How ’bout that! Let me tell you, that was so awesome to hear. As it turned out, I did lose some weight in the months after that conversation, but I was doing it from a place of love and support, and in the pursuit of healthy eating, not starvation. It was so much easier that way. Trust me, I’m so lucky to work for such wonderful and supportive people.
In 1997, there was an article about me in TV Guide proclaiming that I was “breaking all the rules.” Michael Logan, the writer of that article, said that my “appeal is both surprising and encouraging,” considering that one might have expected the show’s producers to have hired a “reed-thin sexpot” to play the high-profile role of Sami. The article quoted Days head writer James Reilly as saying that my looks were an asset. “The audience identifies with Alison’s young cherubic innocence,” Jim was quoted as saying. “She’s real, not like the anorexic, androgynous types you see in the magazines. She proves normal can be very interesting.”
How cool is that?! Normal and interesting!
Yet even though the Days producers have been absolutely wonderful, I know they’re the exception to the rule in Hollywood. They’re in the minority on the issue of weight. Here’s the cruel and ongoing reality: Most producers, directors, and casting agents usually don’t hire actresses who are overweight. When I have time to audition for guest starring roles, such as on movies-of-the-week, I’d better be as lean and mean as possible if I want a shot at the role. If I (or any other actress) arrive at an audition even just five pounds heavier than what the casting director is looking for, hasta la vista, baby! There’s always the pressure to be thinner. It’s a constant. I wonder if it’s ever going to change.
Not only do a few extra pounds reduce my chances of getting a part, but at times, casting agents have been pretty blunt in letting me know. More than once, they’ve told me (through my manager, or in earlier years, my mom), “Ali, can I give you a bit of advice? You should really think about losing ten or fifteen pounds.” (Amazingly, they thought they were being kind and helpful! Can you believe it?!) About a year before I got the part on Days, when I auditioned for a role on Beverly Hills 90210, the casting directors politely informed me that I didn’t have “the right body” for their show (by the way, after receiving that news, I comforted myself by eating—how’s that for irony?!).
Of course, this Hollywood reality drives me crazy! At times, it really weighs on me (sorry—bad pun!). OK, we can agree that size and shape do matter on a show like Baywatch, where both men and women are parading around in a very limited amount of clothing, and their great bodies on the beach are key to the show’s appeal. The same goes for an audition I went to not long ago, where the story line itself focused on the way in which weight affected the relationship between two sisters—one of whom was very thin, and the other who was heavier; obviously, the size of the actresses mattered when those roles were cast. But these are the exceptions. The plot lines of most shows don’t revolve around bathing suit models who splash provocatively into the Pacific to save drowning swimmers! With most TV programs and motion pictures, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re ten or fifteen pounds over-or underweight. Romantic comedies, for example, would still work whether actresses weigh 105 or 140. (Remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding?) But, of course, don’t bother arguing that case in Hollywood these days. You’re wasting your breath.
The Skinny on Being Skinny
What’s the logic behind the television industry’s obsession with thinness? After all, there are probably many more women across America who could relate to an actress who looks real, whether she’s normal-sized or even pleasantly plump—that is, someone who looks a lot more like they do than the actresses they usually see on TV. Take a look back through recorded history, and you’ll discover that shapely and somewhat overweight women were considered beautiful (just walk through an art museum and you’ll see what I mean!). So let’s get real, Hollywood!
But here’s the way the argument goes in show business: In most TV shows and motion pictures, there is an underlying romantic story line and a happy-ever-after ending, and most viewers don’t want to see someone who looks like them in these story lines—they want to see a fantasy of how they’d like life to be, including women with perfect bodies rather than more ordinary figures. (Also, don’t forget about the men: Most male viewers would rather see an actress who looks like she belongs in a Victoria Secret’s ad, not one who’s going to Jenny Craig!)
