True You

by Janet Jackson

  Good Times

  My acting career began on a serious note when my father got a call from the office of television producer Norman Lear, inquiring about my availability for a situation comedy.

  In the mid-1970s, Norman Lear was the king of television. He had created All in the Family and Maude, among other shows. Good Times was a spin-off from Maude and at this point, 1977, was starring Ja’Net DuBois. Lear was looking for a young girl to play Ja’Net’s foster child, Penny. According to the script, the child had endured physical abuse at the hands of her biological mother.

  I knew none of this when Mother and I arrived at the production office. I didn’t know who Lear was, and I didn’t understand how significant it was that he himself was conducting the audition.

  Lear began by chatting amiably with me. I sensed that he was a nice man. Then he asked me a question that threw me.

  “Janet,” he said, “are you able to cry?”

  I thought that was a strange question.

  “Everyone can cry, Mr. Lear,” I said.

  “But can you cry on cue, Janet? Can you cry when I ask you to?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.

  “Let me give you an example,” he said. “Let’s say you bought me a gift, a beautiful blue tie, that you think is perfect for me. You’re absolutely convinced that this gift will thrill me. You’ve picked it out because it matches my eyes. You can’t wait to give to me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Now,” Lear continued, “hand me this tie. Go ahead and hand it to me.”

  I handed him an invisible tie.

  He responded by saying, “How could you give me such an ugly tie? I don’t like it.”

  Right then and there, tears slowly started to run down my face.

  “But I bought it for you,” I said. “It matches your eyes.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  My tears kept flowing. I felt genuinely hurt. I couldn’t hold back my true feelings.

  “Good,” Lear said, now smiling. “Very good.”

  I wiped my eyes.

  “That will be all, Janet,” he said. “We’ll be in touch with you.”

  I knew how auditions worked—you either got a callback or not. I normally presumed the worst.

  Mother and I got up and left the room. When we reached the hallway, she kissed me on the cheek and said, “You did fine, baby.”

  “Do you think I can have Malibu Barbie now?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Mother said.

  Before we left the building, though, Lear called us back. When we reentered the office, he sat us down and said it simply. “Janet was so good we’ve decided to call off the other auditions. Your daughter has the part. Congratulations.”

  “What do you say about that, Janet?” Mother said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lear,” I said.

  I felt happy all over, but I also felt moved to ask Mother the question all over again. “Do you think I can have Malibu Barbie now?”

  “Yes, baby,” she said. And from Lear’s Tandem Productions office we made a beeline to Toys ‘R’ Us, where I raced down the aisle and grabbed the whole package—the tent, the pool, the dream house, and, of course, Miss Barbie herself.

  It’s ironic that while I was buying a Barbie dream house, the character that I was cast to play in Good Times, Penny, was living a nightmare. She was going through horrible times. She was an abused and beaten child who suffered terribly at the hands of her mother. Her mother burned her with an iron and broke her arm. I was asked to play someone who, although smiling and sweet on the outside, had an interior life of extreme fear and pain.

  To help me through the process, I leaned on my real-life siblings. On those first shows, I wore Randy’s jeans because they fit me better than my own. La Toya helped me learn my lines, and so did my Mike, who was just about to go off to New York and film The Wiz. During rehearsals, I wouldn’t cry. I don’t know why. I just blocked the feelings. Maybe they were too much for me. When it came time to tape, though, the tears flowed. I felt what I needed to feel. I felt how much Penny needed to be loved.

  I felt love from the cast of Good Times, who became a second family to me. However, I was still uncomfortable with the process. I hated the table readings. That’s when we were asked to read the scripts out loud. I didn’t think of myself as a good reader. I’d stumble over words. I’d feel everyone’s eyes focused on me.

  I was also told that I was overweight and immediately needed to slim down. In the very first episode, the wardrobe department told me they had to bind my breasts. Where the decision came from, I will never know. So now it was not just my butt; it was my chest, too. I was in constant discomfort and lacked self-assurance.

  The other young actresses that I knew in passing appeared to be self-composed. At the studio next to ours, two girls—Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips—were doing One Day at a Time. They seemed to know what they were doing. I wasn’t sure that I did. Today I understand that Valerie and Mackenzie were fighting battles of their own.

  But I did it anyway. I acted. I pretended. I kept up a grinding work schedule. I missed my family like crazy—Mike, who was making The Wiz; my other siblings, who were always recording. Meanwhile, I was working on this TV show nine to five.

  Nonetheless, I was grateful for the part and the opportunity to act. I also derived satisfaction out of being on time and doing my work. My mom was supportive and loving. My brothers, whom I had once watched as cartoon characters on TV, said that they now liked watching me.

  As a result of my success on Good Times, I was beginning to develop a small amount of self-esteem. I had accomplished something on my own, apart from my family. I had proven that I could act. The problem, though, is that the self-esteem was overwhelmed by self-doubt. I still did not see myself as attractive or especially talented. I figured I had gotten a lucky break. Because acting at the beginning didn’t seem especially difficult, I couldn’t give myself much credit for being good at it. In fact, I could hardly give myself credit for anything.

