EXTRA! Tatum O'Neil

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Let's partner for all of it. Learn more@edwardjones.com hi Jane Pauley and this is our Sunday morning extra podcast featuring a memorable story from our latest show this week. Tracy Smith sits down with Tatum O'Neal, actress, author and mother. It's a revealing conversation about the struggles of a woman who has grown up in Hollywood spotlight. So first, how are you I'm good today.

Right now, today, thank you for asking. If course and why do you think of today while I have rheumatoid arthritis, and I didn't have a flare. I guess that's what they call them since 2012 when I was diagnosed, and five months ago all I have done has had his had one flare over another. What is that mean for your daily life. What that means that my hands stopped working means that I can really tie my shoes.

That means I have to relearn to write I will probably need surgeries on both my wrists. My ankles and I definitely need surgery on left knee and my neck coming up in the next week so for you. You came into the Oscars from a childhood that wasn't exactly idyllic, I wouldn't have won had he been really because I went to been able to do that that performance. If I hadn't had all of those kind of crazy trauma is prior to the age of eight years old that normal children don't have that kind of I would say just the wood that you know this kind of understanding of bigger things of the pain adults have, that's what it that's the way I look at and you're right when you look at that performance. You can see when you were eight when he started shooting the film, but your eyes you can see so much in that little girl's eyes. Thank you so much pain. I enjoy and anything is that when my dad did take custody of me. I've never known a joy at like that and I don't know that I ever will take. It was like Christmas every day and with your dad while my dad is the funniest person you'll ever meet in your life mean the most charming, the most funny. The most smart so for me to get to spend all my time with them and then to do this movie and not have to go to school and being mercilessly teased him was a real joy and I went to been able to do that performance had it not been for Peter Bogdanovich and and my dad because they gave me that confidence and freedom to tell me that I could do anything.

Now all I kept thinking was when Dwight when I really can have to go back to school that had been such a test bed.

I was able to relate to homeschool myself and learn what myself years of school did you end up completing did not finish high school. So are you all self-taught, totally self-taught, because I did a lot of really stupid mistakes in terms of money staff in terms of that. I wish that I had more schooling, but again I'm not a big regret her. I say that word again.

I'm not a big regret or and so it is what it is I hate everything happens for a reason, but it seems like to be honest with you had had I not read that I might not have known that about you. Just from reading what you've written and listening to you speak, it sounds like you very well educated you just read tons and tons of books Emma Minnick Percival. That's the first thing Minnick and I may, I met a really good listener and I really ask a lot of questions I wanted to learn.

I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be the smartest person that I could and the only way that I knew how to do that was to read and to listen so they ask.

And that meant that I was annoying a lot of the time because you're always asking questions that really annoying.

It's like my God is what is she asking my dad, he'd say let's run some lines and I'd say what and eight and II think I said no I don't want to run lives could only get stale and is oh yeah who taught me that word and I have maybe but you know he read a lot of books so so you read a lot of books so I read a lot of books did you have any idea what a big deal it was winning that Oscar 10. No, no, right to you. It was emulated been a kind of a crazy year. The biggest thing that happened to me is that I was at a boarding school. Prior to the movie coming out in everybody hated me and then I went back in the movie came out everybody loves me so there was the big the big oh I see this is what the world is like okay when you look back and see that 10-year-old girl on stage of the Oscars. What you think have a lot of love and and it's taken me a long, it's hard to explain exactly what self-loathing feels like, or why you get it or lacking in self-esteem.

I suppose being public censure aid is hard. I mean it's had more pluses and minuses, but it's taken me a long time to learn that it's okay that I met I'm good with myself and to really forgive little Tatum and to know that that I was just trying I was just trying to survive and I was just trying to do the best that I cared and and I have a lot of empathy for her. It was hard.

I was alone a lot, you know, like Chinatown and manage the whole families and boarding schools a lot. Still, after you know so in a way that night is kind of symbolic because neither of your parents were there that night crack you were alone that night essentially mean your grandparents were there, but will they had been raising me to it was so you know it wasn't like they were just, you know they were. I think it's pretty funny that my grandfather came running on stage and was immediately cut off from the log.

My father was doing the correct it was two years of his life, so I'm sure Stanley said he couldn't come back.

My mother was really dealing with her addiction.

So II forgive both of them 100% and you're saying you I would have more fun as we could and wasn't there either. That was what was so weird to. I couldn't quite get that then I thought they must've all been mad that I was the only one nominated or something but math and was nominated and she was up against me. So at least you know Peter, show up for us.

Think you if you start your career first movie red really screws you up. Yes. Case in point, I think I would work consistently but because of that I and probably because I won an Academy award right outside of the gate and I so about never let it overcome because really good actress. So the fact like I can't get myself a job because I can't the fact that I can get a job because I can't like audition properly is is funny to me and I'm going, so my biggest thing before I was struck with arthritis was oh you will you will be the next audition, you will every job you go in and it's gotten better and better. So Steve worked on this auditioning thing because you didn't have to audition coming out of the fact you had to open it.

Overcome your success and I think that going through puberty and then my dad and I served starting to separate had a lot to do with my confidence at a time when we really need our confidence and I didn't have like a two parent. I had my dad and since we were sort of separating. I think that that you really need confidence as an actor and you know I I put that pressure on myself that I need to be as good is is that as I am in every audition, and I think it's just too much pressure and it probably has something to do the Oscar and it makes sense if you start at the top where else is there to go right but you try not to think like that little negative I still going to anything else but I wouldn't change anything.

