Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady, is the latest former child star to pen his or her memoirs and boy, does she have a story to tell! While Maureen played Marcia, a peaches and creme perfect teen on “The Brady Bunch,” it seems that real life was – well, a bit different.
Maureen’s new book “Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice,” which is hitting the bookstores today, tells a tale of sex and drugs without the rock ‘n roll. Now 52, Maureen even talks about her romance with her onscreen brother Barry Williams. She said they shared a kiss, but nothing more due to timing. She talks about dating Michael Jackson (ew) and Steve Martin as well as partying at the Playboy Mansion and having undergone two abortions. She wrote about she and Jackson going ice skating and holding hands, but his goodnight kiss was only a peck on the cheek. In 1995, she married actor Michael Cummings and a little less than four years later, their daughter Natalie was born.
Maureen says in her book that she turned to drugs after “The Brady Bunch” ended in 1974. At her lowest point, she admits to swapping sex for drugs, but finally kicked her addiction in 1985. Like the other teens on the show, she struggled to find acting jobs, which lead her to the drug use. But, she says that the drug use cost her acting jobs, citing a blown audition with Steven Spielberg for a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark because she was high.
Maureen also had a hard time dealing with her mother’s death from cancer in 2004, then being forced to put her mentally disabled brother Denny into a group home. She began eating because of the guilt and depression, but appeared on “Celebrity Fit Club” to lose the extra 30 pounds.
She found it hard to separate Maureen McCormick from Marcia Brady. She finally resolved the internal turmoil, saying she will “always be struck by how much a part of people’s lives Marcia is and always will be.”
I don’t know about you, but this one sounds like it may be a real page turner!