In 1985, Gold auditioned for the role of Carol Seaver on Growing Pains, but was not initially cast. She appeared in two canceled series, Shirley with Shirley Jones in 1979, and Goodnight Beantown, starring Bill Bixby in 1983. Gold is also famous for her highly publicized battle with anorexia nervosa, which almost killed her. Over the next decade, Gold starred in several television movies. Gold was born Tracey Claire Fisher in New York City. In early 2009, she co-hosted with Fred Roggin on the live show GSN Live. This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. After the taping of the episode, Gold called her producers to beg them not to air the show. Tracey Gold has fought a very public battle with anorexia, an eating disorder that results in excessive weight loss and can even lead to death. During this time, Gold became a famous teen star and battled anorexia. As the oldest of five sisters, she felt the pressure of performance, both on and off the set. From about the age of seven, she says that she thought about dieting, having learned the word and the concept on the many television sets she worked on as a very busy child actress. When she did her first interview regarding the disease, she wore layers and layers of clothing to add the illusion of weight to her overly thin body. She became very frail and could not keep warm. The actress chosen for the pilot was Elizabeth Ward, who had starred alongside Gold in The Hand-Me-Down Kid, a 1983 ABC Afterschool Special. After the end of the long-running series, Gold continued to work as an actress. She struggled to move her focus away from food and toward working on relationships.
Tracey Gold (born May 16, 1969) is an American actress and former child star best known for playing Carol Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains. Missy and Tracey have three younger sisters, Brandy, Jessica (Jessie), and Cassandra (Cassie) Gold. Gold frankly admitted that her family was close, and her career was going well. The public stress of the show added to her performance issues. One of her main struggles was that she wanted to please others and make them happy. However, she successfully overcame the disease despite many obstacles and almost losing her life. She found a doctor who put her on a diet. She struggled with sleeping and had difficulty concentrating. In her autobiography, Gold says that in an attempt to control her development into a woman, she began restricting what she ate. As her disease progressed, she counted and tracked calories of almost every single food. One episode featured her television father offering her food and then laughing about her weight, which at the time was 135 pounds on her 5 foot, 3 inch frame. At the same time, her weakness made others focus on her and care for her. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. However, test audiences did not favor Ward in the role of Carol, and she was promptly replaced by Gold. She became preoccupied with the television movie The Best Little Girl in the World, starring actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, about an anorexic teenager. Gold has been an actress since the age of four, first appearing in a Pepsi print ad. However, they ignored her plea and aired the show despite her protests.
