I remember their faces, their eyeballs getting really big and said, can you do it again? But angry or? Watching people talk about you in a sort of outward way. You become the avatar of what's spooky. We go in, we talk to Billy and he's like, what are your questions and I sig what for me? I don't know how to levitate. I was the most famous person in the world, and they wanted a piece of that. They had lines. It was a hot mess. So there's really no plan on a future career in the arts? I don't know. It's animals and animals. You know, the little bit is surprise.. And then I'm going to tell you something that is really important that I need to public to know. Linda, thank you for being here. You honor me with your presence. I'm so excited to talk to you. Well, vice versa. We're going to go way back. Okay. Yes, we are. Because I started here. How does one become a child model? That's what I want to know. So in around 1966, I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. My family moved up to Connecticut when I was two. So New York is very close. There was an article in Time or Life magazine talking about children modeling and incarnations. Now there were few kids that were maybe doing Broadway or you had your child actors in California, but this was something, oh, you know, like a model. So mom found an agent and got the pictures done. Her name was Dorothy Lohman. And we just started. Do you have interviews? It's about six. And you remember this? Oh yeah. I mean, some of it is through photos that you can remember. Sure. But then I booked my first commercial, which is Downey Fabric Softener. OK. And I had to learn how to jump rope. And all the kids are outside planting in the snow. And mom would be like, then you have to come in and learn how to jump rope, jump rope. So it was in like a line, out like a lamb. And then there was a child jumping rope. I don't know, Billy, you tell me. But that was my first commercial. And then you book another one. So whether it was ivory soap, I did about six of those. Did golden smustered,by's Better Vegetables with Tony Randall. I did all the doll commercial. So a lot of stuff is starting to appear on YouTube now. So Tubzy was a doll splash, splash, Tubzy in a bath. Little girl, hey, I was the high-high-d girl, you push her button and her hair would grow. I think because there was only about six of us really working that you're hired because you become a professional. Sure. Use your hand this way. Yeah. Pick up the doll this way. I see. Move over here. You get a rep basically as well. I think that's what because I did over 75 commercials. Yeah. Um, surely Temple in her great book, her memoir, she talks about being very conscious of what she was in control of and she just said, I knew what I was doing and I was very good at it even though I was a little girl. Mm-hmm. Were you conscious of that at that time time sort of being and not in control, but like knowing, okay, these people need this for me and... Yes, that part, yes. And there's two, three things that come to mind. Number one, it wasn't necessarily something that I was interested to do. I had always told mom and you can go back over every interview since I came, you know, to the public's attention that I talk about, that I wanted to be a doctor to the animals. And mom would always tell me you wanted to be a doctor to the animals. So obviously, we knew that was a veterinarian. We don't know where it came from, but all my money was put away. So your drive, your drive was, this is going to go towards my future education. It was a carrot. So you're, okay, so it wasn't I want to be famous or I want to be pretty, you're anything like that. Yeah, I don't know. And I still don't want to be famous. However, that was the carrot. And then I could save my and We'd a lot of cats the cats so the animals were what kept me the companionship Through if I was lonely I went to public school in Connecticut and So I'd great friends and they were used to me working mom like, you leave the work in New York. We don't talk about it, we don't anything to your friends to anybody. And we never did. The kids were used to seeing me, but they knew that I wasn't thinking about that. So let's do our gymnastics routine. My brother was a sailor, so it was a long Island town so junior sailing champion. So I was brought aboard for ballast. So I didn't learn how to sail. I danced, ballet, I, but horses were my main thing. My cats kept me sane. So when I was feeling lonely, Billy, the cats were the ones that were always there for me. So a lot of people, because of the dog rest, we were everything that I do for animal welfare, to be, but Linda, what about the cats? I'm like, huh? Cats raised me. So I am truly there in heart, but it is really hard to do it all. And so the intent is to keep growing and to include cats and firm animals. But that we had chickens, we had bunny rabbits, and I lived in with wildlife because Connecticut is such. You could see the deer. Raccoon would come up, possum would come up. My parents were very compassionate people. So they taught compassion to the squirrels and the blue jays. And I grew up just loving that serenity and calm and peace, which is very hard for many people to find is that calm and nature brings that for me and animals. So, so there's really no plan on a future career in the arts. Hell no. It's animals and animals. Right. Okay. So at some point you do start transitioning into acting though. It was that just an extension of the same. Because you had to be for an exercise. You did a couple notable. There was a movie. The recording club. I was 10 years old and they hired me. We went to Arkansas and mom and I on days off were going through, they called Arkansas Diamond, which is, I don't know, you dig through and find these. Oh, that's right. They have this kind of Diamond field or Crystal Fields. Yeah, exactly. So things like that you always try to keep me occupied books. I lived in books. So now to stage mom in any sense of the word? No, not at all. Good lady, Mr. Terrible. But did you have an interest in acting? You. So the first movie, they take me down to the makeup room. And I'm sitting there and the lady comes behind me, the hairdresser and she goes, oh, we're going to have to cut off. My hair was probably halfway down my back. Like my hair was really important to me as a kid. I don't know. It's like I wanted to be a princess, but I was a tomboy. So I knew I was gonna have to cut your hair and I turned around, I turned my head around and I said, oh hell no. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry, you can't. And it was a whole big taboo. They got mom and she said, no, you can use a wig but but you don't cut my daughter's hair. And so I have a flip to match the mom. I don't know what the movie is about. Do I care? No. Said then the next movie was the way we live now. And funny now, if somebody brought me a poster recently and it said starring Joanna Miles and I'm like, wait, what? Joanna Miles was later in my movie, Born in a Set. Oh. Because my editor campaign I might just even know