Maybe there’s some truth to that. Where are the actresses who look like average American women? Where are the models who look like real people? (Cindy Crawford, commenting on the makeup, lights, and airbrushing that are part of the modeling industry, once said that in real life, “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford!”) Sure, there are a few plump actresses on TV and in the movies, but not many (I love Camryn Manheim, don’t you?—Her book, which put it right out there, was titled, Wake Up, I’m Fat!). I’m not so sure that the ultimate fantasy for most viewers is an actress who is bone-thin and skeletal, particularly when American women come in so many body shapes and sizes (we accept differences in hair color and eye color, but weight seems to be a completely different matter!).
One of the real ironies about weight and women in show business is that even though most casting directors I’ve worked with are women, they appear to be as hard or harder on actresses and their size than their male counterparts—and I just don’t get it! I don’t know how an entire industry can choose one body type (a very thin one) and presume that it pleases every viewer and every fan. In fact, I know it doesn’t. Why can’t they open their minds and choose actresses from across the spectrum—all sizes, all shapes? And anyway, I’ve always thought “variety is the spice of life”! Why not try casting lots of different body types for different TV shows—give people options! If they did, I think shows would attract even wider audiences than they already do.
While we’re on the subject of diversity, don’t get me started on the issue of aging actresses, either. Actors like Sean Connery and Harrison Ford can play leading roles for forty years, and people still love them. (I know I love them!) But youthfulness is a much bigger issue for actresses. It’s such a shame that actresses like Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton sometimes have to fight for roles or create their own, despite their enormous talent. None of us stays young forever, but that doesn’t make us any less interesting or talented as we grow older. We’re not like gymnasts—we don’t peak at eighteen!
I don’t know whether things will ever change. But unless and until they do, I’d love to have you eavesdrop on some of the conversations I’ve had with groups of Hollywood actresses. Diet mania is not their only preoccupation, but sometimes it sure seems that way. If there’s one thing actresses are good at (other than their acting ability, I hope) it’s finding and exchanging diet plans with one another. When they’re together, that is often Topic Number 1. So for years, I was never without a weight-loss program to replace the one that had just failed. Actresses always tell each other stories about taking one kind of weight-loss pill or another. They’re sharing information on the latest exercise fad out there. Now it’s even mainstream—at least in L.A., there is always talk about the newest diet fad, whether it’s Dr. Atkins, Dr. Phil, the New Hollywood Diet, or whatever. At the other extreme, there are actresses I’ve met who keep their unusual eating (or, more accurately, noneating) behaviors to themselves, never telling a soul that they’re on a near-starvation diet, or that they’re bingeing and purging. Some of them can throw up on cue. They exercise well past the point of exhaustion. But they often keep it all hidden. It’s their deep, dark secret. But guess what? Nearly everyone around them knows what’s happening, particularly when their behavior becomes a little erratic. If you think it’s easy to get caught up in the dieting hysteria among your own friends, just imagine what it’s like in an industry where your looks are often just about the only thing that matters.
At times, I’ve become caught up in this rather sick preoccupation of Hollywood. A few years ago, I k
new I had hit rock bottom when I actually found myself in an absolutely bizarre conversation. Another actress and I were discussing a new “diet plan” we had heard about: No, it didn’t involve cutting calories or exercising more. It required dining on worms! (No, this isn’t my Fear Factor story—that comes later.) According to the guidelines for this particular diet scheme, once these special tapeworms are in your stomach, they make themselves at home and munch away at the morsels of real food that you eat. In the process, they supposedly keep you from gaining weight! We had heard that we could eat as much as we wanted and still lose tons of weight, thanks to those hungry little worms! Luckily, the way you get them out is so gross and potentially dangerous that we were quickly turned off by the whole idea.
Sounds absolutely insane, doesn’t it? And, I agree, it really is outrageous! But I have to admit that for a few brief moments, it seemed to us like something worth trying! What were we thinking?! Fortunately, we never pursued it, and my palate will be forever grateful! But when it actually sounded appealing, even for just a minute or two, I knew we were in real trouble. The sheer lunacy of the pressure to be thin can put such crazy thoughts in your head!
