Living With Ed is very much home and the way we live. Everyone asks me if I’m freaked out to have my home opened up on reality TV. I guess I should be, but we’re actors. Plus my house looks bigger on TV, and that’s great! We have a very small house.
I wasn’t always a greenie, but it’s ironic that I wasn’t, because my father named me after Rachel Carson, who was really the first environmental writer in the 50s and 60s.
As the 60s and 70s progressed, I started to notice pollution. The air was terrible. For my first month of being in LA, I was sick because of the smog. Over the years the air in LA got progressively better, but only because it had hit this critical mass. I was very sensitive to it and I started saying, “This is wrong.” I just knew this was an issue.
When I moved to Hollywood from New York in the 80s, of course it was the Me Generation and the landscape was very self-involved, much as it is now. Bigger was better, more was better, bigger cars, bigger cars…big consumption all around.
At that time, the whole world was getting their careers going, and while socio-political issues like women’s rights et cetera were being talked about, the environment was way on the backburner and low on the totem pole.
I moved to Canada from LA in the early 90s, and I was very impressed with the environmental code there. Canadians were ahead of the curve. It occurred to me then how precious the world was, and I started to get into more outdoors things, like skiing and what have you.
As soon as I moved back to LA (since Toronto was just a little too cold for me), I met Ed. Well, I had known Ed before, but we reconnected at that time.
I had gone on a river rafting trip, which was very out of character for me. I just saw all these gorgeous rivers and I wanted to give back, so I volunteered at this Friends of the River event, for which Ed was the emcee.
Shortly after that Ed and I went double dating with Don Henley, who was very environmental. It was then that I realized I needed to take up the environmental cause, because without the environment, there’s nothing.
Before Ed and I fell in love, I heard Ed speak at an event in 1988 or 1989. He was talking about giving up his car, taking the bus, buying solar panels for his house and all these other things that sounded so bizarre to me. I was like, “Well, sure, you can give up your car – you’re on a series!” I just remember making all these excuses. As for solar panels, I thought ‘Yeah, we might as well live on the side of the moon.’
It’s actually just occurring to me now as I’m talking to you that Ed was one of the first people I ever heard talk on the environment. Even though I was named after an environmental writer, I had never heard anyone, not politicians, not anybody, talk about this issue.
Green Love
Ed is very funny. His passion for something outside himself is also why I fell in love with him. Ed doesn’t prosthelyze, but Ed is a man who walks his talk and he’s very obsessive. He doesn’t compromise at all. I remember when he wouldn’t get in a gas-powered car, and I’d be telling him, “Get in the car.” (laughs) He was a bit extreme, but yes, I did fall for him because of his passion.
In the past four or five years, with the Global Warming crisis that we’re in, I have become a full-fledged environmentalist, but it took a long time.
Moving In
Ed would be really happy in a teepee in a desert somewhere. It took me a while to move in with Ed, and when I did, I was sort of like, “Okay, this is your deal, and I will support you in your deal, but you’re going to have to maintain this.”
When Ed goes out of town, like he is right now, it’s up to me, and it can be a challenge. The other day we had some rain, so I had to go onto the grid, which is our regular power source, and I turned the wrong thing on and I still don’t even know the way to do it, which is sort of frustrating.
This little house was very much set up like a bachelor’s pad. It’s an old 1920s house and the closets are very small. Let’s just say it was very unattractive.
This was actually Ed’s second house. He and his wife had divorced and she kept a bigger house in Ohio. Well, Ed says it was just too big, but of course I would have loved it, because I felt like I had moved into a frat house.
I obviously had to change up the furniture. I mean, Ed literally had furniture from the 60s, and it wasn’t nice furniture, it was dorm furniture. I didn’t spend a whole lot of money, mind you, but I changed the curtains, bought shutters, reupholstered antique chairs, et cetera. It’s very eclectic. There’s a story behind every piece of furniture in the house.
The one thing that Ed has is art because a lot of his friends are very prominent California artists, so we have beautiful art in the house. I just tried to make the house a little more decorative and highlight it all.
As we’re speaking, I’m just looking around trying to figure out a better way to organize things. At the end of the day, we’re just going to have to bite the bullet and add a few square feet to the house. We have a daughter and she needs her own bathroom or a bigger closet. That’s going to be a whole episode in itself.
Coffee On The Go
One of the episodes showed Ed pedaling a stationary bike to generate the power to make me a cup of coffee. Ed doesn’t always pedal the bike to make me coffee or toast, but he could if he wanted to make a point. If Ed wanted to generate the power himself to make me coffee, it would take about 15 to 20 minutes. He does that on special occasions. It’s a party trick.
Another thing people seem to get a kick out of is the fact that we keep the Oscar over the cat box. The truth is, there really is, literally, no other place for the cat box. This house is small, I’m not kidding. One of my dreams in life is to have enough space to have a cat box that’s not visible!
Green Glamour
Environmentalism and glamour didn’t go in hand for a long time. The green movement has become chic now, and that’s fabulous. If it’s chic, it’s easier to find designers who want to work with organic materials.
Before the environment was sexy, green fashion looked like a burlap sack! And I just wasn’t willing to wear a burlap sack. It’s supply and demand. If you ask for it long enough, people will come up with the solution.
More fraught with difficulties is getting to red carpet events, to the Oscars and that kind of thing. We always go to the Oscars in an electric car, while everyone else is in limos. It would feel so weird to be in a limousine and I just couldn’t get in one now. I could be in a town car, mind you…Ed could not be in a town car, but I could.
On the bright side, there are green limousines that use bio-diesel, but that’s only recent, in the last three years.
The Hollywood Dream And A Recycled Milk Carton Fence
My Hollywood dream was always a New York Broadway dream, so needless to say, my life is very different than what I envisioned. How did I end up in LA anyway, I don’t know. I still envy on some level the people who have the house, the pool and all of that.
There’s an upcoming episode of Living With Ed where we go over to Cheryl Tiegs’ house. It’s stunningly gorgeous. It’s like a Buddhist temple, and going to her house is like going to Hawaii. Cheryl, in all sincerity, asks me, “Well, how do you guys heat your pool?” (laughs)
I just looked at her like, “Come on now.” While it’s really nice at Cheryl’s house and I envy her, I don’t have to pay her bills, which I know are astronomical. Also, there’s no guilt. I really know that I’m doing my part…and some of the other people’s parts. It’s not that big a sacrifice. It’s really not.
The Big Picture
I pray that people wake up and start making changes in their own personal lives so that we will mitigate green house gases.
Global Warming is here, it’s not a myth. We really have to look at the extreme weather patterns, which are already affecting us today.
My biggest hope is that if we start taking care of the environment, we may start taking care of each other. If everyone starts to live like we do, then maybe I won’t feel so alone.
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