Oh, we got a guarantee she never knew I didn't

So it's about a divorce couple and

They took me to the zoo Billy

You know where this is going. Okay. I see where this is going and they have us in with the elephants. Chain to the cement. And as a person that is extremely feeling emotional, I get, I can read a lot of information. So you're in there with one and a half year limit, elephant or two? Yeah. And it changed my life. Tell me how? Because the message and the chain and the lack of freedom and the not necessary habitat of just cement. Where's life? Yeah. Then they thought they were doing me a favor and they took me back to see some lying c and they were in this cement in the like the circus cages and it's the old Bronx zoo and I mean the pain, Billy the pain and seeing and knowing that this wasn't right. So years later I fought, I was one of the people that fought really, really hard to break open the zoos to make them more you know, for conservation. And in natural habitat. So people, yes, we need the kids to learn. But show them in their natural habitat. But to be chained up is for varic and it's painful and what a lot of people don't realize. It's just the elephant trade, the rhino trade, all of this and why we are working so hard to stop all of that in Africa. So you have no future in your mind as an actress. You don't necessarily want to be in the arts and then here comes this movie, which you're talking about. I'm talking about it. And I don't want to dwell on it too much. But

600 kids were up for the role. At least that's the truth. And what is the truth? So really, I'll never know, is it PR or whatever? We know they started in California. And as Billy Freak and and the director said. The problem was everybody was already, you know,

the tone. and his Billy Freak and the director said, the problem was everybody was already, a child after it. Yeah, and he said that wasn't what I was looking for. So then they did Chicago and went to New York. So I had just told mom that I wanted to stop acting. I wanted to stop the commercials and I'm like, because it's 13 and definitely way ahead of myself as far as I knew my friends were all getting ready for college like my brain was somewhere else at animals and I said I really don't want to do this anymore. She's like okay the interview with Billy literally came up within two weeks. If it had been a month to my sleep, it wouldn't have been me. I wanted out. So we go in, I read for Juliet Taylor. So you have to go and read, you know, for casting characters. So I read for Juliet Taylor, I remember going in very well. And, you know, you're standing there they're sitting over there and you have some dialogue. And it's pretty filthy, but not what's in the movie. And I remember, you know, and I remember their faces, their eyeballs getting really, you know, big and said, can you do it again, but angry or?

I could tell they were really excited. Thank you so much.

When down, I never told my mother anything about anything.

Was there a reason for that?

Yeah, I kept it very internal.

I think I really didn't want to work.