No going back to your teenage years and just when we see the pictures of those years. It's unbelievable that hair will really not know the affairs everybody had bad hair back and that's okay yeah but there's like dated Michael Jackson your partying at studio 54. You're hanging out with Cher.

I was item 2 problem with it was just one had to get a crane to get me out of Cher's house because she really amazing family like she had her mom and sister. These amazing women. And unlike weight there's no women at my house.

Will there are, but they come and they go every day.

Dad's girlfriend kinda coming and going. If you wanted, girls and women pretty women the best of the women in the world, I suppose, but Cher was like stability for you totally like what I also had big dreams like I didn't want to just be around any normal woman I wanted to be a lap around like ship. I wanted to be around with nails like that because I might come from this vantage in San Fernando Valley actually it's not valid.

Actually, Northridge and United was all these boys I three brothers and the only girl I just thought that whole girly thing was just the coolest thing I can ever I was just but finally you know my dad forced me to come home and I screamed and cried for four weeks if not months because you wanted.

I just I loved her family like I love that she had a close relationship with her mom and her sister and she was smart and funny and irreverent and bold in a time when women were still quite they were able to show their power. If you say you identify with somebody who could show a little but I don't know that, but maybe it's did you bring your friends, mainly adults when you were a kid, I had a couple of kid friends growing up. But as I've grown up with all certain. Me, I'm still friendly with a lot of the girls that I grew up with that I have a wonderful group of friends that I rely on and that are around me and that some are men and women mostly her men were married to men and – because maybe I feel that that I identify in a way with assertive blues that people who had to choose to struggle. I don't really identify with what looks like a picket fence even though that kind of in my dreams. I think cash wouldn't life be cool if I lived in a cul-de-sac and no newlyweds in. I had a perfect perfect doesn't that her husband are and things were less magnified in a bad way for bad or magnified. A good way for good. Maybe I wasn't paying on, but it is what it is for lights or don't spend much dreaming of the white picket fence and cul-de-sac correct any. The truth is we could fill our entire show talking about your life and I still have 100 unanswered questions, but if you could boil it down.

What you think people should know about your life or take away your story will certainly with regards to the rheumatoid that I had never in my whole life been faced with something that scared me as much in such a quick period of time is rheumatoid arthritis correct and you dealt with addiction divorce but rheumatoid arthritis tops them all because you're locked in your own body and you can't see it secant and I think I really look at my hands and really look at them.

He can't really see what's going on so yeah because you see you feel something happening and it feels like you are being hit by with like a hammer all night long all night long and you know what's happening is that you're being crippled and and and it needs to stop. All you going to be crippled and I started to really really panicked and go go a bit mad.

I what was happening and I am surprised myself that they usually do a lot of research about a lot of things and I didn't do any research about about rheumatoid because I haven't had a flare. I haven't had I been on the cover of RA magazine now. I thought that I could be helpful in that area, but until I really started hearing from women who would also dealt with it. It's a primarily a woman's disease. I hence why we have no cure. I think it is. I think drugs like Humira and Enbrel are lifesavers. But I do think that it is more lucrative for pharmaceutical companies to not then then it than they are to to actually get out there and get a cure for this disease and I mean when I tell you that it that the notes that I'm getting from women since I put it out there and I only put it out there three weeks ago and I've gotten thousands and thousands of messages I am saying I lost my legs to the rheumatoid arthritis in think you think you thank you for talking about it.

No one knows what how lonely this no one knows how we feel. No one house knows how much payment because you can't see it in my face. You know, unless I cry and I do a lot about, and I'm not that big of a quiet so you know I'm crying like things are bad. If I can't get the best healthcare I can't even imagine what it's like for four women in this country and that that really gets to me. If I cannot get the best healthcare in America that makes me want to fight it.

What makes one fight for further women. It makes going to fight for bit for a cure for the disease and it makes me want to fight for myself. How do you see your future. Well, I'd like to do a lot of I'd like to. I think the best years are still ahead of me had even if I am crippled like it is what it is right. Like if you have it you have. They don't have a cure yet. I haven't done my best to them, only now just starting to like figure out who I am when you are child star everyone tells you who you are. If you're not in a peer group. You don't know who you are. You don't figure out who you are into like my late 40s to even realize like a magnet person in my you know who am I like and so I think that I now know I'm a good person took a long time and I would like to be a warrior for the disease to find a cure. I would like to fight for the opportunity to do my best work which has not been done because I want to be in. I want to be the one that decides that I should be an actress like I want that choice like it wasn't. It was made for me so I want I want it to be to be for me and I know I will get it and that's the beautiful thing about acting as you can kinda keep doing it until your dad basically Jessica Tandy and all the great actors of our time what you love about acting, there is a kind of familial bond on a set that I'm sure even as you know, what you do with with your cruise and stuff that you don't find anywhere else. If the teamwork that that is from another planet really and it's so creative.

I love actors I love movies I love.

I just love it. I don't know why I just do. I think that where the most wacky bunches carnival clowns left really do you dream of winning another no no, because that's not why would I like you did me. Does that mean like you achieved to me.

For me the biggest achievement would be that I that I did the back condition that I could do that. I got the role that I really wanted and that I am self-supporting through my own contribution in the Navy and Oscar were just gravy. How about that or in any be okay to. I hadn't won me a bevy of Florida 11 how to fill out that show. I remind you to take out with preacher Gareth this week. Stephen Long live Mitch McConnell in one of Washington's biggest midterm monument list for me to races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a democratic seed.

What about if not George. George is right up there with New Hampshire's supra-New Hampshire people really just kind of don't like you have more from this week's conversation followed the take-out with major Gareth on Apple podcasts forever. You get your podcasts