Living Like Ed - (Page 9) FOREWORD BY RACHELLE CARSON-BEGLEY Years ago, I came to Hollywood to follow my dreams, fall in love, become an actress, and live like a queen. Well, I am an actress and I did fall in love with my prince, Ed Begley, Jr. And now we’re married and I’m living like . . . well, what exactly am I living like? Certainly not the Hollywood royalty of my fantasies. Yes, my husband’s a star, but he’s decided we won’t live in Beverly Hills. Instead we have a charming little house in Studio City, complete with a white picket fence made entirely of recycled plastic milk jugs. We have a fleet of sporty vehicles: his electric car, my hybrid, and our bicycles. All of the power for our house is produced on-site. Solar panels pretty much cover the roof, and we have our very own wind turbine. It’s not quite the palace I imagined as a girl growing up in Atlanta. But let’s face it: I married into a lifestyle. I like to joke that before I met Ed, I drove a Hummer, but the truth is I’ve always been interested in the environment. My dad had a little farm, and we always had fresh fruit and vegetables. As a child, I would scream “Polluters!” out of the car window at big trucks. And I do remember that when the Chattahoochee River turned blue, and it was not a blue you’d see in nature, I thought, “This is not right.” So I always had a degree of environmental awareness. On the other hand, I like fashion. I like nice cars and beautiful homes. I like good food. And while I had always appreciated other people’s dedication to environmental causes, it wasn’t my big thing. I just didn’t have a lot of patience for people who had holier-than-thou attitudes about saving the planet. So when Ed and I started going out, I liked to be sort of provocative with Hollywood types who made a big deal of their environmentalism. On our second or third date, a double date with Don Henley and his now wife, I said something like, “So what’s the deal with the environment? There are so many other issues out there. There are children’s issues. There are women’s is- 9
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