Teri Hatcher has had a long-running career that's lasted for decades, with hits shows
along the way like Lois & Clark and Desperate Housewives. Despite her successes, though,
she's had more than her fair share of struggles. This is her tragic real-life story.
In a 2006 interview with Vanity Fair, Hatcher opened up about something that she'd been
trying to hide her whole life. When she was growing up, she and her parents lived in Sunnyvale,
California, close to her aunt and her aunt's husband, Richard Hayes Stone. When Hatcher
was just five years old, Stone began abusing her. As the actress recalled,
"These are haunting things I've remembered all my life. I feel such shame, because it
felt like I was special...but at the same time you know it's wrong."
Over the next several years, the torment continued, and her parents never knew. Hatcher revealed,
"The last time I saw him, I think I was eight or nine, my mother invited them over to the
house for dinner, and I went ballistic. My mom thought that was pretty out of left field,
but that was when her instincts kicked in."
Hatcher's mother removed her from the situation, but she never asked her daughter what had
happened. As the actress told Vanity Fair,
"Nobody wanted to talk about it. All I did was blame myself. It was something I tried
to bury completely. It's why I don't associate with my mother's side of the family; in my
mind, I try to pretend they don't exist."
Hatcher eventually learned that she wasn't Stone's only victim. When he was charged with
molestation in a separate incident, she testified against him, which helped lead to him pleading
guilty and being sentenced to 14 years behind bars.
Following Stone's sentencing, Hatcher was able to push some long-standing doubts aside.
As she told Vanity Fair,
"He pleaded guilty, and even though it wasn't to my crime, it was because of my crime, and
that made me feel really validated. It made me feel that I wasn't crazy. That's a victim
thing; you ask yourself, 'Am I just crazy? Did I make all this up?' Somehow it might
be easier to accept that you're crazy and you made it all up than to admit that it happened,
and how awful it was, and how much pain you're in."
Despite giving Hatcher validation, the guilty verdict didn't entirely erase her fears, though.
When she was asked to call the prosecutor Chuck Gillingham on behalf of Vanity Fair,
the first thing she said to him was,
"Is he, is he still in jail?"
Hatcher also revealed that she still feels genuine anxiety about her abuser. As she put
it,
"I still have trouble embracing that he really is in jail, and staying there. Like the acting-fraud
police are going to come take away my SAG award and Golden Globe, and the real police
are going to come tell me I made it all up."
Hatcher's harrowing childhood experiences had a significant impact on her self-worth,
and her own family didn't always do their best to comfort her. During an appearance
on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she revealed,
"[My mom] was very self-sacrificing. But almost to a bad point. She just never took anything
good for herself, and that was kind of my role model and sort of what I ended up doing."
It was actually her mother's penchant for putting everyone else above herself that inspired
the title of Hatcher's 2006 memoir, Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life. While
discussing the title on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she noted,
"I was explaining what I do, you know, that I eat the burnt toast. I take what is last,
and I learned that from my mother."
That self-sacrificing approach didn't begin to ebb until Hatcher entered her 40s. As she
put it,
"I thought, 'I don't want to do this anymore. There has to be a balance between taking everything
for yourself or taking nothing…and in the middle is the golden buttery brown toast.'"
When it comes to her love life, Hatcher has a history of bad luck. Her first marriage
to personal trainer Marcus Leithold ended after just eight months, and her second union
wasn't much better. She met actor Jon Tenney on a blind date, they got married in 1994,
and then in 1997 they welcomed their daughter Emerson. But then in March 2003, it was reported
that Hatcher had filed for divorce after nearly nine years of marriage.
As it turned out, the separation was a long time coming. In her memoir, she called their
time together a quote, "empty marriage." She also noted that she was getting away from
a husband whom she felt was never really around. In 2005, she told The Mirror,
"I put myself through a lot of torture in struggling for so many years. I finally had
to decide that I needed to put myself first because I wasn't going to survive if I stayed."
A lack of intimacy was also a major issue in the marriage, so much so that Hatcher and
Tenney didn't even make love during their honeymoon. Furthermore, she knew exactly when
their daughter was conceived, as they had been intimate only on Valentine's Day that
year.
In the 90s, Hatcher had a great run as one half of the title duo in all four seasons
of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Then right as the show was ending its run
in 1997, she snagged another impressive role, as she was cast opposite Pierce Brosnan in
the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Unfortunately, the flick received a lukewarm critical reception,
and it turns out that filming was a less-than-extraordinary experience as well, as she and her co-star
got into a bit of a dustup. As Brosnan admitted to the Italian edition of Vanity Fair,
"I got very upset with her. She was always keeping me waiting for hours. I must admit
I let slip a few words which weren't very nice."
Brosnan later learned that the reason Hatcher was taking so long was because she was pregnant
and dealing with morning sickness.
