Mary Steenburgen has revealed the one moment that changed her life forever, when a doctor spoke to her as she was eight years old.
The actor, known for films such as Step Brothers, Elf and The Proposal, appeared on an episode of the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, hosted by her husband and fellow actor Ted Danson.
During the episode, Steenburgen spoke about pivotal moments in her life that have shaped who she is today. The 71-year-old discussed growing up in Arkansas and spoke about her father's health and the "titanic memory" she has of one of the times he suffered from a heart attack.
Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Steenburgen for comment on Friday.
"My dad was a freight train conductor, during his working life he suffered many heart attacks, it was kind of crazy how many heart attacks," she explained.
"First one was [when I was] eight years old and one of my memories that was very, kind of, a titanic memory in my life, was a doctor saying to me, after talking to my mother in front of me and then looking at me and saying, 'You need to be a good girl, you behave, because if you don't, that could mean something very serious for your dad.'
"So basically, the little girl heard, 'Don't do anything wrong or your dad's gonna die.' In my life, psychologically, there is my first life, which is zero to eight, you know, eight years old, and then there's everything after that because in that moment, my understanding of the world as I knew it changed and my understanding of what I needed to do to keep my family alive, which was try to be perfect, even though I'm so—as you know Ted—so far from being perfect."
She added: "That was kind of what I swam in for my years."
Danson, who never met Steenburgen's father, then asked his wife to explain what he was like to the audience.
"I loved him so much, he was [a] fantastic man, very quiet, very soft-spoken, an amazing sense of humor, he didn't laugh out loud," she shared.
"If he got really tickled he silently shook and tears rolled down his cheeks. And, it was such a delicious occurrence and so contagious that I spent a lot of time trying to make that happen, you know, just trying to make him laugh.
"He was a really good person, a real man's man. It was really hard in those days; if you had a heart disease in those days they treated it in such sad ways. Like, they told him, you know, you can't hunt, you can't fish, I think they even said, 'You can't make love to your wife.' There was all this crazy shut down of a human being to protect you. Meanwhile, he knowingly had bacon and eggs every single morning."
Steenburgen said growing up, there was a lot of fear in her house, as she and her family were constantly worried about her father's health. She said things became "more and more frightening" when he continued to have multiple heart events.
"Each time that happened, I think I tried to figure out what I had done to cause that ... people need to remember to tell children that they can't stop someone from being ill, it wasn't their fault, and to be mindful of their psychological life during that time," she continued.
"No one knew, I felt like if I contorted myself enough I could save him, you know. Ironically my father died when I was 35 years old and he pretty much died from lung cancer from his chewing tobacco, that had been his choice."
Steenburgen and Danson first met in 1983, when Danson unsuccessfully auditioned to play her love interest in Cross Creek. They began dating while filming Pontiac Moon in 1993 and tied the knot on October 7, 1995.
English (US) ·