Bad Beadle: Charlotte Stewart Reveals Life of Sex, Drugs and Booze After 'Little House on the Prairie' (original) (raw)
When it comes to kid-friendly TV time, "Little House on the Prairie" never failed as a family favorite.
But behind the scenes, the fair and loveable Miss Beadle, played by actress Charlotte Stewart, led a sex and alcohol-soaked secret life that was a far cry from her wholesome character.
Read: Woman Drives Nail Through Her Own Hand on Live TV When Magic Trick Goes Horribly Wrong
In her tell-all memoir Little House in the Hollywood Hills: A Bad Girl's Guide to Becoming Miss Beadle, Mary X, and Me, Stewart, who found her fame as the beloved school teacher in the iconic 1970s TV series, opens up about her life in the fast lane in the years after the show came to an end.
"I got a little off track when I left 'Little House on the Prairie,'" the 75-year-old actress recently explained to KCAL. "There's nothing worse than someone having a lot of money and a lot of free time."
The actress recalled, with the help of diaries and datebooks, growing up in Hollywood in the early 80s, surrounded by drugs and alcohol.
"I was spending too much time playing," she said in an interview with Star Tribune.
She even recalls her passionate trysts with A-listers, including a romantic getaway with The Doors singer Jim Morrison.
"We made this great escape together," Stewart recalled about Morrison. "It was a really hard time in his life."
But the fun came to a crashing halt when she realized she had a problem.
"People were trying to help me, but I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. That’s common with addicts," she told the Star Tribune.
She recalled in the memoir that in her darkest period, she endured everything from cancer, to divorce, to financial ruin and homelessness. She even said drugs jeopardized her career.
Read: Who Was Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy? The Untold Story of JFK's High-Spirited Little Sister
Even though the downward spiral began just after her time on "Little House on the Prairie," Stewart said, "I never had a sense of humor about it. That was a really horrible time for me."
By 1984, she went into treatment and slowly started to build her life back up, including accepting a role on the 1990s series Twin Peaks.
Stewart has since relocated to Napa, and is set to reprise her role of Betty Briggs in the Twin Peaks revival, slated for 2017.
Watch: There Was Hil to Pay: Hillary Clinton Once Hit Secret Service Agent in the Head With a Bible