When Teri Hatcher and Jon Tenney split in 2003, they agreed that their daughter Emerson
would live with her mother but that the two of them would share custody. Despite this
agreement, custody issues continued to plague them. In 2010, TMZ reported that the former
couple were back in court to decide who Emerson would spend the Thanksgiving and Christmas
holidays with that year. What frustrated Hatcher most of all was that, under California divorce
law, she had to split all of her marital assets with her ex.
"So getting divorced is hard."
As Hatcher wrote in her memoir,
"Worse than feeling like a failure...there was an overwhelming sense of rage at having
to pay my way out of the situation. What I thought were the best years of my life, the
most lucrative years of my life, seemed over and I had nothing to show for them."
She added,
"I had no marriage, a deeply diminished bank account, and no career."
Following several fallow years in her career after Lois & Clark ended, Hatcher finally
landed the role of a lifetime when she was cast as Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives
in 2004. But her time on the show was far from joyous. Indeed, there was a dark side
to the Housewives cast. Rumors of on-set drama were abundant and, when the cast landed on
the cover of Vanity Fair in 2005, editors were told to penalize Hatcher. An ABC representative
who accompanied the actresses to the shoot told Vanity Fair,
"Whatever you do, do not let Teri go to wardrobe first."
Hatcher was also not supposed to be placed in the middle of the photo. But she was, which
led to Marcia Cross reportedly storming off and Hatcher crying on the phone. In 2012,
show creator Marc Cherry confirmed that Nicollette Sheridan had once called Hatcher the "meanest
woman in the world. That same year, Eva Longoria proclaimed that Hatcher was, quote, "just
a loner." All this backstory would explain why Hatcher was left out of the group gift
that some of her co-stars gave crew members when the show wrapped after eight seasons.
As a production insider told Celebuzz,
"The girls don't get along with Teri so they organized this and left her out."
We're guessing that a Desperate Housewives revival probably won't be in the works any
time soon.
"Everybody's rebooting everything."
"Okay."
"I'm not the first person to say this. Why not, let's do Desperate Housewives, let's
do Lois & Clark."
In 2011, Hatcher talked with Extra about how she had been secretly dealing with a little-known
health issue that had caused her great pain. She confessed,
"I've been struggling with this thing called frozen shoulder, which is a real condition
which women get. It's basically left me pretty much not functioning with my left arm...I
can't hook a bra anymore."
The pain was so bad that she couldn't even pick up a bag. Treatment included cortisone
shots and she was even considering surgery. She told E! News,
"It's a long haul through rehab and physical therapy, but I have a great attitude...I believe
things happen for a reason and this has really helped me get better at asking for help, defining
priorities, and enjoying all the things I can do."
There's no clear cause for frozen shoulder, which is also known as adhesive capsulitis.
It's more common in women over 40, a group that now includes Hatcher.
"Adhesive capsulitis is a strange condition, because it's really common, and yet we know
very little about it."
According to the Mayo Clinic, the condition is characterized by stiffness and pain in
the shoulder joint, as well as signs and symptoms that tend to begin gradually, worsen over
time, and ultimately resolve, typically within one to three years.
In 2014, stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay penned an autobiography entitled The Filthy
Truth. Among the subjects he covered was an affair he claimed to have had with Teri Hatcher.
The pair met on the set of the 1993 romantic comedy Brain Smasher...A Love Story. According
to Clay, the two co-stars shared an "instant attraction." He wrote in his book that the
two of them got intimate with each other over the phone, which led to him visiting her hotel
room one night. Although they didn't get physical, Clay claimed,
"[Her] moans were delicious, and by the time it was over she was completely and absolutely
satisfied."
One big problem with all this was that Clay was married to someone else at the time. He
admitted to feeling guilty about their fling. But just a few days later, when Hatcher visited
his room again, they kissed, and things escalated from there. As Clay wrote,
"The lovemaking was out of this world."
The pair made a vow never to speak again and soon after, Clay found out that his wife was
pregnant.
Teri Hatcher's track record when it comes to love is far from spotless. In 2005, she
confessed to The Mirror that she hadn't been on a date in two years. She also admitted,
"I'm scared, though, because the possibility of someone breaking my heart is a risk."
And when she finally did put herself out there, that's exactly what happened. She recounted
her many dating failures in her memoir, writing,
"I never thought I'd be [over] 40 and have no one to go to dinner with, nor someone who
loves me and whom I trust, but here I am. Sad but true."
Hatcher also listed off some questionable bachelors she'd met, like the millionaire
who was in a long-term relationship with cocaine and the lawyer who offered her $50,000 to
go to a convention with him, as if she were an escort. Worse than the disappointment itself
is the fact that Hatcher tends to blame herself. In 2006, she told Vanity Fair,
"I have so much pain. This pain of feeling like it's your fault, and not knowing how
to solve the problem...that's a really familiar pattern to me in my life...There's this cycle
of not being able to give yourself a break, of constantly finding an avenue to punish
yourself."
In the end, Hatcher hopes that her example will inspire others, as she declared,
"I want to start treating myself better. And I want you to start treating yourself better,
too."
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