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The Charming Holly Marie Combs
Holly Marie Combs seems to be
leading a charmed life: she found fame as a young actress on
the Emmy-award winning TV show Picket Fences, she’s
currently the star of the WB’s hit show Charmed, she married
her sweetheart on Valentine’s Day this year and she’s
expecting her first baby. But life hasn’t always been so
full of magic for her.
When Holly was born, her
mother was just 15, and the two struggled for most of
Holly’s young life. At 8 years old, Holly moved with her mom
from California to New York City. Holly’s mom eventually
married, but she worked late as a waitress and Holly’s
step-dad was a bartender, so Holly spent many of her nights
alone. She says, “I was a very solitary kid and I didn’t
have a lot of friends when I was younger. Moving from
California to New York was a big change for me and I didn’t
fit in very well.”
Although she may not have
interacted well with kids her age, she had no problem
interacting with the camera. Holly began doing commercials
and print ads when she was just 9 years old. She says, “We
didn’t have a lot of money and that’s part of the reason I
started acting…[it] was an easy way for me to make more
money.” Holly got her big break at age 18 when she was
chosen to play the part of Kimberly Brock on Picket Fences.
After the show’s end, Holly
starred in TV movies before successfully auditioning for the
role of one of the “Charmed Ones” in the WB’s new drama,
Charmed, in 1998. The show’s based around the idea that the
Halliwell sisters- Piper (Combs), Pheobe (Alyssa Milano) and
Paige (Rose McGowan)- must battle and overcome evil by
uniting their supernatural powers. Charmed has been a huge
success for the WB and is now in its sixth season.
ON THE SET
This year, Holly’s once
solitary life is changing dramatically. On Valentine’s Day,
she and boyfriend David Donoho, whom she met on the set of
Charmed, were married. And on April 27, she’ll add another
person to her life with the birth of her son.
Holly and David were together
when they learned of their pregnancy: “[Dace] was actually
there when I peed on the stick,” Holly says. “I was looking
at the stick going, ‘Is that a line.’ Three tests later we
were still saying the same thing!”
Once the couple was sure the
pregnancy was a reality, Holly announced the new to her
producers because, she says, “ My character has been
pregnant on the show last year, so I knew it was going to be
an issue to work two pregnancies into the show in 2 years.”
Her producers hid her
pregnancy from the audience for the first 6 months, but
there was no hiding the symptoms Holly was feeling. She says
the first three months were difficult: “I was in absolute
amazement about how debilitating tired I was… You could read
it on my face when they filmed me.” She tried to keep
working at her usual pace but admits she couldn’t help
thinking, “Wow, this is actually kicking my butt.” Luckily,
Holly’s producers were very understanding. She says, “ They
started to incorporate naptimes into my schedule…[and] they
spread out my scenes so that I would have breaks in
between.”
Holly’s co-stars, Alyssa and
Rose, also help make things easier on her. Holly says of
them, “ They’ve gone through every stage of my pregnancy
with me to the point where in the beginning, Rose would
apologize for having tuna fish for lunch!”
MIXING MAGIC AND DAY CARE
After her little boy’s birth,
Holly hopes to bring him to the set with her. She’ll enlist
the help of a nanny to watch him while she’s filming… if she
can find one who’s willing to keep her hours! “ When we were
interviewing nannies. Most of them just assumed that they
would stay at home with the baby, “ Holly says. She had to
tell them all, “No, you’ve got to come with me and I leave
at 6:00 a.m., so you’ve got to be up early and ready to go…
You’ll stay with me until about 4:00 and then you’ll get to
go home!”
And luckily, the Charmed set
is already prepared to handle babies. After Holly’s
character gave birth to a little boy names Wyatt last
season, Holly says’ ‘It’s like daycare there now.” Plus.
Holly is sure she and her nanny will have all the help they
need from other crew and cast members: “ Our crew is
substantially women, so I have so many babysitters there. No
one’s going to get any work done!”
MAKING CHANGES
Holly's been a smoker since
she was 15 years old, but when she learned she was pregnant
she decided to quit, She says, ‘It was actually really easy
because I had already started to cut down. My husband is
asthmatic and he just can’t for the life of him imagine why
anybody would put a smoke in their mouth, so he really
helped me to start cutting down.”
Pregnancy-related nausea was
also a very motivating factor in her decision to quit. “
When I got pregnant the smell of other people’s cigarette
smoke was so heinous to me that it made me not want to have
a cigarette ever again,” Holly remembers. “It’s kind of like
cheating when’ it’s so easy to quit because you can’t take
the smell!”
