ is just an expression. Of course he can wear overalls. It’s a movie about a dairy farm.” Mom looked at me and rolled her eyes. I smiled back.
These kinds of incidents gave us an understanding of what was meant by the term “stage mother.” A stage mom was generally someone from the Valley who tried to look like she was from Beverly Hills, living her dreams vicariously through her offspring. They were always made up, artificial, loud and pretentious.
A few auditions in, Mom and I learned to find a private corner or hallway to practice. She loved to coach me on my delivery, but I didn’t like her giving me suggestions. I started to think about the words on the page and what the commercial was trying to sell. I learned to go to a quiet, internal place where I could hear my own voice saying it. I tried to give the casting directors what they wanted to hear, what sounded best. Watching TV in the evenings became my research.
If the line was, “Make your reservations today,” I would try different inflections.
“Make your reservations today.”
“Make your reservations today.”
“Make your reservations today.”
“Make your reservations today.”
Usually I felt the right way to say the line in my gut. The only time I performed it out loud was when the camera rolled. I don’t know if that reluctance was a self-conscious thing or a deliberate attempt to keep the line from getting stale by saying it too much.
The casting director always said something like, “Thanks, that was really good,” but I was very hard on myself. That was awful, I’m really terrible at this, I regularly thought to myself.
Some kids spend years going to auditions and don’t land more than a commercial or two, so it was surprising that my sixth audition was my launching pad.
Moms were not allowed behind the audition door, but they often leaned next to it to eavesdrop. If the kid inside was known for booking a lot of commercials, many of the other stage moms leaned toward the door, looking as though a stiff wind had blown through the room.
For commercial auditions, I stood directly over a piece of tape on the floor, looking at the camera. At “Go,” I said, “Hi, my name is Kirk Cameron. I am 10 years old and I’m with the Iris Burton Agency.” I tried to sound bright and full of life, but not fake or over the top—just to let them see the happier side of my personality.
The casting director’s job is to get kids on tape to send to the producer or director. Often, that was the only person I could distinguish in the darkened corner, though I could see several others. Their silhouettes were imposing.
“Okay, Kirk. We’d like you to add just a hint of sadness to your voice,” the casting director said. “Pretend your dog died.”
“Say it with a British accent this time.”
“Now say the line like a young Brazilian street boy trying to sell enough cashews to pay for his own education.”
No matter how challenging their direction, I did my best to please.
On my sixth audition I suddenly felt terribly shy. The waiting room insanity had gotten to me.
Instead of calling us in privately, the casting director brought us into the room by groups of four. They lined us up and we each gave our name and information before spitting out the scripted line. As each boy spoke, one after the other, I got more and more nervous.
When it was my turn I was so embarrassed standing in front of these other people, so afraid that I wouldn’t do a good job, that I turned my back to the camera and started to cry. All I could think was, I can’t do this.
Mom remembers that they sent all the other kids out and then the casting director took me aside to play catch for a few moments before giving me the opportunity to try again.
I did it without a problem and got my first callback. (The studios always have at least one callback so the people who weren’t there during the first round can see how the kids perform a second or third time.) Then one afternoon I was sitting at our table doing homework when Mom answered the phone. She sounded like she was excited and trying not to be. She hung up and came running over to me. “Ooohhh, honey! You got it, you got it!”
I tried to pretend I was excited, too—but I really didn’t know what I was in for.
Though auditions had become an ordinary part of life, being on a set was all very new. Mom and I were tentative about where to go, where to sit, what to say, who to talk to. But it was so exciting and the crew bent over backward for the actors—even kid actors. I thought this was really strange, because I was accustomed to sitting at the little kids’ table of life. Someone explained that the commercial couldn’t be made without the actors. They were the ones who were selling the product for the sponsor. The crew kept an upbeat attitude so the actors would be more relaxed and more likely to do a good job.
Bonnie, the casting director, helped a lot. She came to greet us as soon as she saw us wandering around, lost and confused.
