Barton’s tragic tale of teen stardom
WASHINGTON POST: Mischa Barton had one goal when she sat down for an hour-long interview on Dr. Phil this week.
“I was excited to sit down with you and clear up a lot of things that have been out there for a long time. A lot of stuff has become very public about me recently. I think over the years, I’ve probably tried to control it ... that’s been close to impossible to continue doing at this point,” she told Dr Phil. “I want people to hear it from my mouth.”
Barton, the 31-year-old former child actress who shot to stardom on Fox’s teen drama The O.C. in 2003, has been in the news recently following a frightening episode in January – she was filmed by a neighbour as she hung off her fence of her West Hollywood home, yelling incoherently, until she was taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation.
When she was released, Barton said someone had slipped the GHB drug into her drink earlier that night. Then, last month, she hired a lawyer after the Daily Mail reported that a sex tape featuring her was being shopped around to various pornography sites.
In the last decade since Barton’s character was killed off The O.C., she has made frequent headlines, but not for her work. There were reports of excessive alcohol and drug use; a drink driving arrest; a lawsuit against her mother/manager; and a much-publicised hospital visit in 2009, where she was kept under involuntary psychiatric observation when she threatened suicide.
Now, Barton said, she wants to set the record straight about her life – though the Dr. Phil episode mostly served as a sad, frightening reminder of the dangers of becoming famous at a young age.
As Dr Phil noted, Barton was immediately deemed the “it girl” when she landed the role of Marissa Cooper on The O.C., but that came with a lot of pressure. The tabloids criticised her weight and chronicled her time partying with pals such as Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie. As the youngest cast member (she was 18 when the show debuted, as opposed to her 20-something cast-mates), she felt the glare of the spotlight more than anyone.
Her frenzied lifestyle led to a breakdown in 2009. As she told Dr Phil, she had barely any time off between acting and advertising jobs. Then her team wanted her to star in a new TV show (CW’s The Beautiful Life), she said, so they gave her prescription pills to help with exhaustion and anxiety.
However, Barton said, eventually her agents and parents became concerned about whether she was ready to star in another series, and they forced her to go to the hospital. Once there, she threatened suicide.
She told Dr Phil that she wasn’t really suicidal: “I just didn’t want to be there. I didn’t think it was fair.”
“Were there people medicating you to keep you working?” he asked.
“Yes. Everybody was very concerned that I wasn’t ready to jump back into a whole new show.
“And there was a lot of pressure to do right by the show and to helm a new series,” Barton said, adding that they gave her Xanax and other medication that were “not appropriate” for a 23 year old.
“Again, I hate to disappoint. It’s my least favourite thing. And I was very young... but an entire team of people felt that they knew best for me at that time.”
Dr Phil got angry. “That’s treating you like a commodity,” he said. “That p***** me off. They got a smorgasbord of pills here: ‘She’s anxious so let’s give her this, she’s down so let’s give her this. Just keep her working, keep her up there, keep her cranking’ ... and then you get criticised.”
“I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about me over the years,” Barton agreed. “That’s what I’m wanting to keep clear here,” Dr Phil said. “They’re drugging you to keep you vertical.”
Even years later, when she has been out of the Hollywood spotlight (save for some small movies and a brief stint on Dancing With the Stars), Barton still struggles with the perils of fame. For example, during the incident in January where she was drugged. Her neighbour recognised her and instead of calling for help, filmed her and sold the footage. And a friend who was with Barton at the house was too scared to call 911, since she feared it would inevitably wind up in the tabloids. “She was afraid to do that with me being who I am,” Barton said. “She was nervous and hesitated.”
Plus, Barton told Dr Phil that
she thinks she was specifically targeted by the man who filmed her having sex and is currently shopping the footage for $500 000 (R6.88m) ; they had been dating for several weeks at the time, and she trusted him. Now, she believes it was a con.
“People have a way of finding you. They can work their way into your lives if they really have an evil purpose like this ... you can be manipulated in so many different ways,” Barton said.
At the moment, she’s focused on working with her lawyer and the police to block the sale of the tape – and she’s speaking up as a way to empower other women to
do the same if they find themselves in a similar situation. And when Dr Phil asked her to name the biggest misconception about her, she reiterated that despite the fact that people know her from when she was a famous teenager, she’s not actually the character she played on The O.C.
“People really confused the character with the person and maybe because of all the fame around that time ... one of the biggest misconceptions that I’m a spoiled rich girl,” she said.
“People find it convenient, they attach you to one thing. And people think I’m crazy. That’s another good one.”