  Yes, I was disciplined. Yes, I was being recognized. Yes, I was operating in the difficult realm of show business. But deep inside, did I feel uniquely blessed? Did I feel truly worthy?

  The feeling that comes when you know the true you—a true you that is strong, sincere, beautiful, and unquestionably valuable—was a long ways off. Before I could embrace that feeling, there was a world of lessons to be learned. And maybe because I see myself as a slow learner, none of the lessons were easy.

  Yes, I was disciplined. Yes,

  I was being recognized.

  Yes, I was operating in

  the difficult realm of show

  business. But deep inside

  did I feel uniquely blessed?

  Did I feel truly worthy?

  My father, Joseph Jackson, is a man who truly is old-school. People may not understand him, but I know he loves me and my family.

  Discipline

  Our family was all about discipline. My parents saw discipline as the key to survival and success. I never once rebelled against the notion of hard work, practice, and rigorous rehearsal. I didn’t always like it—after all, I was a kid—but watching my brothers do it and seeing the results, the message was clear: no discipline, no achievement.

  When it came time to get up in the morning and head to the set of Good Times, I was out of bed before the alarm clock rang. I was dressed. I was prompt. I was programmed. I embraced my family’s sense of unyielding discipline. I am the product of that discipline and cannot envision my life without it.

  And yet…

  When it came to food, the concept of discipline didn’t exist. I was given no instructions about what or when to eat. We were a show business family focused on show business success. Food was fuel to keep us going. Food was necessary, but hardly required study.

  In the early days, when I went on the road with my brothers, it was all about room service. In fact, it became a running joke that l
ittle Janet had memorized the room service numbers at every hotel on the circuit. I loved calling up and ordering whatever I liked—cheeseburgers, or apple pie, whatever and whenever. It was magical. Pick up the phone, and thirty minutes later there it was: my fondest desire arrived on a silver platter.

  Disciplined artistic training came to me as naturally as eating, yet when it came to eating, discipline flew out the window.

  Some of my siblings, such as my sister La Toya, have high metabolisms. La Toya could eat dozens of her beloved chocolate turtles without gaining a pound.

  My metabolism was slow.

  My appetite was big.

  After a show, after receiving a standing ovation, I wanted to celebrate the good feeling. I would go back to the hotel room and make a phone call.

  The waiter would wheel in the food—hamburgers, french fries, and ice cream.

  If someone had told me back then that just as I needed to be a disciplined actor, I also needed to be a disciplined eater, I wouldn’t have understood. Though I was hardly a rebellious kid, I would have surely rejected the idea of curbing my eating habits.

  Eating was emotional for me; eating calmed my nerves and brought me instant gratification.

  “I hated the word discipline,” a friend of mine once told me. “My mother was a rabid disciplinarian. If I got out of bed a minute late, I was punished. If I didn’t eat every last bite of my oatmeal, I was punished. If my homework wasn’t finished by eight, even more punishment. As a result, I was always late getting out of bed, I never finished my oatmeal, and I never completed my homework on time. I flat-out rebelled. I couldn’t stand the pressure, and I resented how everything had to be just so.

  “‘Why?’ I asked my mother. ‘Why can’t I stay in bed another five minutes? Why can’t I have another hour to get through with my homework?’

  “‘Because you need to learn discipline’ was always her answer.

  “‘What’s the big deal about discipline?’ I wanted to know.

  “‘Without discipline, you’ll never amount to anything.’

  “Well, when you’re seven or eight years old, the idea of ‘amounting to something’ isn’t foremost on your mind, is it?”

  “But at least it showed you that your mother cared,” I said.

  “I didn’t feel that she cared about me,” my friend said. “I felt like she cared about this principle of discipline. Discipline was just making me do things I didn’t want to do when I didn’t want to do them. Her insistence on discipline turned me into a wild child.”

  For all the truth in my friend’s story, I saw the positive side of discipline. I didn’t reject or resist discipline, because I saw how discipline led to success. Success meant pleasing an audience and earning a standing ovation.

  I was still a preteen when Mike introduced us to vegetarianism. I believe that came out of his love for animals, a love that I share deeply. It seemed to make sense, and the majority of the family went along with the program. Mother agreed and felt it was not only important to exclude animal flesh from our diet but to employ colonic treatments on a weekly basis. The idea was that the bacteria and toxins that accumulate in the colon have to be flushed out. Later I would learn that many doctors disagree with this method, feeling that the body’s digestive system naturally eliminates those toxins. There is a school of thought, however, that maintaining a healthy colon requires extraordinary measures. For many years, our family adopted those measures. And as an obedient child, I didn’t argue or challenge the plan. As a young girl, that wasn’t my nature.

  Because I loved Mike and cherished the times he and I spent together, I was more than willing to embrace his diet. That became another bond between us. Before he recorded Off the Wall, he could go out in public without security. People recognized him and asked for autographs, but it was still manageable and not intrusive. We’d go out alone.