“Kirk!” she said, reaching to shake my hand. “It’s so nice to see you again.” She then reached for my mother’s hand. “You must be Mom. I’m Bonnie.”
“Barbara,” Mom said, looking almost as excited as I was.
Since the shoot was in Griffith Park, the area had trucks and cables scattered everywhere.
“Follow me,” Bonnie said. “I’ll take you to the Honeywagon.”
“Uh,” I said, “I thought this was a commercial for Count Chocula, not honey.”
Bonnie smiled. “That’s what we call the dressing room trailer.”
She took us to a trailer big enough to require towing by a semi. It had stalls along the length of it. I stared in awe at the doors, each one with a name on it. Mom took a picture with me standing next to my name, even though it was only written in black marker on masking tape. I felt very important and was both eager and frightened for the real thing to begin.
“You can leave your things in here. It’s yours for the next two days.”
The dressing room had a bench seat on one wall. Across from that was a desk with a well-lit mirror, a place where I could hang my clothes, and a bathroom.
“I’ll show you how to find Craft Services now,” Bonnie said. I wondered why there would be a table for arts and crafts on a movie set. Weren’t we here to act?
I quickly caught on to the lingo. Craft Services was the food area spread out beneath a huge California oak tree. Bagels, donuts, rolls, croissants, loaves of white and wheat bread, a variety of muffins and sweet rolls—it was carb heaven. Topping that was the table of endless candy, as if the world’s finest trick-or-treater had been robbed. “It’s free, have whatever you want,” Bonnie shrugged.
I couldn’t believe it. I snagged a bagel and smeared it with cream cheese. It was my first of many, many years of free bagels. (To this day I won’t pay for bagels or cream cheese—not when I can score them for free on film sets.)
“We’ll start you in school first, Kirk,” Bonnie said, beckoning me to follow her to a table underneath another oak tree. Starting my day with school interfered with my crack at the candy table, but at least it would be a shortened day of education. This commercial shoot was going to keep me legitimately out of school for two days, quite the adventure! California law required only three hours a day with the tutor. Mom had gotten homework assignments from my real schoolteachers for them to use.
“Hi, Kirk, I’m Pamela. I’ll be your teacher for today. What grade are you in?”
Pamela was responsible for more than making sure I got my papers done. She had the responsibility of protecting me on the set, making sure the studios were following child labor laws.
“Why don’t you begin with this math? I’ll be right here if you have any questions,” she said.
Not much later, a man came to get me. “We’re all set up for you, Kirk. Ready?”
I nodded, my eyes like saucers with anticipation. The saucers got even bigger when I saw the Panavision cameras with the big black lenses, giant wheels of film tape behind, each one resting on dolly tracks. I followed the man through a flurry of activity, fascinated with the 50 people running around moving cables and lights. The sound guy held a boom mike with a gray furry cover that resembled a dead possum.
I had been told they would use stand-ins to do my part while I was in school, so the crew could determine the light and camera positions. It was very strange to see an adult about my height and coloring—he wasn’t a kid; he was a Little Person. I found out later they used Little People a lot because, as adults, they could work long adult hours. At least I now knew what my face would look like with a five o’clock shadow.
For the rest of the day the same things repeated over and over. I did a take until the director said, “Cut.” When adjustments were going to take longer than 20 minutes, they brought the Little Person back in and he took my place while I went back to school.
By the end of the day, I was hooked. This was great! I wanted to do more of it. I thought I must be pretty hot stuff to be getting all that red carpet treatment—my own private teacher, a dressing room, endless candy. And all the people were falling all over themselves for me. It was a huge ego boost.
After we gathered my things and fell into the car, exhausted, I turned to Mom and said, “Can we do this again?”
She smiled and tousled my hair. “Sure, Kirk.”
After Count Chocula I felt I could do this well. I quickly became more confident in my auditions. I received callbacks most of the time, booking a commercial every third or fourth interview, resulting in a total of 30 or 40 commercials throughout my early acting years. My sister Melissa auditioned off and on for years, and though she was very talented, she landed only one commercial and a few series pilots. (She eventually quit because she hated to be on camera.) I knew some kids went on auditions for years and never got a job.
