I LOVE Helping People

Family Affair's Jody shares stories from his years as a child star and his life today

- Lindsay Hoffman

If you watched television in the 1970s, Johnny Whitaker feels like an old friend. In addition to charming primetime viewers on Family Affair as adorable Jody, Johnny starred in kid-friendly fare including Saturday morning’s Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and the 1973 musical Tom Sawyer. “The best part of being a child actor was meeting President Johnson,” Johnny, 64, tells Closer. “The worst was that I couldn’t play baseball or go to a regular school.”

Like so many former child actors, Johnny endured a rough transition into adulthood. “[The Brady Bunch’s] Christopher Knight says that Hollywood loves its puppies, but once they become dogs, they don’t want anything to do with them,” Johnny says. “Unfortunately, that’s quite true.” Today, he’s a certified drug counselor, who’s proud to have been sober for 26 years. Johnny is currently working on his first memoir.

What do you consider your big break?

Probably [1966’s] The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming, because that’s where I met Brian Keith. He wanted me to come and audition for the role of the next-door neighbor in his new series. Family Affair was [conceived] for a 16-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy, and a six-yearold girl, but at my audition, Anissa [Jones] and I looked so much like twins, they changed it. That was my big break.

Do you have a favorite episode of Family Affair?