Patty Duke on Shirley Temple

from Entertainment Weekly:

Patty Duke

ruled the 1960s, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at 16 for The Miracle Worker and later starring in her eponymous sitcom. Starting her career at just 7, Duke has unique insight into the life of a child star, and the specific challenges they face as they grow up in the public eye. Duke opened up about those struggles in her memoir, Call Me Anna, which showed how she overcame her own difficult obstacles.

With the sad news that perhaps the most famous child star of all time, Shirley Temple,

passed away Monday night, EW spoke with Duke to discuss Temple’s influence on her, her own on-set experiences, and why she thinks so many child stars struggle once they hit adulthood.

I don’t know a whole lot about Shirley Temple’s home life or background to get what we saw on film. Except, having been almost in her shoes I know that that little girl worked hours and hours and hours and I hope somebody treated her very kindly. Every mother wanted their daughter to be Shirley Temple. I had very straight hair and my mother used to drive me crazy curling my hair so that I could look like Shirley Temple. Didn’t work!

As a child, I idolized Shirley the movie star. My favorite Shirley Temple movies were the ones that had her incredible singing and dancing and dimples, but then she’d do a scene that was serious and I would be sobbing for days. The mold had been broken. There was only one Shirley Temple. But look, she’ll live on: When we go to a restaurant, my grandchildren order a Shirley Temple.

–As told by Patty Duke