Mia Farrow on The Rosie O'Donnell Show 1997

our first guest has chronicled the often amazing events of her life in the best-selling book what falls away the world knows her from her roles in tv's peyton place and the classic films the great gatsby great great husband the great gatsby thank you and the extremely terrifying so scary i didn't even see the whole thing rosemary's baby take a look [Music] what have you done to it what have you done to its eyes he has his father's eyes what are you talking about guy's eyes are normal what have you done to him you maniac satan is his father nut guy nia pharaoh [Music] [Music] how are you i'm good thank you great to see you great to be here you know i have never seen the whole rosemary's baby you coward i know i'm a little bit of a chicken maybe when you're older you think so did you know that i saw burnt offerings once with remember did you see that betty dance no i never saw that one it's a really bad horror film and i had nightmares for years i can't watch him either no i haven't watched the exorcist i can't i never saw it either i didn't even see jaws yeah i didn't see jaws you didn't see jokes no no we don't see the same scary movie this is a wonderful book thank you so much for saying those things but it's the truth i read this book and i called nora ephron my friend who was also a brilliant writer and we were speaking of how wonderfully well you write you write lyrically thank you so much no you wrote the whole thing yourself yes i did sat down in a room with a pen to paper yeah for four and a half years though oh really yeah it took me that long but i was doing other things i did four movies and i have a lot of kids as you know yes i know so it was busy yeah i got it done and i'm glad you like it the part that amazed me was the early part of your life growing up in beverly hills as like a rich privileged kid it's sort of a side of the world that you never really get to see or understand what it feels like tell everyone about how the tour buses would come by gosh well we lived on beverly drive which is right in the center of beverly hills and the tour buses would come and they'd point out all the movie stars houses and my mother was maureen o'sullivan a famous movie star she was jane in the in the tarzan movies jane uh tarzan so the buses would come up and they'd point out our house and we were ready for them and we had bottles of ketchup hidden under the rhododendron bushes and we had little rubber daggers and stuff and we'd just splatter each other with blood and we'd stab each other with our rubber daggers and howl and roll around on the ground and just give them the best show we knew how to do that's what we did and amazing like stories about these hollywood legends like john wayne when you were a little girl yeah you remember him i went to the studio to visit my father and he made a lot of westerns including hondo with john wayne some other john wayne movies too but there was a little dusty town and the swinging saloon doors and it was mesmerizing you know pretty ladies with their hair all done powdering their noses and i knew not to say a word you know because on a set that's the thing you do you keep quiet i was about three and i saw john wayne the tallest man i'd ever seen and he came up and said how do you do you know and he put me on the tallest chair that ever existed his great big chair and then he got a little bored you know i was three and he forgot about me and he walks down the dusty road to his horse and i'm up on the highest chair and i have a little dress on and my little underpants you know and i was always aware when anybody picked me up that maybe my underpants would show that's a big thing when you're little not a thong not a song thank goodness right that's all we need you got to be careful with thongs anyway so i was careful with my underpants and i you know i was always careful when anyone picked me up to pull my dress down but i knew that i couldn't get off this high high chair so even when i had to go to the bathroom more than i could tell you so i remember that just agonizingly sitting on this high high chair and not able to get down till finally i didn't couldn't see anybody my mother and i didn't see a familiar face somebody remembered me but like hours later you're stuck stranded by john wayne on the set yeah no what i didn't know about you as a little child you had polio i did when i was nine i had polio i think we have a photo of your dad taking you out of the hospital right there there i am yeah dad little girl and how long were you in the hospital um i think it was about six weeks yeah no i don't think it was that long i think it was more like two two i don't really remember maybe two two three and in the book you talk about how it's so panicked your whole family and your mom and the scrubbing that went down of all the furniture you can't you know those days you know mercifully they have the sock vaccine which came right after my polio my whole class had to have these first experimental series of shots so of course they hated me for years um and when i got back from the hospital they had rolled up the rugs taken uh all the furniture out of the house they had torn up the lawns they had drained the swimming pool they had taken all the wallpaper off off the walls and they were repainting the whole house because they didn't know how it was transmitted gave away the dog oh it was very there are parts of this book that are so moving here's i'm going to read this little quote although see this word plused i don't know is that how you say it yes pelucid i never heard of that word i had to look it up you're smarter than me but this is very touching about after your father died and you went back to the house and i think it really shows some of the the beauty of the of the sentence structure that you have in here somewhere between birth and death inside one thank you moment i stepped outside dread at imaginings the fist of anger and guilt unclenched and i lay down clear as glass on the bed where my father had died so touching it really got me that when you went back to the house and ann southern who you all know anne's southern famous tv actress had moved into your family's home yeah and encouraged that it took to go into that room yes i i was staying with her while i was doing the pilot for this peyton place thing and it was the one room nobody went into she i don't my father had died in that room so like no one would go in there and last of all me until the day before i was scheduled to leave and go back to my mom in new york and then i went in the room and had this major experience of a sort of a spiritual um experience and and it's so beautifully captured in in that chapter it really is more with mia farrow and her book what falls away which i seriously encourage you to buy and read after this break we'll be right back [Applause] [Music] still ahead one of country music's biggest stars