Teri Hatcher’s acting career started with her appearance on The Love Boat during the eighties. In 1993 she leading role on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
In 2001 her acting career came back to life when she was cast as Susan on Desperate Housewives.
That particular role landed her an Emmy nomination, two Golden Globe noms (and a win for Best Actress in 2005), as well as a SAG award for Best Actress.
Apparently she was earning a whopping $300k per episode.
However Hatcher set things straight saying, “I don’t make anywhere near the reported $285,000 an episode, and never have.” In 2020, she was worth $50 million, despite her success, she faced challenging experiences.
Read about Teri Hatchers tragic real-life story.
Her uncle abused her as a child. Teri Hatcher opened up in an interview with Vanity Fair about “something [she’s] tried to hide [her] whole life,”
Hatcher revealed when she was only five her uncle, began abusing her. “These are haunting things I’ve remembered all my life,” she said of the memories, revealing, “I feel such shame, because it felt like I was special […] but at the same time you know it’s wrong.”
Her parents had no idea this continued for years. “The last time I saw him — I think I was eight or nine — my mother invited them over to the house for dinner, and I went ballistic,” Hatcher recalls.
“My mom thought that was pretty out of left field, but that was when her instincts kicked in.” Although her mother “removed [her] from the situation,” she didn’t ask what had happened.
“Nobody wanted to talk about it,” Hatcher explains, while adding, “All I did was blame myself. It was something I tried to bury completely,” she continued, “It’s why I don’t associate with my mother’s side of the family; in my mind, I try to pretend they don’t exist.”
Teri Hatcher was forced to face her fears .
Teri Hatcher was shocked to discover that she wasn’t her uncle’s only victim. During a garage sale at her childhood home her mother approached her. “[She] handed me these newspaper clippings, like she’s handing me grocery coupons, and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I found these.‘ ”
Hatcher learned from the paper clipping that Stone had been “arrested and charged with three counts of sexual molestation” after a 14-year-old girl who lived in the area took her own life in 2002. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Hatcher admitted. “I kind of freaked out. It struck me so strongly that — oh my god, he’s been doing this for 35 years!”
Teri Hatcher’s childhood traumas continue to haunt her.
Following Richard Hayes Stone’s sentencing, Terri tell us “He pleaded guilty, and even though it wasn’t to my crime, it was because of my crime — and that made me feel really validated. It made me feel that I wasn’t crazy,” she continued.
“That’s a victim thing; you ask yourself, ‘Am I just crazy? Did I make all this up?’ Somehow it might be easier to accept that you’re crazy and you made it all up than to admit that it happened, and how awful it was, and how much pain you’re in,” she explained.
His guilty verdict didn’t remove her fears. When Hatcher was asked to call prosecutor Chuck Gillingham the first thing she said to him was, “Is he — is he still in jail?”
Hatcher continues to feel anxious about her abuser. “I still have trouble embracing that he really is in jail, and staying there,” she confessed. “Like the acting-fraud police are going to come take away my SAG award and Golden Globe, and the real police are going to come tell me I made it all up.”
Did her mother contribute to her low self-esteem?
Teri Hatcher’s childhood experiences had a huge impact on her self-worth, but feels her mother also negatively impacted her self-esteem. “[My mom] was very self-sacrificing,” she revealed. “But almost to a bad point. She just never took anything good for herself, and that was kind of my role model and sort of what I ended up doing,” she noted.
It was actually her mother that inspired the title of Hatcher’s memoir, Burnt Toastas she reveals how the title was picked, she said, “I was explaining what I do, you know, that I eat the burnt toast. I take what is last, and I learned that from my mother.”
Once Hatcher entered her 40s that self-sacrificing approach began “I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said. “There has to be a balance between taking everything for yourself or taking nothing.”
A marriage without intimacy.
Teri hasn’t had much luck in love. Her first marriage to personal trainer Markus Leithold ended after just eight months. In 1994 she married actor Jon Tenney after they met on a blind date. Teri gave birth to their daughter Emerson in 1994.
Hatcher filed for divorce after nearly nine years of marriage, which was long overdue as it was an “empty marriage,” Hatcher wrote in her memoir, Burnt Toast, that she was getting “away from a husband who I felt was never around anyway.” She revealed, “I put myself through a lot of torture in struggling for so many years.”
Their lack of intimacy was a major issue, she knows “exactly when Emerson was conceived, because we had sex once that year, on Valentine’s Day.” She also adds, “From the beginning, our marriage was probably more defined by friendship.”