I didn’t even know for quite some time how well Kirk was doing until Barb told me some camera guys had said, “He’s got something going with the camera.” I thought, What are you talking about?
Robert Cameron, Kirk’s dad
I don’t know what I did differently than other kids, but it always seemed to go well with me inside the audition room.
In spite of all the jobs I landed, I never got used to auditions. I hated the entire process.
When I got a message in class that Mom was there to get me or when I saw the VW bug waiting outside in the pick-up lane, I thought, Oh, no, I hate this. I don’t want to do it anymore. Why can’t I be like every other kid and stay in school, or go home to play with my friends? I slowed my pace, slumped my shoulders and dropped my head. Everything about me sagged, making me resemble a thin, scrappy Eeyore.
Mom was always chipper, attempting to zap some life into me. “Hi, honey! How was your school day?”
I either shrugged or grunted. I didn’t want to talk to her.
“Why don’t we stop at McDonald’s? We’ll get you some ice cream, or a Happy Meal with a toy inside. Whatever you want.”
“Mooooom, I’m too old to care about toys,” I’d whine. A few moments went by. “What do you think the toy is?”
She didn’t fool me. I knew she was trying to cheer me up. I accepted the food and the toy, but I held on to my bad mood like a winter cold. I liked being a grump and had no desire to snap out of it. I didn’t want to give in.
And I really didn’t want to put on the stupid, ugly clothes she always brought. She learned very early that kids who are the most successful in auditions had the same look all the time. They had to look like their head shots. And if it was a callback, they needed to look exactly as they did in the first audition. So every time I auditioned I had to wear the same dorky outfit. It became my uniform. I cannot express how much I loathed that red-and-tan striped IZOD sitting on a hanger in the rear window just waiting to be put on and tucked inside my jeans. Was there anything worse?
Oh, yes.
Not only did I have to tuck that shirt into a pair of stiff Toughskin jeans, I had to cinch the whole thing with a belt. And then when we got to the studio, Mom whipped out her brush and started in on my bowl-cut hair, brushing it to be smooth and stick straight. “Come on, Mom,” I’d protest. “I’m 10!”
“Oh, stop it. Your friends aren’t even here.”
She had a point. Still, I didn’t want the security guard, the janitor or even the Arrowhead water delivery guy seeing my hair brushed by my mother.
We went into the audition building and immediately started rehearsing lines. Mom was always so eager, and that drove me nuts. “Let’s practice the lines. You do this part and I’ll do that,” she’d chirp. When I didn’t go for it, she’d say, “Okay, sweetheart, after the audition, where would you like to go to lunch?”
I’d heave a big sigh and say, “McDonald’s. I’ve been thinking about a Big Mac all day.”
I never told her, but I was self-conscious about practicing with her. I was afraid that she would make fun of me, or that I’d get it wrong in her eyes. Either of those would make it harder for me to deliver the line on camera.
I dreaded auditions where I had to sing. There was no advance warning about these musical commercials. I stepped through the magic door and after I said my line, the director, shrouded in black, called out, “Hey. We’d like you to sing something. Pick whatever you want.”
Great.
So there in front of a camera I’d have to come up with some little ditty on my own, or they might ask me to sing “Happy Birthday.” I hated it.
The other tough thing was if I had to cry on cue. Commercials didn’t generally call for crying, but often auditions for movies and TV shows did. Those were very uncomfortable. How can you cry with all those people looking at you? I’m sure that, somewhere on the other side of town, Tracey Gold had no problem with it. But I hated tearing up for strangers.
As the years went on, things got worse. Or rather, I got worse. I learned that the cure for the boredom and depression of having to audition was to fall asleep quickly. That was also my way of getting back at Mom because I knew she wanted to talk. I put my head back on that seat and went right to sleep. An hour later, just as Mom was parking, I’d wake up, stretch and get out of the car—all without talking to her.
As I walked into the audition room I was so groggy. She’d look at me and say, “Do you even want to do this?”