randy travis [Applause] how much butter does it take for mouth-watering mashed potatoes none use swanson broth instead rich golden swanson chicken broth adds loads of flavor and it's 99 fat free put in swanson broth instead of butter for delicious mashed potatoes that are light fluffy and low in fat and now swanson broth also comes in a resealable carton so adding flavor without adding fats a snap recipe after recipe swanson broth when all you want to add is flavor how to tell sos from brillo even if you're from another planet just pull on it like this if it comes apart it's brillo if it doesn't it's sos got a tough mess get sos this tuesday at gnc gold card members save 20 on everything you can join at general nutrition centers then once a month get 20 off vitamins minerals sports nutrition and everything else in the store see you this tuesday [Music] [Music] ask your veterinarian for advantage advantage don't give fleas a fighting jacks shaw's supermarkets is here at the grand canyon to introduce new shaman triple roll so how long is it shaw's supermarkets knows it's three times longer than a single roll three times longer that's over a hundred feet longer than a double roll no other bath tissue lasts longer and is so soft it's a great combination of softness and length get new charm and triple roll from shaw's supermarkets it's three times longer and it still fits [Music] taxi lady oh hi i'm in i've got to go to school serve us with a smile drive you straight to the door it's it's out of your way yeah made in your way is my way didn't you know that [Music] ryan o'hail and you how about that peyton place how old were you when you started that show 18 you were 18 years old that beautiful long hair yeah one day what did you do in the dressing room and i took a pair of scissors and cut it to about half an inch and i put it in a glad bag now you didn't tell the producers or the writers i knew they wouldn't let me because it had become like an ingredient in the show and that's why i thought it had to go and also i was getting a little vain about it you know so i thought that wasn't healthy but look at that picture of your hair look how beautiful you look right there i thought it looked alright and they made such a fuss there was such a howl the producers got angry and they ran in with wigs and you know they made me cry and they said i had responsibilities and i wasn't meeting them and then all the press there must have been nothing going on in the world that day because as people talking about it i couldn't believe it to this day you brought it up what's in the book well i had felt it i felt it was it had become an issue yeah it's an important point now were you with frank sinatra at that point no yeah i was i was so people said i did it because i was mad at him or something like that but he loved it and i kept it that way for years because he was crazy about it the very touching the your relationship with him in this book and i loved him i still love him yeah you're still close friends yeah i'm nuts about him yeah he's great here's a sentence that you wrote about frank that i loved as well although the armies of his heart and mind did frequent battle and left him isolated and restless in matters of conscious and human hope they were one again impressed with your writing ability mia pharaoh it is very the beautiful that you encountered with him the level of fame unbelievable in the press following you on boats when you went up to visit the kennedy family and that's right we took this boat trip up the coast and they thought uh one of the kennedy women pat lawford was jackie kennedy but even before that it was crazy you couldn't see the water for the boats right and people were very upset about the age difference between the two of you yeah and that wasn't a big issue you know that wasn't the problem well you know it later became a big issue for us i guess but you know i don't know what that that was i don't know why people got so upset i guess because he had the swinging image and i was as you saw on tv people thought i was even younger than 18 because i think i was playing about 16. right well you did look awfully young you talked about the fame by becoming famous i have bombed the very bridges i needed most to cross the gulf to connect with other people isn't that in the end what redeems us i find that to be so true right for myself as well it's very hard when you become famous people don't really treat you like you're a normal person and you lose touch with your humanity in a lot of ways particularly if you're shy and immature you know it's hard enough anyway if you have those ingredients but then if you're famous and people present themselves to you a certain way and have a preconception of what you are and i couldn't get through to people you know i didn't have any sense of who i was after a while i was really lost and i thought it was irrevocable and i didn't have the strength i was so shocked to go back to college i plan to go to college period right because i couldn't be out in public by myself at that point i was quite lost one of the wonderful parts of this book is talking about all your children and i think the people who uh have an issue with the fact that you have so many uh should read the book because i think it isn't explained concisely and clearly and uh with such meaning about all i think it's wonderful i think i know you don't like to be held up as a hero for that but i i'm inspired by the fact that you have all these beautiful wonderful rainbow uh collection of children i think it's an amazing thing i really do [Applause] it's it's a real blessing for me i i don't know why people would have an issue with that why would they i think it's because i'm an actor really don't you think i mean if it was a regular person doing it well it's true whenever they have like on 60 minutes of those shows you know people who uh adopt many children everyone applauds them i think you're right maybe because you're nobody in our business has done this right that i know of i'd say any reason i can think of i mean why shouldn't i spend my life doing this i i've only done one film a year and that's you know from either three to nine weeks of my of my time and even then i bring the little kids right so that's what i do with my day i don't know why it's incomprehensible to some people and i haven't met all of your children but the ones i've met are so aren't they great full of life and fun and well adjusted it's really a beautiful thing i i uh i think you're great i really do and i love the book and i uh i hope that everyone goes out and buys it what falls away is the name of the book mia pharaoh's life story and what a wonderful oops life story it is thank you for being here mia farah we'll be right back after this break

Channel: Looking Back 3000

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Id: 3cvAdIlz9lA

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021