Meg Tilly can't help but laugh when people suggest that her new career as a novelist is some sort of desperate attempt to finagle her way back into the spotlight.
The former Hollywood actress — who is now releasing a second book called Gemma — is still best known for her Oscar-nominated role in 1985 as the young nun in Agnes of God. Yet, she looks back on her acting career with a shudder.
How bad was it? Well, it may have been a cakewalk compared to her childhood, when she experienced repeated physical and sexual abuse at the hands of several family members, including her stepfather. Still, says Tilly, who now, at 46, has begun speaking publicly about the grim circumstances of her youth that inspire her writing, "being a celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be."
As a rising star with a troubled past to hide, Tilly found life in the limelight often intolerable.
She recalls the time she was in the hospital, about to give birth to her daughter, when an excited nurse barged into the room wanting to know what it was like to work with William Hurt (in The Big Chill).
Then there was the sleazy producer who suggested she come back to his apartment to convince him she could imbue the role of school teacher with sufficient sexual tension. ("I was nursing at the time," she recalls incredulously.) Or the "gross" male co-star who refused to wear a sock over his "full-on boner" and tried to slip it in during a sex scene.
And all the crazed fans, some of whom continue to stalk her more than a decade after she packed in her public life and moved to rural British Columbia where she continues to happily live the life of a self-described hermit with her husband, Don, and 16-year-old son, Will, the youngest of three children.
"I wouldn't wish fame on my worst enemy," Tilly says with a sigh on the eve of her North American book tour, which kicked off with a reading last week in Toronto.
"Well, it might not be such a bad fate for Hazen," she adds, referring to the child molester in her new novel. The repulsive character is named after her mother's former boyfriend, one of many men who sexually molested Tilly as a child.
"This book is a big middle finger hoisted in the air to all those guys," she says with a triumphant grin and buoyancy of spirit that are as heart-warming to witness as they are hard to fathom, considering the wretched experiences of her youth.
Tilly was born in California, but spent most of her childhood growing up in an impoverished farm house on Texada Island, off British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, where the family sometimes shot squirrels for dinner. She was the third of four children born to Patricia Tilly, a teacher, and Harry Chan, a car salesman. She was 3 when her parents divorced and her mother began dating John Ward, a child molester who eventually became her stepfather.
Ward left her mother when Tilly was 13, but was soon replaced by another abusive boyfriend, Hazen. She says he was just as much a monster, one who often threatened to kill everyone with a butcher's knife. All three men are now dead.
These men, and others that Tilly declines to name, were the inspiration for Gemma, a stomach-churning tale about a young girl who is kidnapped by a sexual predator. Like Singing Songs, her first novel published in 1994, the story is semi-autobiographical, although some characters and situations have been changed.
"Gemma had it way worse than me," says Tilly, who is so full of energy and eager to tell her story that she barely pauses to pick at the croque monsieur sandwich on her plate.
"No one ever threw me in the trunk of a car," she continues. "And at least I had my brothers and sisters. But the sexual abuse is similar to what I endured. Her emotions are definitely mine."
Tilly wasn't always so anxious to talk about her past. Her first novel was presented as being entirely fictitious, snatched from roles she had performed and books she had read.
"I was scared to admit the truth — that this dirty, little scrappy kid could have been me, Meg Tilly, the movie star," she writes in the new introduction to Singing Songs, which was rereleased this week to coincide with the second book.
"Well, I'm older now, hopefully wiser, braver, still scared, but that's okay," the introduction continues. "With this new edition of Singing Songs, I feel that it is important for me to claim my connection to these stories, for myself, and others who have had a past like mine. Because if we continue to hide, to play the pristine, perfect, everything's-a-picnic soundtrack, we do the world a disservice."
Tilly decided she would eventually come clean with the truth about her childhood soon after the first press tour for Singing Songs. The reviews had been widely mixed. The New York Times, for instance, called it "a book of considerable quality," while a critic for Entertainment Weekly magazine said he wanted to pick up the book and "throw it across the room."
Tilly vividly recalls squirming in her chair while a television interviewer read her snippets from some of the more damning reviews that accused her of writing "kiddy porn" and mused about the type of "sick mind" that could make up such excruciatingly graphic scenarios.
"I was sitting there, live on television, thinking to myself, 'But I didn't make it up,' " she says, looking casual and relaxed in faded jeans and cowboy boots.
"And after that, I felt totally abandoned for a long time. There was only one person in my family who strongly supported me.
"That's changed," she quickly adds. "I think we've all grown older and moved on. Now, it's very different. My sisters aren't about to come on tour with me, but they're supportive."
Becky, her younger sister, has recently corroborated her stories of abuse. "I share the same memories," she told People magazine. "Our mother's boyfriend was fiendish. My stepfather was a horrific individual."
Their older sister Jennifer, also an actress, hasn't said anything publicly, but Tilly says she stands behind her. "Jenny said to me, 'I love you Mary Lou. Do what you have to do,' " Tilly explains with a sanguine smile.
Tilly's mother, however, still refuses to talk to her about the books she has written. "I love my mom enormously. I don't think she ever meant to mess up. She's done many wonderful things and we wouldn't be nearly as creative as we are if it weren't for her.
"I do help her out financially," she goes on, almost apologetically. "And I write to her. But I needed to tell the truth about my life. She has her reality and her truth, and it's just as valid. But I can't live in her reality any more. It doesn't mean I don't love and respect her, I just can't do that any more."
Gemma, the new novel, is written from two points of view — the young girl and her molester. Assuming the voice of a morally unrepentant pedophile, says Tilly, was one of the hardest things she's ever done.
"Now I'm really glad I did it," she says, and adds she was encouraged to do so by her writing-group instructor.
"I hope it will help other people understand how the mind of a pedophile works. The average pedophile is going to abuse between 30 and 60 children before they're caught by the police — and up to 380 children in their lifetime," she says, plucking American statistics out of the air with the authority of someone who has done a lot of research on the subject.
"And they're four times more likely to offend than any other violent criminal. So obviously throwing them in jail isn't doing the trick. They need therapy," says Tilly, who has self-published this second book and will be donating half the proceeds to organizations that serve children who are abused.
"A lot of people who feel the need to dominate and violate in that way are trying to seize back power because of damage that was done to themselves as children. I hope that maybe by hearing their story alongside Gemma's, they'll remember the damage inside themselves and maybe they'll seek help," she says optimistically.
But mostly, Tilly says, this story was written for women like Gemma and herself.
"It's for girls like me who were abused and think they have to stay where they started. You don't. You don't have to end up in prison, you don't have to stay on the street, you don't have to end up addicted to crystal meth. That's letting them win. You can make your way out of it. You can. You can build a life, have dreams and go after them. So what if you fail? At least you tried. And on your way there, you might end up somewhere you never thought you'd be."
Meg Tilly's book tour continues Nov. 16 in Winnipeg, Nov. 20 in Saskatoon, Nov. 21 in Edmonton, and ends in Calgary on Nov. 22.
Alexandra Gill