Jaclyn Smith, best known for playing Kelly Garrett on Charlie's Angels, has revealed she has suffered from an "unusual" form of obsessive-compulsive disorder since she was 12 years old. The 80-year-old actress disclosed the condition in her new memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, released on September 8.
"It's really an unusual form of OCD," Smith told People magazine. "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."
Smith said the condition began after her uncle died from the effects of alcoholism at age 54, when she was just 12. She began obsessively praying in an effort to keep her other relatives safe.
In the memoir, Smith wrote that the stress "showed itself in physical symptoms, including a missed period," and that a doctor told her she "might have trouble having a child" because her hormones were "all messed up."
"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."
From Self-Diagnosis to Motherhood
Smith, who swore off alcohol herself, wrote that she began to understand what was happening to her while she was a psychology student in college.
"It's not fun being diagnosed (or self-diagnosing) with a psychiatric disorder, but at the same time I felt relieved," she wrote. "There was a name for it, and I wasn't alone!"
Despite the doctor's warning, Smith went on to become a mother while married to her third husband, cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, 84. She has two children, Gaston, 44, and Spencer-Margaret, 40, and 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 said. "You just can't."
Affair Allegation Against Ex-Husband Roger Davis
Elsewhere in the memoir, Smith alleged that her ex-husband, actor Roger Davis, 87, had an affair with the real estate agent who was helping the couple find an apartment. Smith and Davis, who first met at a casting call in 1968, were married from 1968 to 1975.
Smith told People she initially believed she and Davis were "a match made in heaven." "We both didn't drink, we loved architecture, we both were actors, we were both from the South, we liked the same food," she said. "We liked everything the same, but boy, did I have a lot to learn."
In the book, Smith described having lunch with a friend in New York City and deciding to show her an apartment that she and Davis had been "on the verge of renting." "After we settled the bill, I said, 'Let's go up. I'll show it to you,'" she wrote.
On the way, Smith wrote, she and her friend ran into Warren Beatty, whom she described as "the leading man at the time." Beatty asked 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 that Davis then "appeared as if from nowhere," approached the group and told Beatty that she "only does commercials."
How the Affair Came to Light
According to Smith, the affair came to light after the real estate agent's husband propositioned her. When she turned him down, he told her that Davis and his wife, Laura, had been having an affair. Smith wrote that the claim was later confirmed by Laura herself, after Smith asked her directly.
"I couldn't imagine how two people I trusted could have betrayed me, and for so long," Smith wrote. "Laura was telling me to my face what she'd done, but I still couldn't believe it."
Smith recounted Laura telling 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 affair, claiming Laura was "just jealous" of her.
The End of the Marriage
Smith told People the revelation was the moment she knew the marriage was doomed. "I mean, I was pretty naive and in love with love, but there's a line," she said. "When the paint starts to peel, get out, because it doesn't change."
She wrote that she nonetheless lived in a state of "denial" as she tried 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 naivete, 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 eventually divorced. She has since been married to her husband, Brad Allen, 72, for more than 28 years.