Her image as a Bond Girl was tainted.
Teri Hatcher had a great run starring in all four seasons of Lois & Clark and went on to land another impressive role as Bond Girl Paris Harver. Acting alongside Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond.
Brosnan admits to an on-set feud with his leading lady. “I got very upset with her,” he said, explaining, “She was always keeping me waiting for hours. I must admit I let slip a few words which weren’t very nice.”
At a later point her discovered her absences were due to morning sickness, “It came out one morning that Teri was pregnant [with Emerson] and she hadn’t been feeling very well. Still these things happen”.
Teri Hatcher had a ‘never-ending divorce’
Custody issues continued to plague them deciding who Emerson would spend the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with. Hatcher had to split all of her marital assets with her ex.
“Worse than feeling like a failure … there was an overwhelming sense of rage at having to pay my way out of the situation. What I thought were the best years of my life, the most lucrative years of my life, seemed over and I had nothing to show for them,” she wrote.
Adding, “I had no marriage, a deeply diminished bank account, and no career.” Revealing the root of her bitterness, Hatcher said she took issue with having “to give the husband I had supported while he’d gone and done whatever he’d wanted half of the money I’d spent my whole life earning.”
She justified, “I’d been doing the earning and the parenting so somehow it didn’t feel fair.”
Unfortunately her career break was tainted by a lot of controversy.
In 2004, Teri Hatcher finally landed the role of a lifetime after years of small roles when she was cast on Desperate Housewives. However, there was a dark side to the Housewives cast as there rumours of constant drama on the set.
In 2012, show creator Marc Cherry stated that Nicollette Sheridan had referred to Hatcher as the “meanest woman in the world” while Eva Longoria also said “Teri was just a loner.”
Maybe this explains why Hatcher was excluded from group gift Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, and Vanessa Williams gave crew members when the show wrapped after eight seasons. “The girls don’t get along with Teri so they organized this and left her out,” a production insider told Celebuzz.
It doesn’t seem positive that Desperate Housewives will make a comeback to our screens.
Teri has previously suffered from a mystery illness.
Hatcher explains in 2011 she was been dealing with a health issue whih was causing discomfort. “I’ve been struggling with this thing called frozen shoulder, which is a real condition which women get,” she explained. “It’s basically left me pretty much not functioning with my left arm.” The pain prevented her from being “able to pick up a bag.”
Treatment included cortisone shots although she was “considering surgery. It’s a long haul through rehab and physical therapy, but I have a great attitude,” she added.
Teri continued to say, “I believe things happen for a reason and this has really helped me get better at asking for help, defining priorities and enjoying all the things I can do.“
Her condition is “characterized by stiffness and pain in your shoulder joint [and] signs and symptoms typically begin gradually, worsen over time and then resolve, usually within one to three years.“
Accused of being ‘the other woman.’
In 2014, stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay wrote a biography titled The Filthy Truth where he detailed an alleged affair with Teri Hatcher. The pair met on the set of 1993’s Brain Smasher… A Love Story, a poorly rated B-movie, and, according to Clay, shared an “instant attraction.” The comedian mentions in his book they engaged in intimate phone conversations which led to him visit her hotel room one night, they didn’t get physical.
Clay, admits to feeling guilty but a few days later, Hatcher visited his room, they kissed and “the lovemaking was out of this world.” They vowed never to speak again once Clay found out his wife was pregnant. He and Monica ended up being married for a decade and have two sons together.
Teri constantly gets her heart broken and blames herself.
Teri Hatcher’s hasn’t a positive track record in love. It’s been two years since she has dated because she admits being “scared of the possibility of someone breaking [her] heart is a risk.” Once she put herself out there, this happened.
In her memoir, Burnt Toast, she recounts multiple failed dates as she writes, “I never thought I’d be [over] 40 and have no one to go to dinner with, nor someone who loves me and whom I trust, but here I am.” She mentions one millionaire who was “already in a long-term relationship — with cocaine” and the lawyer who offered her “$50,000 to go to a convention with him, like an escort!”
Hatcher has a tendency to blame herself. “I have so much pain,” she explained. “This pain of feeling like it’s your fault, and not knowing how to solve the problem … that’s a really familiar pattern to me in my life.” She adds, “There’s this cycle of not being able to give yourself a break, of constantly finding an avenue to punish yourself.”
Hatcher is hopeful that her autobiography will inspire others. “I want to start treating myself better,” she announced. “And I want you to start treating yourself better, too.”
