Who's against her? "Oh, there are people out there." Then this comes out: "I have such guilt about being lucky that it's ridiculous. I always hate complaining about anything because if you look at this life I have, anybody else would want it. But the other day I was just sitting in a chair crying hysterically because I just felt so ugly and I didn't have a nanny and my whole life was, like, this stupid thing and I felt like nothing." And finally this comes out: "I used to think I had to prove something to other people. People are going to have this image of you anyhow. Sometimes people might forget that I'm 31. I'm 31! I wish people wouldn't categorize actors as being TV actors or feature-film actors. (Movie directors) won't see me. I'm not worth seeing because they've categorized me. And I don't think that's fair." This is it: The dark heart of Valerie Bertinelli is not about marriage to a 35-year-old rock musician who made headlines in 1990 for his battles with a drug and alcohol problem, a guy who's on the road much more than he's at home. It's not about the tab stories that have screamed about tensions between ) Bertinelli and Van Halen almost from the moment they were married in 1981. She insists, by the way, that there are none, and that she talks to her husband every day when he's on the road. "I see all these magazines about hot couples of the moment and we're never in them. So it's like, well, they're totally bored with us by now." (And maybe there are no articles because Eddie is notoriously closemouthed about the marriage; he wouldn't comment for this story.) No, the dark heart of Valerie Bertinelli is about...what the Valerie Bertinelli made-in-the-USA product is. She's a made-for-TV actress. She has not been able to break into feature films. And this stings like a rebuff and stirs up all that is shaky in a young woman.
She tried hard, harder, hardest a few years back, pushed by her longtime manager, Jack Grossbart, 43, who has shaped her career from the time she was still a sitcom princess. She made the also-ran list for The Big Chill (Meg Tilly got the role) and Footloose (the winner was Lori Singer). She made one feature in 1985, Ordinary Heroes, costarring Richard Dean Anderson. She feels rejected. "I finally decided I'm not going to prove anything to these producers. They have their own set thing in their mind. And so I'll never be in a Scorsese movie or an Oliver Stone movie because they'll never be able to picture me doing anything for them. But that's their problem." Well, clearly not only theirs. Valerie Bertinelli has hit a kind of psychic wall. How far is she willing to go for that next feature-film step? "I don't want to work right now. I told Jack that I really don't even want to think about working until after March or April." She leaps up, sits down again, folds one leg under her, and plays with a small, single diamond on a delicate chain around her neck. She had to be convinced to do Child's Name, she says; her baby was five months old and she was still breast-feeding and she didn't want to stop but she knew she'd have to in order to lose weight for the part and well, it turned out okay. She'd rather stay home and play with Wolfie, she says, although she makes noises about a possible new series with CBS. She'd rather play racquetball in her spanking-new indoor court or work out with her trainer in her ultraequipped home gym. She'd rather be less harsh on herself. Anyhow, it's time for Wolfie's dinner; his grandmother, a pleasant, smiling woman with short blond hair, pads into the kitchen carrying the baby. "Oh, I have such a gorgeous little boy!" Bertinelli coos happily as grandma puts grandson in his Sassy seat at the kitchen table. "Yes, you are. Yes, you ARE!" she burbles. The sun is setting on the hills and on the frame of the new garage-slash- guesthouse the Bertinelli-Van Halens are building to house a nanny as well as Ed's extensive automobile collection. In a couple of hours, Valerie will give the baby his bath and put him to bed. And then she'll crawl into bed herself-intending to read a few pages of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, perhaps, but probably conking out by 9 p.m. Just like any other mom in anywhere USA. Just like our Val.