I don't very internal. I think because I really didn't want to work. Okay. I didn't like it. So it was like, yeah, I don't want to share it. Shouldn't that. I mean, should be, are you okay? How did it go? Yeah, of course. Yeah. But I wasn't forthcoming at all. So then the next meeting is with Billy Freakham. And I really don't remember that particular first meeting. It's the second meeting where he brought mom in and said, now, I want you both to go home. I need you to read the book. So we did. And as a 13 year old, you're reading, okay, I don't understand all of this. I'm Protestant. So I wasn't raised Catholic. So it didn't mean anything to me. And I didn't understand the language. And I didn't understand this. And what I'm reading is I'm not trained to jump up and down off the bed. I'm not trained to levitate. I'm not trained to turn my head around. Seriously Billy, when kids are young, they don't understand things and people forget this. And so I don't know what mom thought You never said a word we go in we talk to Billy and and he's like what are your questions? And I said well for me I Don't know how to Yeah, he's, honey, those are called special effects. I still don't have a clue what you're going to do. Don't you worry about that. Yeah. Do you have any other question? No. So I don't know what the conversation with mom was. Just because I know it's not a sequence because, but I'm curious. You said your mom didn't say anything after she read the book, but later when she found out, like what you were gonna be asked to do, did they ever become a problem with your mother or she was okay with it? Billy. Billy and Billy, master manipulator. And that's a part for years I have kept a lot. Well, what is a what is a director, but a master manipulator, right? And that's where some some are more by the book. I do. They are. Yeah. But the people, those that are highly intellectual and creative and have divisions and what they put together, It's not different than what you're doing as an artist. You're receiving information and you're asking for that information. So you're asking musically, you know, it's like Mozart. The stuff is flooding in and you have that as well, not gift. And then you've got the performance. Sure. And you created your character, what you wanted. So a director has to create the whole set. They division the film, the tone, the look, and then you get into your DP. So sometimes you're going to have, you know, you'll hear what's more granular, it's more grainy, it's more clear and precise. Their production and that whole world of entertainment, whether it's film television or music, it's a production. And so constantly He goes, Billyy when I say he was a master manipulator and all the things that I've kept secret for all the years, which I am putting in my book. I needed time. I needed to be let go by the puppeteer and that's how I felt about him. So he had a way, whatever the conversations with him and mom, she always talked about him like a son. So he had his own thing with her. You know, you're fine and your daughter's fine and everything's good. But what do for you yeah so there's that setting so it my mind my mind goes in two different directions uh not that it's possible but in a fun way if it's the right word can you can you can you looking back because obviously the movie went on to be a, can you appreciate the tone that he was after setting aside your own experience and your family's experience with it? Do you see it in any extant way where you can say, I kind of understood why he was ruthless and what he was after? Does that resonate at all or no Billy was Driven from his childhood. He was a visionary He knew what he was attracted to he wanted to push the limits He felt he could break open the walls and there were many walls to break open That's the thing that when I tell people that I come from black and white television, I come from the capes over the head to take a picture and you took 30 minutes before you could, you know, take your photo. I come from that time. So I have watched people forget how new television and film is. So he is part of that process where he wouldn't buy into. He started. he's one of the first with the action.

Going away, if you watch old movies,

old cowboy movies or gangster movies, and you think of it, everybody, you see the black and white, you know, the cars and then, you know, and then the car goes, you know, then there's different directions, or they're being in the right and the horses through the, you know, he was a master of action. And so he's like, no, I'm going to bring live action.

So when he did the French no, I'm going to bring

live action. So when he did the French connection, it's well known. I mean, he pushed the limit. That was like some live, unpermitted, crazy driving through the streets of Chicago. And he pushed the limit in every way on that. So he now there's a whole new world that's opened up and he receives the Academy Award. So it's like, well, what does he do next? So again, he's pushing. He's pushing inside. So he was gonna take, as he said, he needed a normal healthy child. Everybody kept thinking Reagan was sick. And that's what he tells me. He told me was everybody was presenting more of a sickly looking like, yes. And he said, you come in the door and you look like Cinderella. Yes, the contrast. And so because I was the Cinderella girl, Cinderella has a ball. It was a children's clothing line. And so he said to take that and turn that image into something that was is so misunderstood and feared. That's what he knew. So now going the opposite way, do you view with the hindsight of time? Do you view what he did in using you as a child in that particular role? Do you view it as exploitative? Because I think it's pretty clear that that movie couldn't get made now the way it was made to that. No, we couldn't. There's no way. So the first step that he took was, he took the set to New York and it was a closed set. So nobody's allowed in. No one. So no LA gossip. No, really. They didn't, they weren't allowed to see, oh, Daly's. They weren't privy to anything. He kept everything very top secret and you couldn't do that today. Especially not out here in a labor shooting. So a lot of the child labor laws and things came from children paying their dues. You know, you've got all of the little little rascals, those stories were terrible. You've got your Judy Garland, you've got just all the child stars and my performance. I am known to say I've been very vocal, don't ever do a ton of the child. Okay, well, I think that kind of answers the question. I appreciate that. And I will write more about it, Billy. I mean, that's what the book is for. That's my retirement. That's my gift to the animals. That's my gift to the world is to tell the truth about what really happened. Yeah. Where everybody else gets so excited about it. And that's been hard for me through the years to live with my pain and what I endured.

But everybody else's joy and I get it. So I just go along with it.

