Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith has opened up about living with what she describes as an “unusual” form of OCD since she was 12 years old.
The 80-year-old actress discusses her experience with obsessive compulsive disorder in her new book, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, which was released on September 8. Smith traces the onset of her anxiety to the death of her uncle.
“It’s really an unusual form of OCD,” Smith told this week’s issue of People. “It all revolved around loved ones and prayer and sacrifice and manifesting. It just eased my anxiety and my nerves on the people I love so much, and I didn’t want to lose them.”
After her uncle died from the effects of alcoholism at 54, Smith began praying compulsively in an effort to protect her other family members.
In her memoir, Smith recalled that the stress produced physical symptoms, including a missed period. A doctor told her that her hormones were “all messed up” and said she “might have trouble having a child.”
“On a purely human level, it felt cruel to tell an anxious, grieving adolescent girl that she could be infertile,” she wrote. “He was the doctor, so I believed him, and my anxiety doubled instantly.”
Charlie’s Angels alum Jaclyn Smith, 80, revealed in her new book that she has lived with an “unusual” form of OCD; seen September 9 in New York City
She began dealing with the disorder after her uncle died at age 54, when Smith was just 12
Smith, who famously played Kelly Garrett on the iconic Charlie’s Angels series, gave up alcohol herself. Years later, while studying psychology in college, she came to understand what she was experiencing.
“It’s not fun being diagnosed (or self-diagnosing) with a psychiatric disorder, but at the same time I felt relieved,” she writes in the book. “There was a name for it, and I wasn’t alone!”
Smith did become a mother when she was with her third husband, cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, 84.
With Gaston, 44, and Spencer-Margaret, 40, in her life, she calls motherhood the ‘best part of my life.’
‘You just want to catch every raindrop, but I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that you can’t control everything,’ Smith says. ‘You just can’t.’
Also in her memoir, Smith alleged her ex-husband Roger Davis had an affair with their real estate agent.
Speaking with People, Smith said she believed that she and Davis were ‘a match made in heaven’ after initially crossing paths at a casting call in 1968.
‘It’s really an unusual form of OCD,’ Smith told People. ‘It all revolved around loved ones and prayer and sacrifice and manifesting. It just eased my anxiety and my nerves on the people I love so much, and I didn’t want to lose them’; Seen in a Charlie’s Angels promotional shot
She had been told she might not be able to have children, but she went on to have two kids with her third husband, cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond; Seen in 1989
With Gaston, 44, and Spencer-Margaret, 40, in her life, she calls motherhood the ‘best part of my life’
She said of her connection with Davis, ‘We both didn’t drink, we loved architecture, we both were actors, we were both from the South, we liked the same food.’
‘We liked everything the same, but boy, did I have a lot to learn.’
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The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Smith for further comment on the story.
Smith, who was married to Davis, 87, from 1968 until 1975, wrote in her memoir that in the incident involving the realtor, she had lunch with a friend in New York City and wanted to show her friend an apartment that she and Davis had been ‘on the verge of renting.’
Smith wrote, ‘After we settled the bill, I said, “Let’s go up. I’ll show it to you.”‘
The actress said that en route to the apartment, she and her friend ran into Hollywood icon Warren Beatty, who she called ‘the leading man at the time.’
Beatty had asked Smith if she would have wanted to work on an upcoming project, the actress wrote, telling her, ‘You know, I’d like you to come in for an interview. I’m doing a new film and might have a part for you.’
Smith wrote in her book that Davis then ‘appeared as if from nowhere and approached our little group’ and told Beatty that she ‘only does commercials.’
According to Smith, the reveal involving the real estate agent, whose name was Laura, occurred after Laura’s spouse had propositioned her.
When she said no, he then told her that Davis and his wife had an affair, Smith wrote, adding that the news was confirmed by Laura herself after she asked her directly.
(L-R) Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett seen in a promotional Charlie’s Angels photo
Smith said in the book, ‘I couldn’t imagine how two people I trusted could have betrayed me, and for so long.’
‘Laura was telling me to my face what she’d done, but I still couldn’t believe it.’
She said that the real estate agent told her, ‘Remember the day you ran into Warren Beatty outside the apartment, and Roger suddenly appeared on the street out front? He’d been upstairs in the apartment having sex with me.’
Smith wrote that Davis denied the infidelity, claiming that Laura was ‘just jealous’ of her.
Speaking with People, Smith said that the reveal marked the moment she knew their relationship was doomed.
‘I mean, I was pretty naive and in love with love, but there’s a line,’ she told the publication. ‘When the paint starts to peel, get out, because it doesn’t change.’
In the book, she said that she essentially lived in a state of ‘denial’ in trying to keep the marriage together.
‘Denial, I discovered, can be seductive,’ she wrote. ‘At that moment, blind belief was easier than truth. And some truths must be seen to be believed. My options were to leave Roger then, after only two years of marriage, and feel humiliated by my own naïveté, or to give the man I loved the benefit of the doubt and hope I’d made the right decision.’
Smith wrote that she ‘chose the latter,’ though she and Davis would divorce years later.
The actress has been wed to husband Brad Allen, 72, for more than 28 years.