Tracey Gold

Actress

Birthday May 16, 1969

Birth Sign Taurus

Birthplace New York City, U.S.

Age 54 years old

Nationality United States

#16257 Most Popular

1969

Tracey Gold (born May 16, 1969) is an American actress and former child star known for playing Carol Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains.

1979

Tracey Gold became an actress at the age of four, first appearing in a Pepsi print ad. She appeared in two canceled series, Shirley with Shirley Jones in 1979, and Goodnight Beantown, starring Bill Bixby in 1983.

Gold was originally cast as the youngest daughter in the original pilot series of the sitcom Gimme A Break! starring Nell Carter, but was replaced by actress Lara Jill Miller when the show went to series.

1982

She played one of Albert Finney and Diane Keaton's four daughters in the feature film Shoot the Moon (1982).

1983

The actress chosen for the pilot was Elizabeth Ward, who had starred alongside Gold in The Hand-Me-Down Kid, a 1983 ABC Afterschool Special.

However, test audiences did not favor Ward in the role of Carol, and she was replaced by Gold.

1985

Gold also guest starred on her sister Missy Gold's series Benson in 1985, playing the cousin of Missy's character, Katie Gatling.

In 1985, Gold auditioned for the role of Carol Seaver on Growing Pains, but was not initially cast.

Growing Pains ran from 1985 until 1992.

During this time, Gold became a famous teen star and battled anorexia.

1988

In 1988, Gold also starred as Angela Strull in the teen film Dance 'til Dawn.

On August 9, 1988, Gold and her two sisters were the only celebrities at the funeral of murdered child-actor Judith Barsi.

Gold read A Child Of Mine (from the poet Edgar Albert Guest) as a eulogy.

After the end of the series, Gold continued to work as an actress.

Over the next decade, she starred in several television movies.

In 1988 at age 19, Gold gained some weight over the Growing Pains series hiatus.

That season, the sitcom's scripts called for her to be the brunt of jokes about her being overweight from her television brothers for many episodes in a row.

Beginning in October 1988, Gold dieted from 133 pounds to about 110 pounds on a medically supervised 500 Cal diet, but still occasionally the scripts continued to include weight-based jokes at her expense.

1989

In her autobiography, she says that between 1989 and 1991, she became increasingly obsessed with food and her weight and continued to slowly and steadily lose weight.

1990

In 1990, Gold began group therapy in an eating disorder program, but only learned more ways to lose weight.

That season, her problem with weight loss was touched upon slightly on her television series, when Gold is seen looking at her body in a carnival mirror, and describes to another character the distorted image in her head.

1991

In 1991, she started starving herself more than ever and vomiting, and lost a great amount of weight, to the point that she was admitted to a hospital in early 1992.

Her lowest weight is estimated to have been near 80 pounds.

She was suspended from the show for her skeletal appearance.

Photos of Gold's emaciated body were plastered all over tabloid magazines, and she was one of the first celebrities ever to be formally outed for anorexia.

She last appeared in the 1991 episode "Menage a Luke" after missing the two prior episodes where her problem is very obvious in some scenes, and did not return until the last two episodes of the series in the late spring of 1992, although she was not nearly recovered at this point.

2003

In 2003, Gold appeared in an episode of the TV show The Dead Zone as the character Penny Barton.

2004

Gold was a contestant on the program Celebrity Mole: Yucatán in 2004, and starred in the movie Safe Harbor in 2006.

She hosted the TV Guide Channel mini-show Trapped in TV Guide.

2008

In addition, she hosted the TLC series The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom, which debuted on March 3, 2008.

Gold appeared as the spokesperson in "Baby Sleeps Safe", a national television infomercial for Baby Guardian.

2012

On January 2, 2012, she appeared on the ABC network's reality series, Celebrity Wife Swap, trading places with singer Carnie Wilson for a week.

2013

On July 24, 2013, Gold returned to sitcoms with an appearance on the Melissa & Joey episode, "Something Happened," as one half of a lesbian couple with a home-schooled daughter.

2014

Gold starred in the first episode of Heartbreakers called "Shot Through The Heart" on ID on August 13, 2014.

She competed on and won the twenty fourth season of Worst Cooks in America, the show's seventh celebrity edition titled That's So 90s, airing in April and May 2022.

Gold said around the age of seven, she thought about dieting, having learned the word and the concept on the many television production sets she worked on as a child actress.

She became preoccupied with the television movie The Best Little Girl in the World, starring actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, about an anorexic teenager.

In her autobiography, Gold says that in an attempt to control her development into a woman, she began restricting what she ate.

When she was 11, she was diagnosed with the early stages of anorexia nervosa by her family pediatrician after a weight loss that accompanied a growth spurt.

After some counseling, she eventually returned to a more normal weight for most of her teenage years.