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Cheryl Ladd on the meaning of the film [180k WAV] or [725k QuickTime] ...on the opportunity to do the film [165k WAV] or [680k QuickTime]

August 25, 1999
Web posted at: 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT)

By Andy Culpepper
Turner Entertainment Report Senior Correspondent

In this story: Sending right message to kids Times have changed since 'Charlie's Angels' Leading fight against child abuse Preparing daughter for fame RELATED STORIES, SITES

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- She burst onto the national scene more than two decades ago as a member of that staple of '70s pop culture, "Charlie's Angels." Cheryl Ladd has come a long way since she left South Dakota to seek fame and fortune in the big city of Los Angeles.

The actress joins actors Jon Voight and Jack Warden onscreen this month in the feature film "A Dog of Flanders." In it, Ladd plays the wife of a mill owner living in Belgium more than a hundred years ago.

Ladd chatted with various members of the media recently in Los Angeles to publicize the film. Following is a transcript of my interview with her as we talked about her life, her family, and her work.

Q: Why did you want to be a part of this story?

Ladd: Truly? It was in fact an answer to prayer. I had been looking at my body of work and thinking, you know, I hadn't had the opportunity to do the kind of film that inspired me as a child to come out of South Dakota and live my dreams, and try to be the best of me that I could possibly be.

There were films when I was a child that did those kinds of things for you, that really uplifted you, and really made you believe in yourself and the world, and literally I prayed about it. And this script arrived -- thank you, Lord. You know, he does listen. I can't tell you how thrilling it was for me to read it and have the opportunity to be a part of it. I am really proud to have been a part of it.

Ladd in "A Dog of Flanders"

Q: I was talking to Jon (Voight) about the whole message involved, and for young people to realize that we all have problems. But this year, especially, with the number of young people that have turned toward violence because of the problems that they couldn't deal with.

Ladd: I think that this film is important in that sense, because look what we have been giving them. We always seem to be a bit surprised that our children are reflecting stuff that we are showing them. I don't know about you, but every movie that I saw when I was a kid, I emulated. I was Haley Mills for an entire summer and had an English accent.

And when I think about how intensely they affected me, it really makes me stop to think. What are we showing our young people? What are we showing them? No wonder they're emulating it. We have to be more careful. We have to give them something much more substantial. Much more uplifting. Much more empowering, so they don't feel that they have to have guns.

Q: I probably have known this, and I should know this, so I apologize. Are you a mother?

Ladd: I am. I have a daughter and a stepdaughter that I raised. They're grown-ups now.

Q: Hard to believe. What are your thoughts about the kind of product that is out there -- the whole rating system has come under fire recently. It seems like if it's sex, it gets an NC-17. If it's violence, nobody blinks.

Ladd: Right. I think we're all reevaluating all of that. I think that they're for a reason and I think they have to be enforced. I think if we just protect our children better -- not just put a stamp on it and say that it's all taken care of, but really in fact enforce those things and really let our children be children. 'Cause when you're a child, it's where your character is formed. It's where your belief system of good and bad, and the kind of person you decide you're going to be as an adult person is formed in those innocent years, in those years where you take time to learn about the world and decide who you're going to be in it.

Ladd in one of her most memorable roles in "Charlie's Angels"

Q: You know, this is potentially an offensive question, so I'm going to tell you that right now. If you say, "Charlie's Angels," and somebody says, do an impersonation -- if you were playing charades. Somebody might go, "Freeze!" (gestures with hands together as if holding a gun) and this would be a gun. When you were doing those episodes, the national debate wasn't what it is now.

Ladd: Well, I think it was a very different time. They were very clear who the good guys were and the bad guys were. We were grown up Girl Scouts. We may have worn the most modern clothes that were out there at the time. But we were, if you look back at what "Charlie's Angels" was, it was "Gunsmoke." It was very ... the good guys upholding the good things. And there was no gray. We were good girls. We were doing the right thing, and the bad guys paid the price and had to take responsibility for those choices they made.

That's not what we have now. We have heroes solving their problems, mowing people down with automatic weapons. And as soon as you turn it that half of degree, little people, particularly -- not grown-ups -- little people get very confused. Who do I want to be? How do I solve my problems? So, yes, Charlie's Angels had guns, but those guns ... I don't know if you saw very many "Charlie's Angels" episodes, but they were very rarely fired, also. We almost never fired them. We pulled them, said "freeze" a lot. "You okay Kelly?" That was the dialogue, but nobody fired a gun very often.

Q: That's true. I mean, in hindsight you're right. As a prop.

Ladd: It was more of a prop. And the power of the women was that they were doing something good for the society. They were taking care of the bad guys. As unrealistic as the whole premise, perhaps, was: us against karate-chopping people who outweighed us by 250 pounds. The moral of the story was very sound.

Q: You said "doing good" for people. When I walked in here, you mentioned a children's firm. Is that something you've been working with?

Ladd: Yes. "Child Help USA."

Q: Tell me about that.

Ladd: It's the largest non-profit organization fighting child abuse in this country. I've been working with them since 1979. And it's just been such an amazing transition over this 20 years now.

