From Times Online
October 14, 2008
Marcia Marcia Marcia!Brady Bunch star 'traded drugs for sex'(Everett Collection/Rex Features)
The wholesome Marcia Brady - her antics off-screen were adult-rated
James Bone in New York
A former child star who was once America’s TV sweetheart has confessed that she became a cocaine addict and traded sex for drugs.
Maureen McCormick played the eldest daughter Marcia on “The Brady Bunchâ€, the long-running sit-com about the clean-cut, “blended†family of a “man named Brady†with three sons and a “lovely lady†with three daughters.
The TV show, which aired from 1969 to 1974, became a cultural phenomenon that spawned several sequel series as well as two feature films, three made-for-TV movies, and a touring stage show.
But in a tell-all memoir published yesterday, McCormick says her life became the polar opposite of the wholesome world of Marcia Brady. “I had played Marcia Brady for five years. But I wasn’t her in any way, shape or form. She was perfect. I was anything but that,†McCormick writes.
The book, entitled “Here’s the Story,†is the latest episode of revelations about the TV family after the disclosure that Bob Reed, the actor who played the on-screen father, was a closeted gay who later contracted AIDS.
In her book, McCormick, now 52, recounts that she got deeper and deeper into Hollywood’s drug scene - even after a powerful producer threatened to stop her working in Tinseltown ever again.