Chapter 11
In this chapter, let me tell you more about my own journey in the battle of the bulge. As I mentioned in the last chapter, the folks at Days of Our Lives have never made an issue of my weight. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve been able to ignore it, either. I’ve been in show business almost all of my life, and since I’ve been a teenager, I’ve been very aware of the matter of weight and its importance in Hollywood (and throughout the entire society, for that matter). As I moved through puberty, and once my adolescent growth spurts were pretty much over, I became so busy with school and acting that I began getting less exercise than I should have. I gained a few pounds, although I know I was never really fat. But like millions of other adolescent girls, I became very self-conscious about every additional pound on the scale, particularly at this sensitive time of life where you start thinking about boys and going on dates. I also began to recognize that I couldn’t eat like I did when I was ten years old; it doesn’t work that way (unless, of course, you have a few friendly worms hard at work in your stomach!).
For a time, I tried a vegetarian diet, and it seemed like a healthy way to eat. But it sure didn’t do much for my figure. True, I didn’t eat meat, but I had pasta three or four times a week! That many carbs kept me wearing dress sizes much larger than I would have preferred. In fact, it really didn’t seem to matter what kind of diet I adopted; at times, my weight would dip a few pounds, but I always gained it back. It seemed like a losing battle, and at times I became an absolute wreck! I just wanted to give up.
But then Days of Our Lives became part of my life. At age sixteen, I joined the show, which lifted an enormous burden from my shoulders, and let me put much less focus on the scale—or at least that’s the way it should have been.
However, I’ve always found myself surrounded by incredibly thin actresses—and I do mean incredibly thin—not only on Days but among every other group of actresses I hung out with. As I described in Chapter 10, many, many actresses are totally absorbed with their weight, minute by minute. They feel inadequate and have their spirits absolutely crushed if they gain just a pound or two, convinced that they’re fat.
When you’re working with people who are so weight-conscious, it’s almost inevitable that some of their obsessions rub off on you. Yes, there were (and sometimes still are) times that I wanted to be just like them. I might wake up in the morning, feel hunger pangs, have breakfast, and then become so angry with myself because I had eaten! When women in size 0 dresses would tell me very nonchalantly that they’d throw up after eating, I thought, “Maybe something’s wrong with me—why am I being so moral and health-conscious about this whole thing? What’s wrong with doing whatever it takes to become underweight and undersized?” I even thought at one point that a personal “weakness” was preventing me from being able to throw up my meals.
Fortunately, those thoughts didn’t linger. And here’s the bottom line: I know my body type and body structure, and no matter how little I eat or how much I work out, I’m never going to become the thinnest of the thin, or close to it. For better or worse, that’s just not me.
OK, I will admit to the following: There was a time when I wished I had the willpower to become anorexic. I have to admit, I remember days when I felt so desperate that I tried to make myself throw up after a meal. What on earth possessed me to try it? As I wrote in Chapter 5, I remember going into the bathroom and closing the door. I sat down next to the toilet, and stuck my fingers down my throat. But nothing happened. Yes, I gagged, but I couldn’t throw up. How did I feel afterward? Both disappointment and relief at the same time. Looking back, maybe someone was watching out for me—if I had been able to successfully vomit, I might have kept doing it. It could have become a way of life and spiraled way out of control. I know plenty of girls and women who have slipped into that trap. Fortunately, I found a way of growing up rather than throwing up, and I embraced a much healthier attitude about eating and body weight. But at times, it sure hasn’t been easy.
Crash Diets and Other Disasters
If you’re like me, you may have tried everything to lose weight, believing it would make you feel better about yourself. In my case, even when people would say to me, “I’d kill to have your body, Ali,” I’d sometimes be thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding! Maybe you’d kill for Britney Spears’ body—but mine?!”
Now, of course, I’ve matured a lot, and I’m not the maniacal dieter I used to be. I’m no longer one of those people who never met a diet she didn’t like. Yet thinking back, if I had kept copies of every diet and diet book that I ever tried, they could fill up my entire garage (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much!). Over the years, I’ve gone on dozens of crash and crazy diets—none of which worked over the long term, and some of which chipped away at my overall health. I consumed low-calorie frozen entrees. I cut out snacks. I ate more fat. I ate less fat. I tried starving myself (quite literally), and then after a few days would binge on bowls of ice cream. I became one of the sweating masses crowding into trendy health clubs in Los Angeles. I exercised with several different personal trainers.