In the beginning, when I did "When She Was Bad," and I played a child abuser on television, there were no films about child abuse. Even the news weren't really reporting it. They were just beginning to report what an epidemic it was in our country. And now the fact that we have so much knowledge and there are places now for people to get help. And we would be making a whole lot more headway if the drug situation and the alcohol situation in our country were being battled in a more realistic -- in a perhaps more successful way.

Q: You mean parents who can't deal with their problems are taking it out on their kids?

Ladd: Yes. And in general, if they were sober, they would think before they struck. I think drugs and alcohol are hugely impacting the child abuse situation. Because the knowledge about child abuse is out there. The education's out there. There are people who do not want to abuse their children, who find themselves doing things they don't want to do, because they are under the influence of something that is controlling them. And that's a big problem in our country. 'Cause we have made headway in the education of what child abuse is.

Q: We go back to the movie ("A Dog of Flanders"), and you see adults in this film that are nasty. And you think, "didn't somebody hug them enough? Didn't they get the right kind of treatment?"

Ladd: I think that discipline is so much of an important part of being a parent. Because it's very, very important to teach your children to take responsibility for their actions. And somewhere in the whole fabric of what that means, we've lost a clear understanding of what that is. Being able to discipline your child and say, "You will not continue this behavior. You will pay a price if you do," and I don't mean you strike them or beat them or anything, but you make sure your children understand from a very young age that there are consequences for their actions. And then you hug them and love them and make them feel that you couldn't live on this planet without them.

And if they have both of those things, they're going to grow up and be people that we want to lead our country. And that we want to take care of us in our old age. And we've been missing the boat.

Q: Oh, that's a good point. I just thought of something someone told me a week ago when I was preparing for this interview and someone said to me that your ex-husband, and I may get this wrong, and you may not even know this.

Ladd: Oh, I know.

Q: You know? That your ex-husband was in (another previous version of "A Dog of Flanders").

Ladd: Yes. David Ladd, who is my ex-husband, my daughter's father, was Nello in the 1959 version of "A Dog In Flanders," and I am now in the 1999 version, and maybe our daughter, Jordan, who is really freaked out by the whole thing, thinks it's really fabulous. Maybe someday she'll be doing a version of "A Dog of Flanders."

Q: And how old is she?

Ladd: She's in her early 20s. She was just in Drew Barrymore's movie...

Q: You can't have a child who's in her 20s.

Ladd: Oh, yes, I can. And I'm just crazy about her. And a stepdaughter in her early 20s, also. So, I raised two girls.

Q: So, she's acting as well?

Ladd: Yes. She was in Drew's movie, "Never Been Kissed."

Q: Oh! I saw that.

Ladd: She was the tiny little adorable brunette.

Q: Well you must be awfully proud.

Ladd: Can you tell?

Q: Well, yeah, just a little bit. But tell me something. Weren't you -- this is not an easy business for anybody. But for a mom who's been in the business, to see her daughter getting into it, what kind of trepidations where you going through?

Ladd: Well, I have to tell you that I would probably be more surprised that Jordan wouldn't choose to be in the business with her grandfather being Alan Ladd. Everybody in her family was somehow was in the business. It's kind of a family business. I think it would -- it's kind of like somebody coming from a generation of doctors, who decides not to be a doctor. I think people find that unusual. So, for Jordan to be in the business, she certainly had a clearer understanding of what the business was about than I did, coming from South Dakota.

Q: Did anything prepare you for being plucked from obscurity to overnight stardom?

Ladd: (Laughs) I always like that "overnight stardom" comment...

Q: But it's true.

Ladd: ...because I was six or seven years' overnight success of studying and acting and doing bit parts, and smaller parts, and better parts, and you know, sort of more leading parts in television.

Q: But it is overnight, though, from going to being a working artist to being "your face on every cover."

Ladd: That was bizarre. No one prepares you for that. That's pretty overwhelming stuff when that happens, that big, that kind of overnight. 'Cause two days before it was announced that I was doing "Charlie's Angels," nobody cared what I ate, how I exercised, what I washed my hair with, and what I felt about anything. Nobody cared. And all of a sudden, everybody thought all those things were interesting.

Q: So what has mom told daughter about those kinds of things to avoid -- to avoid the barbs that come with that sort of thing?

Ladd: Oh, I think that she's seen a lot of it firsthand, so I don't have to tell her too much. But I do, through example and conversation, talk to her about, "You better love the doing of it" because I haven't lost ... the enthusiasm of being an actress and the process of acting, and being with actors, and reading scripts and getting excited about that whole process. I love it, as if I just started.

But the other aspects of the business side of our business can be extremely difficult. It can be otherworldly sometimes. And you really have to keep your head on straight and really focus what you're doing it for. What is it?

Q: Now, this film, when it comes out is going to have people of all ages seeing it, and everyone's going to take away something different, depending upon where you fit in that food chain of child, or adult, teen-ager. What do you hope overall that people get out of this film or leave the theater thinking about?

Ladd: Well, I think really that the message of the film is the value of human life, of dreams, ... I think it reconnects us all to that little spark that we have in us that connects to God and the universe. That's very powerful. It reminds us how powerful it is.

"A Dog of Flanders" is slated for nationwide release on August 27.

"A Dog of Flanders" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company Warner Bros. Movies, a Time-Warner property.