Although it got her to quit
smoking, pregnancy has made Holly acquire another vice:
eating sugar. She says, “ I crave sugar more, [and] I was
not a big sugar person before.” The actress blames her
husband for her unavoidable ice cream cravings. “David…is a
sugar junkie. He can’t control himself around ice cream,”
She says. “And it was funny [because] as soon as I got
pregnant I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m turning into him! I’ve
been invaded by his DNA and I’m turning into him!”
Otherwise, pregnancy has been
pretty good to the actress. She says the worst thing for her
has been “the indigestion. This child is awfully gassy!” And
she’s grateful her hormones haven’t been too out of whack.
“People say that pregnant women are hormonal and emotional
and I didn’t find that to be true,” Holly says. “ I found
that I was more logical and more clearheaded than I ever had
been in my life. Your priorities just shift and suddenly
everything becomes clear to you.”
THE REST OF THE FAMILY
Although this little boy will
be Holly and Dave’s first baby, they already have a big
family. Holly has always been an animal lover, and says, “I
think we have five dogs at them moment, three cats, four
bunnies, two birds, Coy fish and a turtle, I think I have
every species covered!” Holly also has horses. She says, “ I
have three quarter horses and then I have a pony. So four
altogether, but the pony doesn’t really count as a whole
one!”
PREMONITIONS
Although Holly may not have
supernatural powers in real life, the magic of science is
helping her see into the future: if all goes as planned. She
already knows exactly what day her baby will born. Her
doctor has scheduled a C-section for her on April 27. She
says although she didn’t really want a C-section, “[The
doctor] didn’t give me a choice.”
When Holly was just 24,
doctors discovered she sad a uterine fibroid that was about
the size of a baseball. They feared it was cancerous, so
they decided to remove it. Holly was told that if they found
the fibroid was malignant during the surgery, the doctors
would have to do a complete hysterectomy right then. “At 24
I hadn’t really begun thinking about children,” Holly
remembers, “and then suddenly the choice was almost going to
be taken away form me.” Luckily, the fibroid was benign, but
Holly’s uterus was still affected by the surgery. Holly
says, “[The surgery] created a weak spot in my uterus and
[the doctors are] afraid that if I go through labor and
contractions…it might tear and hemorrhage.”
Despite these complications,
Holly feels lucky to have been able to get pregnant at all.
“After my surgery [doctors] told me it might be really hard
for me to get pregnant…but it was really easy for me. It was
literally the first time we tried!” She laughs.
PARENTING IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Although she’s a star, Holly
prefers avoiding the limelight as much as she can. “I’m not
great at dealing with [the media],” She admits. “When kids
come up to me to talk to me and say they love the show I’m
almost as nervous as they are and it males me feel like a
total goon!”
Holly hopes to shield her son
form the media as much as she can. She says, “When I see
Reese Witherspoom trying to go to the grocery store with her
kids and there are photographers following her it just
breaks my heart. I think, ‘She’s just trying to buy eggs…and
you’ve got to document it for the world.’” Holly thinks it
would be difficult to raise a child under those
circumstances: “How do you raise a normal kid when you have
to explain that there are strange men in the bushes taking
your picture?”
But despite the pressures of
Hollywood life, Holly, and her husband are both grateful
they’ll be able to offer their child all the things they
could never have when they were younger. “We had to struggle
for everything we got,” Holly says, “so it’s important to
use to make sure that this kid has everything we didn’t.”
Then she adds with a smile, “I’m sure he’ll be spoiled
rotten and we’ll be overcompensating a little!”
And Holly is definitely
looking forward to the magic of motherhood. Because she
spent so much of her young life alone, she says, “To be part
of a family unit is going to be a while new experience for
me.” This talented actress is very excited to add the role
of mother to her growing list of accomplishments and to be
completely bewitched by her own little charmed one.
THE NURSERY
Designing the nursery has been
a bit more complicated for Holly and Dave than it is for
most people. Holly says, “We had carpet all upstairs, and
because this kid could have allergies and asthma like my
husband, we tore out all the carpet and put down wood
floors.” But the remodeling didn’t stop there. Holly
continues, “ We tore out all the window and put new windows
in to make sure the room was draft-free.” She also says,
“I’m putting air purifiers in and a humidifier…and of course
I had to use all the low-toxic paint and stain.” The she
adds with a laugh, “Not that we’re neurotic or anything!”
By Misty Bott
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