I get exhausted just thinking about all of this!
Perhaps the only approach I didn’t try was one of those meal-replacement shake diets. You probably know the routine—drink shakes two times a day, and then have a dinner of chicken breast and vegetables, or something similar to it. I knew someone who was very overweight and actually lost eighty pounds drinking shakes. But the day he cut out the shakes and started introducing normal eating to his life again, he gained all the weight back—and more. It turned into a real nightmare for him. I knew I didn’t want that to happen to me. I also knew that you can’t just drink shakes for the rest of your life.
I continued to try a lot of other approaches, though. For a while, I ate custom-made meals, prepared by a nutritionist and delivered to my door. It seemed worth the effort. Well, let me tell you, the food was so bland (I still have this need for some salt in my diet, and there didn’t seem to be any in this program!). The rules were very strict (I was supposed to eat particular foods in specific amounts at designated times of the day—and I became overwhelmed just trying to keep track of everything). I stuck with it for a month but just wasn’t losing weight—or at least not as fast as I wanted to. At the same time, going to a restaurant was out of the question. My frustration finally boiled over. I lost my cool, canceled the delivered meals, considered myself a failure (again)—and then looked for the next diet to try!
Get the picture? If there was a diet out there I didn’t try, it was only because I had placed my hope for the moment in something else. All the while—all through my teens and early twenties—my career on Days continued to go great. But for much of the time, I really couldn’t enjoy it because I felt terrible about myself—all because of the number on the scal
e. For so long, I never lost any weight—certainly not in the long term—and I knew that I wasn’t doing my body any good, either. The only thing that ever got thinner and frailer was my self-esteem. At times, I could talk as good a game as anyone, but during the worst times, I didn’t like myself. If my weight rose, I allowed those extra pounds to undercut my self-respect and self-confidence. In short, I was making myself miserable.
Crazy, huh?
From Bad to Worse
In the past, there have been many moments when I was so tired of struggling with my weight and so frustrated with Hollywood’s vision of perfection that I was at the breaking point! I felt like throwing up my hands and throwing in the towel on show business. That’s how deep my despair had gotten. Of course, for my entire life, acting has been my dream. It’s what I love. It’s what I’m good at. But I admit that sometimes the “weight thing” really got to me.
More than once my self-loathing overheated, and I would absolutely lose it. At the mall, I might try on a cute outfit and feel that it looked absolutely terrible on me, or that it just didn’t fit the way I thought it should. Or I would peruse pictures taken of me at a photo shoot, and when I appeared heavy in my own eyes, my unhappiness and misery would boil over. I’d curse myself for not having willpower. I’d have a full-blown meltdown. You get the point, right? It could be pretty ugly.
I remember a few incidents that I’m almost embarrassed to tell you about. Several times, I stormed into my kitchen, sobbing uncontrollably, and cleaned nearly everything out of my refrigerator and cupboards. The sugar-rich soft drinks went first…then the Haagen-Dazs bars…the lemonade mix…the sugary cereals. I tossed every “unhealthy” or high-calorie food within reach into a large trash bag, or even worse, I’d occasionally fling it against the wall and watch it land in a heap on the floor (Yes, I was a cleaning lady’s worst nightmare!). Eventually, once the trash bag was filled to overflowing, I’d drag it out to the garbage bin, with tears rolling down my cheeks. Can you imagine what that scene was like? Definitely a pitiful sight. When it was all over, after calming down a bit, I’d go to the market and fill up my shopping cart with items from the health-food aisle—there was nothing with sugar, and certainly nothing that tasted good—and I’d start the next diet, but I’d do it from a very negative, very unhappy place. Inevitably, of course, I’d fail on that one, too, usually ending up by going out and having the dessert that I had been craving for weeks.
All The Days Of My Life (so Far) Page 14