I shrugged a wordless answer. I didn’t have the courage to tell my mom I didn’t want to go anymore. My parents had always said, “You don’t look like you’re enjoying this. If you don’t want to do this, just tell us. You can leave at any time.”
“No, it’s okay,” I’d say and slip away to hide out in my bedroom.
I didn’t feel like Mom was forcing me to continue. I simply didn’t have the nerve to stop. It’s like a kid in gymnastics who’s doing really well and everyone is telling him, “You’ve got a gift. You’ve got talent.” And when he’s there, he does a good job and it feels good. It’s complicated—half of him wants to continue and half wants to quit.
Mom only saw the grumpy, groggy kid in the waiting room. What she didn’t know was that I knew I could turn on the exact personality I needed, perking up the moment I went through the magic door to the audition room. In some ways, I wanted her to think I was blowing it miserably in there.
I never showed Mom that part of me. I knew what she wanted—and I was determined not to give it to her. I knew she wanted me to talk to her. I knew she wanted me to show her what I was going to do. I knew she wanted to know the reaction of the casting director. She was always so anxious after it was over: “So? How did it go? What’d they say?”
Most of the time I didn’t even look at her. Occasionally I threw her a bone and say flatly, “I dunno. They said, ‘Thanks, fine, good.’ ”
Sometimes I put on the shy act instead. It was my way of selfishly doing what I wanted and showing my parents I was in charge by not talking—exactly what some married couples do. If I don’t talk, then I win. I’ve got the power!
What a jerk! Why did I do that? I think it was partly a way of punishing her for taking me away from my friends. Partly it was a control thing. It was my way of being in charge, of being the boss. I can do what I want, it silently conveyed. What could she do to me?
I was so awful to her, yet I don’t remember her ever getting frustrated with me. She tirelessly drove me an hour each way—sometimes longer in traffic—and waited hours for me to finish. I was so unappreciative of all she did.
Eventually Mom gave up trying to get me to rehearse with her. She says that one day after a Universal Studios audition when I flatly refused to say a line her way, she came to the conclusion, Okay, he’s obviously doing something right. He doesn’t need my help anymore. He’s booking the jobs and I can simply be the chaperone. She quietly continued her taxi service for this little selfish brat.
If Mom had called me on my attitude and said, “You know what? You’re being a jerk. And you’re being disrespectful to me. We’re going home. We’re not doing this anymore,” that probably would have gotten me off my high horse. I would have jumped off that horse and apologized. Because I really loved the work—and deep down, I loved my mom.
Work never failed to give me that same ego boost I had experienced when filming that first cereal commercial. People bent over backward to give me what I wanted. And what kid doesn’t want adults eating out of his hand, catering to his every wish? Because life was all about getting to the place where I could be happy all the time, acting was the perfect venue.
It wasn’t only the ego boost that kept me going. I truly loved what I did. When it came time for me to perform, I did the job. It helped that I was good with memorization and knew how to give the crew what they needed. I got a lot of praise for that.
Mom received kudos as well. They’d tell her, “Your son is such a great kid,” blah, blah, blah. That made my mom feel good about herself. Besides, being on the set was fascinating to her.
I was incredibly fortunate that the commercials began to come fast and frequent. Now I was the kid that caused moms to whisper, “Look. Kirk Cameron is here,” and to be discouraged, figuring (falsely) that because I booked a lot of commercials, I was a shoo-in for every audition. (Though I did book a good number.)
I started to recognize other kids from the auditions. River Phoenix was one of the regulars at that time. He was one of Iris Burton’s big hits. We would often audition for the same parts. Sadly, he later died of a drug overdose outside the Viper Room in Hollywood.
I did commercials for Count Chocula, Polaroid, McDonald’s, Formula 409, He-Man, Kool-Aid, Pepsi, Fruit Roll-Ups, All laundry detergent, Hawaiian Punch, Northwest Orient Airlines—and so many more that none of us can remember all the products I represented.
