Still Growing: An Autobiography (7 page)

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.

Mom screeched to a stop in front of ABC studios. “It’s on the second floor. Run! See if you can still get in.”

I bolted from the car. If I missed this audition, it would reflect badly on Mom—and even worse, on the prestigious, intimidating Iris Burton. We couldn’t afford to lose the best agent in town.

I took the stairs two at a time. At the top, I pounded on the door.

A balding man opened it and peeked at me.

“Hi, I’m Kirk Cameron. I know I’m late . . .”

“You are,” he said. He looked at his watch. “The audition was at 4:30. It’s 5.” He started to close the door.

Instinctively, I put my foot out so he couldn’t close it. “I know, I know. But my mom will kill me if I don’t do this audition. Please can I read just to tell her I did it?”

He looked over his shoulder, probably to ask what the others thought, then opened the door.

I had no idea what I was auditioning for except that it was a “pilot”—the first episode of a TV series that determines whether the network will put the show on its schedule. I’d gotten the script ahead of time but had really only glanced at it. I knew nothing about the show. To me, the title
Growing Pains
sounded dramatic and gritty.

I left the audition without a sense of how things had gone. They laughed, but I wasn’t sure they were supposed to. Mom waited in the
receiving room. “How did it go? How did you do? Was it okay that you were late?”

I did my usual shrug, but thought she should get a little more than usual because of the stress I’d put her through. “They laughed.”

“That’s great, Kirk!”

By this time, auditions had been coming fast and furious. Some panned out, some didn’t. Mom really wanted me to get either a part in a series or the lead in a movie. She believed that at 14, I was ready and needed to take the next step in my acting career. One of my recent auditions was for the starring role in the movie
Lucas
. It had gone well and their first choice, Corey Haim, was not able to take the part. We had been told to wait by the phone for the announcement of my big break, but the call never came. I didn’t get the
Lucas
job and I could tell Mom was disappointed.

“Maybe you’ll get the pilot,” she sighed.

I did get the callback for
Growing Pains
. This time I knew it was a comedy and played it the way I saw Mike Seaver.

It must have gone well.

One day I was playing Atari when Mom interrupted my session. “Kirk,” she said, sticking her head in the room. “You got it! You got the pilot!”

I was happy and all, but her interruption caught me off-guard and Pinky cornered my Pac-Man before I could eat a power pellet.

Because I had been on the show
Two Marriages
, I had experienced life on a series. It wasn’t all that new to me, though I played a bigger role in
Growing Pains
and, of course, one was a comedy and the other a drama. I was looking forward to it. You couldn’t beat the steady work—and
no more auditions!
Of course, I would see a lot less of my friends, but I figured a comedy would be a lot of fun. At 14, I was ready for this new adventure, however long it lasted.

I knew that booking a pilot is only the first step to stardom—the network has a strong say in the final casting. It’s a challenge to create a convincing “family” by throwing a group of strangers together. Actors have to possess that over-used adjective,
chemistry
. The children should at least resemble the actors playing their parents. (Whether I look more like Joanna Kerns or Alan Thicke, that’s a puzzler TV historians can debate for centuries to come.)

Reading in front of the network bigwigs is much more intimidating than reading for the casting director. The room was bigger and we performed the audition on a stage. Thanks to the invention of shoulder pads, there were a lot of broad-shouldered suits scrutinizing us. Comedy is serious business.

The network picked up the pilot and we taped it, but in test screenings, the show didn’t rate very well. Viewers weren’t fond of the original Carol, and didn’t like some of the banter between the parents. They felt it was mean-spirited, and
Roseanne
hadn’t yet “set the Barr” for mean.

In response, Mike Sullivan put together an introductory piece to make the family more likeable. He also reworked the banter and cut together a little dual narration to show before the credits. They hired Tracey Gold to replace the original actress and we re-shot the scenes with her as Carol.

When the studio re-tested the show,
Growing Pains
was the top pilot for that season.