The Hollywood Exclusive - Column by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

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The Hollywood Exclusive: Tom Arnold Frees Himself From Demons of Childhood Sex Abuse/Dean McDermott Opens Up About His Impoverished Past

Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith

Tom Arnold, who was sexually abused as a child by a babysitter, admits he had some tough demons to face when recently portraying a child molester in the independent film "Gardens of the Night."

Accepting the controversial part was a risky move for the actor, but he tells us it was a necessary part of his healing. "People told me, 'Oh, boy, stay away from this.' My publicist said, 'You have to decide -- are you Tom Arnold, or are you an actor?' Also, if I hadn't said yes, this wouldn't have gotten made," he adds, speaking of the feature that's been playing film festivals. "And if my dad had watched something like this many years ago, maybe he would have asked some questions about what was going on in the neighborhood. Maybe I'm fooling myself and I just ruined my career, but either way it was a powerful experience. Playing this character was the last piece for me to put it behind me."

Tom also plays the father confronted by his emotionally and sexually scarred daughter in Marianna Palka's "Good Dick" feature, starring Palka and Jason Ritter, that starts its limited release roll-out today (10/10).

He's reached a point where he can talk about his difficult past, and he candidly opens up to us about his experience. "In 1989, I got sober, and before you leave rehab you do an alcohol, drug and sexual inventory. I remember saying, 'There was this time I was like 4 or 5, and there was this thing that would happen with my babysitter. He was a couple of years older than me. At the end he gave me a candy bar, and I knew my dad didn't want me to have candy because I was so hyper, so I never told my dad about it. I was more scared of that because I didn't know what sex was," he explains. "The therapist was like, 'Wait a minute? You were like 4 or 5, and your babysitter was 6 or 7?' I did some research and found out the guy was 18."

A year later, Arnold hired a private investigator to find the man, who at that point had become a church leader and the owner of a big company. He was also about to adopt his fourth son. "I went to the police, and they said it'd been over seven years so there was nothing they could do, but I went back to Iowa to confront the guy. I remember he put his finger on my chest, and everything came back. I was scared for a second, but then I snapped to it and told him what was going to happen to him if he ever touched me again. By now a lot of his employees had come out of their office because Tom Arnold was there," he recalls. "Then I went right over to the state capitol and met with the governor. I told him what happened and that the guy was about to adopt his fourth child and that he had to stop it. He said it wasn't something he could get involved with. A few days later, my brother called me and said, 'You won't believe this, but the adoption fell through. Something was wrong with the paperwork.'"

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TOGETHER 4-EVER: Actor Dean McDermott admits he doesn't like being away from his wife Tori Spelling for too long, but that's just the motivation he needed when playing the bad guy in Ving Rhames's latest movie, "Saving God," which hits DVD Oct. 14. "The hardest part was being away from T and the family for so long. We get crazy when we're away from each other for an hour. This project was four weeks, so it was the longest we've been apart. Thank God for our Mac laptops so we could do video conferences," says McDermott, who sported an actual mohawk for the part. "It was great for the character because I felt so lonely without Tori there, which worked because my character and his wife were separated in the movie."

Playing a mean-spirited gangster was certainly a stretch for McDermott, who dubs himself a nice guy, but he had a little more in common with the story than some might think. "The story really appealed to me because it's got the age-old battle of good vs. evil as the backdrop in the drug-infested streets of Baltimore," he explains. "I can relate to that because I grew up in government-subsidized housing in Canada, which is sort of the Canadian projects, if you will. I can relate to how a neighborhood is affected by the introduction of drugs and violence."

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MEANWHILE: McDermott and Spelling are anxiously waiting to see if Oxygen will renew their reality show "Tori & Dean: Inn Love" for another season because he says they have a blast working together. "We'd definitely love to do season four. Season three, especially, was a lot of fun because we changed it from a half hour to an hour format so the audience could get into our lives a little deeper."

PRODIGY: Eight-year-old music sensation Ethan Bortnick – who's already wowed Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and Jay Leno on their shows -- appears on Playhouse Disney's "Little Einsteins" tomorrow (10/11) playing Mozart's 21st piano concerto. He tells us he taught himself to play at age 3 because "I was so mad at my parents because they wouldn't give me piano lessons." He hopes to be a zookeeper who plays piano when he grows up. Right now, he doesn't have any animals, he confides. "We had a dog, but we were traveling so much, and the dog stayed home alone. So we gave him to a lady who doesn't go anywhere."

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With reports by Emily Feimster. To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.

This news arrived on: 10/10/2008

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