I did a commercial for EuroDisney, filmed in California’s Disneyland. I had to take on an accent and pretend to be a little English kid, in a whole different country with a whole different family. They set this big ice cream sundae in front of me and I had to say, “Cor, Dad, what a big ice cream!” Not only was I at Disneyland, I had all this ice cream to dive into at every take.
They shot the commercial on Employee Appreciation Day, so the park was shut down to the public and only the employees and their families were there. When they finished filming the commercial, I got to wander around a nearly empty Disneyland and go on any ride I wished. And because there were no lines, I simply walked to the front and got on the ride, going on as many times as I wanted to.
In the arcade, an employee followed me around and put a key in the machine of any game I wanted to play.
“Ding! Ding! Ding!” the machine responded and I magically had 30 credits to play that game or any others. It was a dream come true.
Probably the most fun I ever had doing a commercial was for Wrigley’s gum. Once they shouted, “Action!” a group of kids piled into a river raft and we shot down the white-water rapids of the Kern River. We had to do it about a half-dozen times to be sure they had great shots. Awesome.
It wasn’t too shabby that I got paid very well for all this “work” on rapids and in theme parks. In the ’80s, the going rate was 5 to 10 grand for two days of commercial work.
I also enjoyed the part of my imagination that commercials brought to life. For two days, I belonged to a whole new family living in a different reality. That girl was my sister. That kid, my brother. It was fun to pretend that these other people were my parents. “Hey, Dad!” I’d say to some strange guy who was my actor parent. I threw myself into it, wondering what life would be like if these people were truly my mom and dad.
When I was 11, I landed the part of Liam in a TV movie called Goliath Awaits, starring Eddie Albert. The movie was about people living on a partially sunken ship. It wasn’t until after I booked it that they told me the part required scuba diving. Since I’d never done that, I had to take lessons. The studio sent an instructor to our house with scuba gear. Our neighbors across the street let us use their pool.
The training didn’t help a lot. Although I only had to swim around under the surface with the tank on my back, I couldn’t get myself to actually breathe under water. I finally started to get the hang of it but still wasn’t all that comfortable.
During the actual filming, I had to stand up to my waist in very cold water and wait for “Action!” As the cameras filmed the sinking ship I had to dive under it and swim away. It was a cold and miserable day.
In 1983, I played Eric in the television drama series Two Marriages. The show ran only one season, but it gave me a taste of daily life on a television show—and even better, a life without auditions.
One of my jobs interrupted a family camping trip to Illinois. Just as we pulled up the camper, I received the call to appear on the television show Bret Maverick. So Mom and I flew back to Los Angeles while Dad and the girls enjoyed a great road trip together. They went to Mt. Rushmore without me.
One thing I thought was really cool is that we got a fax machine in our house to have scripts sent to us ahead of time! Okay, it’s not a big deal now, but in the days before cell phones and email, only the fanciest offices had these special machines. They rolled out difficult-to-read, blotchy information on rolls of thermal paper. When that baby started to hum, we all paid attention, wondering what exciting script might roll out.
As I reached puberty, I emerged from the “I can’t stand girls, get them away from me” into the world of being smitten by them. I played the little brother to Michele Greene on an after-school special called Andrea’s Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy. I guess she was about 21. I watched her the entire time we filmed and developed a mad crush on her. The last day, I was so sad I was leaving and would never see her again. She stood off to one side talking to a friend. I shyly stepped over and stuttered, “Good-goodbye.”
She gave me a courtesy smile. “Oh, goodbye, sweetie. It was really nice meeting you.” Then she turned away and continued talking to her older friend.
I was crushed. Crestfallen. Heartbroken, I walked away.
I first met Tracey Gold when we played brother and sister in a McDonald’s commercial. We met again in the made-for-television movie Beyond Witch Mountain. Later she played a cheerleader while I played a football star in the Robin Williams/Kurt Russell film The Best of Times. She was cute, she was good and she was always working on something. I had a bit of a crush on her at the time—which probably sounds a bit creepy to the rest of the world who think of us as siblings.