Without it because I'm not asking for details if you don't want to give him here, but

was it as simple as waiting for William Friedkin and not beyond this planet anymore or is there like

what what is kept you from telling that story? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Um, I don't want to belabor it because you know, when I said, or Malcolm McDowell sat in the chair, you know, we we we jokingly talked about how we you know, he's asked about clockwork orange every day of his life into infinity. So I try not to do that to you. Everybody else does it to us. Billy, why stuff? I guess my goal as someone is honored with being able to sit down with someone like yourself is to just shed something fresh or just something. Try to illuminate a different part of the process. I'm more interested in the emotional part of the journey. I think most people, because I've obviously been interviewed a thousand times, they tend to focus on they want stories, they want anecdotes, you know, I mean, I'm more interested in I can so I sure please the difference is when we do press and that's what the public doesn't really necessarily realize so they get our depressed release and then you have your different people and they're going to push, try to push an envelope with your billiard, try to get you to do this. They're given one minute, they're given five minutes, they're given whatever it's a check. And we all know what our job is. It's part of the business, it's what they read, whether it's truthful or not in tabloids and articles and in interviews. I've certainly seen many interviews with you. I know what you're referring to, and they want to know about your band members, and they want to know why you make these choices, and they want to know how hard it was for you to write the music. So what you were going through, why did you do this? I know, but the public doesn't understand. This, what you bring to your table, why you were doing this is your curiosity and intellect that you wanna know, what is the other side, what's the real people? What are the stories and what are the connections? See, I know you, Billy. God bless. So the one question I do have about that time, and my only way I can relate to it is when I feel like people are asking about the same thing over and over and over again, it almost becomes surrealistic because you find yourself thinking about one particular day or one particular period of time. It's like looking at the same photo and if you look at a thousand times you start to see something behind the tree or something and then you start thinking, it was actually something behind the tree or am I imagining that? Oh, the Billy, that's you. That does not mean no, but maybe I guess because I mean I was asking my one question. Because hindsight is always 2020, but you know, 14 year old you on this close set, you know, mouthing these obscene lines, you're in a supernatural thriller. But you're just your kid, you're 14 years old. Like, what's your general memory of the ambiance of your, of, of, of, did you have fun, do, were people nice to you? I mean, just what's your emotional memory at the time without knowing what happened afterwards or what came of it? Good, good and bad. So, first off, the next episode, I was not hired right out. We had to make up tests. Had to do acting. So it was almost probably once a week meeting with Billy and he had me acting out the lines, acting out the lines. Give me more, give me more, give me more. He had it so I was just so programmed for what, whether I liked it or

not. And I did not enjoy it. Just get it over with, just do what they say. And this is the problem with child abuse is do what they say, do what they say. Do you look back now and think, why didn't I walk away or why didn't I say, I don't want to do it or. There's no getting out as a child. I see. That's the whole thing. My goal in the nursing campaign is children and animals are born innocent, but now enter abuse. I see. Okay. So, now we do the makeup test. And these are certain things that I've talked about. It's in nothing that's new, but certainly interesting for audiences. Way back in the day, Dick Smith was the, you know, revered makeup artist and he had done, you know, creature, the black lagoon. Oh, I know, oh man. Oh yeah, he's the guy is like the Wolfman transitions and yeah. So all of these heads Likenesses, you know are up on the on the this basement wall all the makeup stuff and everything and So the first thing they had to do was cast my head Then they cast my body now. What did that entail? Okay? So we are going to put a skull cap on and then we're going to stick two straws up your nose. Yeah, and then you plaster it up. And then we're going to put the plaster. Yeah. And we're here, breath through the straws and So there's nothing like sitting there and the whole world just goes black. And you're trying not to wig out. So that's the first one. Then you're done and done. And then you have all these facial expressions that I had to do. Then later they had to cast the whole body in the position to make. It's a lot for a child too. A little girl with men, how long? Think of it. That's, it's very hard and he was very, very honorable and respectful, but I don't care. It's still a young girl with men. I see. So we start the makeup test and it's a full mask. and Billy Freakin says, oh hell no. You wouldn't know. It could be anybody. I have to know it's her. I need you to cut away the mask, but still give me the same imagery that I need. So that's how Dick started making the prosthetics and prosthetics and prosthetics and prosthetics and prosthetics. And then they took away eyebrows, no eyebrows, blah, blah, blah. And then they put the dry, they took, the wigs weren't looking right, so they took dry shampoo and put that hair shampoo made it dry in my hair. And so the discomfort from the glue alone and on a young girl's face. So it was people forget 1973. That was the original glue. And then now we're doing eye drops in order, the numbing drops in order to use contacts to change the eyes to the green. And so that just that alone was very abusive and very, very uncomfortable every day. So your overall memory to summarize my question was not unpleasant. Okay. I was hoping there was some happiness in there. The happiness was that I they always made sure you know I got to see my animals on the weekend. Billy did buy me a horse which would make sense now that you hear all the horrible stories that was his gift and that meant a lot to me. But, but no, it was just get me out of here. I was very unhappy, Billy. I'm sorry to hear that. Two things I'm going to ask you to put them in the order that makes most of the most sense. Over here, you win a golden globe, best supporting, you're nominated for an Academy Award, and over here is the sort of controversy that followed the film came out. So in your mind which came first? Controversy. Okay. Did you feel somewhat disassociative from it? It's kind of like why did not my movie I didn't write the script I just I'm

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