PASADENA, Calif. — If Valerie Bertinelli hasn't been much in the tabloids of late, it's because — with the exception of her husband Eddie Van Halen's battle with cancer — she hasn't given the gossip sheets much to write about. A TV star since the age of 15, the 41-year-old former "One Day at a Time" star is one of those ex-child actors who didn't go bad and, thus, hasn't made news.
"Yeah, you don't hear the good stories," Bertinelli said. "You don't hear — she's been married 20 years and she's not a drug addict and she's never been in jail. And she's boring."
Well, not boring. But not the sort with a lot of secrets that make for a good episode of "The E! True Hollywood Story."
Twenty years ago, few in the celebrity press expected her marriage to Van Halen to last. And, for a few years, there was a steady stream of stories about how the union was on the edge of collapse.
"It is strange to have someone judge you on your life when they're not a part of your life," Bertinelli said. "And it's still strange to me, to this day. I'll see things on the Internet and people are judging me by what they assume my life is. And it's remarkable, actually."
And the speculation isn't just about major things like the state of her marriage or her alleged inability to have children. (Years worth of stories about her infertility were false — she was actually trying not to get pregnant for nearly a decade until she and Van Halen decided it was time for them to become parents.)
"I've been criticized for my hairstyle, because I haven't changed it for 20 years," she said, although she has changed it several times and has recently gone back to her more familiar look. She was, after all, a blonde for a while — including when she produced the 1996 miniseries "Night Sins" in Utah.
"At that time, it was, like 'Oh my gosh, why are you blond?' Now it's, like, 'Oh my gosh, why don't you change your hair?' " she said. "It's like, OK, just leave me alone. Just let me be me."
She does, however, anticipate that the tabloids might try to create some sort of rivalry between her and her "Touched" co-star, Roma Downey.
"Oh, you can guarantee that," she said. "Two women on the same show? Of course there will be.
"The first week I was on the show, Roma and I assumed there would be a story in the Star or one of those terrible magazines about us. No — they did it about Della (Reese) and me."
Apparently, one of the tabloids was calling around, working on a story suggesting that she and Reese were not getting along, and that Reese was unhappy about Bertinelli's son, Wolfie, being on the set.
"Excuse me, but she gave Wolfie the biggest hug," Bertinelli said. "And she is the best hugger in the world."
Bertinelli said what bothered her about the whole incident was the effect it had on Reese.
"It hurt me that it hurt her. I was going to laugh it off. It was me the story was going to make look bad," she said. "And she was very hurt and I don't like it when people have to be hurtful with lies. (It) drives me crazy.
"Thankfully, they got it killed because none of it was true."
Despite the pitfalls of celebrity, Bertinelli isn't complaining. She doesn't necessarily want her son following in either her or Van Halen's footsteps, but she wouldn't discourage him, either. And she said she's seen Wolfie display some talent in his school plays.
"Well, all the kids get to be in the school play, whether they want it or not," she said. "But, you know, he just started to come out of his shell this year. I noticed two years ago when he did his lines in the show it was sort of monotone and this year he was emoting and I was in shock watching him. He's blooming before my eyes."
And he's almost as old as she was when she first started acting professionally.
"I wasn't much older than him — I was 11," Bertinelli said. "It's frightening to think that I would have asked my mother if I could do this. I can't imagine him asking me to do this."
She said she wouldn't actually encourage him to become an actor, but — if he wanted — she would "let him explore. But with big, big safety nets around him. It's so hard on your self esteem and your self worth."