Tracey Gold is an American actress and former child star best known for playing
Carol Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains. In early 2009, she co-hosted with
Fred Roggin on the live show GSN Live. Early life
Gold was born Tracey Claire Fisher in New York City. Her younger sister is
fellow actress Missy Gold, who appeared on the TV series Benson from 1979 to
1986; their mother, Bonnie Fisher, was an advertising executive.
The name "Gold" is a shortened form of the name acquired by Tracey and Missy
when they were adopted by Harry Goldstein, who married her mother when
Tracey was a preschooler; an actor in his own right, he later became a
Hollywood agent. Missy and Tracey have three younger sisters, Brandy, Jessica,
and Cassandra Gold. Both Brandy and Jessie are actresses.
Acting career Gold has been an actress since the age
of four, first appearing in a Pepsi print ad. She appeared in two canceled
series, Shirley with Shirley Jones in 1979, and Goodnight Beantown, starring
Bill Bixby in 1983. Gold was originally cast as the youngest daughter in the
original pilot series of the show Gimme A Break! starring Nell Carter, but was
replaced by actress Lara Jill Miller when the show went to series. She played
one of Albert Finney and Diane Keaton's four daughters in the 1982 feature film
Shoot the Moon. Gold also guest starred on her sister Missy's series Benson in
1985, playing the cousin of Missy's character, Katie Gatling.
In 1985, Gold auditioned for the role of Carol Seaver on Growing Pains, but was
not initially cast. The actress chosen for the pilot was Elizabeth Ward, who
had starred alongside Gold in The Hand-Me-Down Kid, a 1983 ABC Afterschool
Special. However, test audiences did not favor Ward in the role of Carol, and she
was promptly replaced by Gold. Growing Pains ran from 1985 until 1992. During
this time, Gold became a famous teen star and battled anorexia. In 1988, Gold
also starred as Angela Strull in the teen film Dance 'til Dawn.
After the end of the long-running series, Gold continued to work as an
actress. Over the next decade, Gold starred in several television movies.
Battle with anorexia Gold is also famous for her highly
publicized battle with anorexia nervosa, which almost killed her. From about the
age seven, she says that she thought about dieting, having learned the word
and the concept on the many television sets she worked on as a very busy child
actress. She became preoccupied with the television movie The Best Little Girl in
the World, starring actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, about an anorexic teenager.
In her autobiography, Gold says that in an attempt to control her development
into a woman, she began restricting what she ate. When she was 11, she was
diagnosed with the early stages of anorexia by her family pediatrician
after a weight loss that accompanied a growth spurt. After some counseling, she
eventually returned to a more normal weight for most of her teenage years. In
1988 at age 19, Gold gained some weight over the Growing Pains series hiatus.
That season, the show's scripts called for her to be the brunt of fat jokes
from her television brothers for many episodes in a row.
Beginning in October 1988, Gold dieted from 133 pounds to about 110 pounds on a
medically supervised 500-calorie-a-day diet, but still occasionally the scripts
included fat jokes at her expense. In her autobiography, she says that between
1989 and 1991, she became increasingly obsessed with food and her weight and
continued to slowly and steadily lose weight. In 1990 Gold began group therapy
in an eating disorder program, but only learned more ways to lose weight. That
season, her problem with weight loss was touched upon slightly on her television
series, when Gold is seen looking at her body in a carnival mirror, and describes
to another character the distorted image in her head. In 1991, she started
starving herself more than ever and vomiting, and lost a massive amount of
weight, to the point that she was admitted to a hospital in early 1992.
Her lowest weight is estimated to have been near 80 pounds. She was suspended
from the show for her skeletal appearance. Photos of Gold's emaciated
body were plastered all over tabloid magazines, and she was one of the first
celebrities ever to be formally outed for anorexia. She last appeared in the
1991 episode, "Menage a Luke" after missing the two prior episodes where her
problem is very obvious in some scenes, and did not return until the last two
shows of the series in the late spring of 1992, although she was not nearly
recovered at this point. After a several year struggle, Gold
eventually recovered, and starred in the 1994 TV movie For the Love of Nancy with
Jill Clayburgh. The film explored a young woman's battle with anorexia and
its effects on her family. Although she was warned of the possibility that she
had done damage to her reproductive organs by the years of anorexia, Gold
was later able to bear four children. As she entered her thirties, she maintained
a normal weight for a woman her age, and often held speaking engagements warning
young women about the dangers of eating disorders, all the while continuing work
as an actress. Personal life and post-Growing Pains
Gold met her husband Roby Marshall through Growing Pains costar Joanna
Kerns, who portrayed Marshall's mother in the TV miniseries adaptation of the
1989 true crime book Blind Faith by Joe McGinniss. Roby had served as a
consultant on the miniseries, which dramatized the 1984 case in which his
father, Toms River, New Jersey businessman Robert O. Marshall, was
charged with the contract killing of his wife Maria.
Gold and Marshall married on October 8, 1994, and have four sons: Sage Gold,
Bailey Vincent, Aiden Michael, and Dylan Christopher.
In 2003, Gold wrote the book Room to Grow: An Appetite for Life with Julie
McCarron. = Arrest=
In 2004, Gold was arrested for drunk driving after rolling her SUV—carrying
her husband and three young boys—down a California freeway embankment.
Gold was arrested by California Highway Patrol officers and charged with a
felony count of driving under the influence causing injury. According to a
CHP spokesman, Gold was driving a 2001 GMC Yukon on Route 118 on September 3
when she lost control of the vehicle. While Gold's husband and two of her sons
were not seriously injured in the late-night crash, the actress's oldest
child, 7-year-old Sage, suffered a broken clavicle and a head laceration.
After CHP officers administered sobriety tests, Gold was arrested on the DUI
charge, said CHP spokesman Steve Reid. Booked under her married name, Tracey
Gold Marshall, she spent five hours in the Ventura lockup before being released
on $50,000 bail. = Present day=
In 2003, Gold appeared in an episode of the TV show The Dead Zone as the
character Penny Barton. Gold was a contestant on the program Celebrity Mole
2: Yucatán in 2004, and starred in the movie Safe Harbor in 2006. She is
currently hosting the TV Guide Channel mini-show Trapped in TV Guide. In
addition, she is the host of the TLC series The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom,
which debuted on March 3, 2008. Recently, Gold appeared as the
spokesperson in "Baby Sleeps Safe", a national television infomercial for Baby
Guardian. On January 2, 2012, she appeared on the ABC network's reality
series, Celebrity Wife Swap, trading places with singer Carnie Wilson for a
week. On July 24, 2013, Gold returned to sitcoms with an appearance on the
Melissa & Joey episode, "Something Happened," as one half of a lesbian
couple with a home-schooled daughter. Gold starred in the first episode of
"Heartbreakers" called "Shot Through The Heart" on ID on August 13, 2014.
Filmography References
External links Tracey Gold at the Internet Movie
Database