  He’d drive us from the San Fernando Valley to a vegetarian restaurant run by Sikhs on Third Street in Los Angeles, called the Golden Temple. We’d eat salads and drink Yogi tea. The meals were delicious, and we stuffed ourselves. I remember thinking—or hoping—that overeating healthy food wouldn’t get me fat the way nonhealthy food might. I still worried, however, that healthy or not, I was too fat and that my eating was out of control. But these were private worries; I didn’t mention them to Mike. At the same time, Mike, who had problems with acne, never discussed that with me. All of us in our family—brothers, sisters, mother, and father—kept such thoughts to ourselves.

  There were also wonderful spontaneous trips that Mike and I would make to give food to the homeless. We’d buy a bunch of takeout meals and drive around the city, stopping whenever we saw someone holding a sign asking for help. That was Mike’s idea of a good time—simply give to the poor on a personal basis. All this happened when I was still a preteen and Mike was not yet twenty. Our closeness meant the world to me. There was still taunting about my booty or my inability to trim down, but that was more than compensated by our private time together. I saw no problems on the horizon.

  “I did,” said my sister La Toya years later. “I always knew you’d have weight issues.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The teasing got to you. I saw it in your face. You might have said, ‘Sticks and stones might hurt my bones, but names will never harm me,’ but I knew that the names were harming you.”

  Mike named me “Dunk” and we shared every dream, every confidence. I was his little sister; he always knew that I had his back.

  Escapade

  I was eleven and on break from Good Times when Mike invited me to New York. It was 1977, and the height of disco madness. La Toya was also there. Excitedly, Mike told me about this club called Studio 54. Nightclubs weren’t anything new for me. My siblings had been taking me to clubs for years. I was used to being the only kid at the party. But from the minute we arrived, I knew this was different.

  Long lines of people, dressed in fabulous outfits, were waiting to get in. Once we were spotted, we were whisked right inside. The place was mammoth. It was packed. Strobe lights flashing. People sniffing flour.

  “Why are they doing that?” I asked, not understanding that it wasn’t flour they were sniffing. No one answered me. Everyone was too busy looking.

  I was introduced to the owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. I saw Liza Minnelli. I recognized her from her films and knew that her mother was Judy Garland. I also knew the films of her father, Vincente Minnelli. I also recognized the man she was with—Halston. It was a dazzling, amazing scene. I don’t think I said a single word the entire night.

  I felt privileged to be there. With the exception of Brooke Shields, what other young kid could gain entrance? It was a fascinating glimpse into the world of extreme celebrity glamour.

  Mike could have excluded me from such experiences. But in his mind—and in mine—such experiences were fun. It was plain fun to see the outlandishness of one of the wildest clubs ever to host the stars.

  To be included was to be loved.

  I cherish such experiences. Despite whatever self-image issues I had—feeling I was fat, or a poor student, or inferior to my siblings—the presence of my family was and remains a comfort. Families can be challenging, and many are deeply dysfunctional. But despite that dysfunction, a family can provide a loving energy that’s hard, if not impossible, to duplicate.

  Long ago a friend told me this story that I’ll never forget. It’s testimony to the strength of family, even when that family comprises just two people.

  “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I lived alone with my father. My mom had died in childbirth and all four of his grandparents lived far away. It was just Daddy and me. Daddy had problems. He was a drinker, and he couldn’t hold down a job. We were always moving the day before the rent was due. I changed elementary school five or six times. Usually I was the one who had to wake up Daddy so he could take me to school. I was very young—five or six—when I started making him breakfast. I didn’t kno
w the word for it then, but I do now: he was depressed. It was hard for him to get out of bed and get going. In the evenings, we ate frozen dinners or takeout from McDonald’s. When I got older, Daddy wasn’t really capable of helping me with my homework.

  “Once in a while he’d have a lady friend help me. One of his girlfriends was a bookkeeper and good at math. Another worked at the library and helped me with my reading. But Daddy wasn’t good at keeping these relationships. He’d quickly move from one lady to another. I often heard him fighting with them over the phone or in person. He had all sorts of problems that I could talk about for days, or years, or even the rest of my life.

  “But here’s what I remember most, and here’s what I cling to most—the fact that my father was there. Every night when I went to sleep, he was there. Every morning when I awoke, he was there. I know that he fed me the wrong foods and I know that he never had the right stuff to fight the demons that kept him down. But the simple fact that he stuck around—day in and day out—told me the one thing I needed to know. That he cared. And because he cared, I was able to feel that I was worth caring for.”

  Being in the real world

  taught me that when it

  comes to relationships,

  it is all about sincerity,

  not class, or race, or

  economic status.

  With my childhood friend La Nette. In high school, feeling fat even though I was so thin.

  All Right

  At the end of my stint on Good Times, I had to enroll in a new school. I no longer needed to be tutored privately. I had to go to a real school with real kids and deal with my real issues. It was one of the biggest changes in my young life up to this point. I was nervous and not happy. I was struggling with how I looked and whether I would fit in with the new kids. I would be out of my comfort zone.