The Rise, Fall and Triumph of Suzanne Somers: There’s Much More to Her Story Than ‘Three’s Company’

Sometimes it seems as though Suzanne Somers has lived two lives. In one, she’s the woman who became a phenomenon as Chrissy Snow with the Classic TV show Three’s Company, but seemed to implode from advanced ego syndrome. In the other, she lost her job in search of pay equity and struggled to move on, battling and winning against cancer, becoming a best-selling author of self-help books, enjoying a musical residency in Las Vegas, and launching a line of organic makeup products. Along the way of both, she’s perhaps gained some wisdom and definitely some perspective.

“I now get that these careers are high and low,” Suzanne tells Closer Weekly in an exclusive interview, “and you don’t learn anything when you’re high. You learn when you’re low. That’s when you have time to sit back and think and realize that when you hit the top of the mountain, there’s nowhere to go further up. You can only start going down, and that’s the time to go left or right and reinvent. I’ve actively reinvented myself over and over and I’ve taken every big fist that has come my way and turned it into rocket fuel. Kind of, like, ‘Oh, yeah? Let me show you!’”

That philosophy is something that was born out of an abusive childhood at the hands of her father, who was an alcoholic. A bad alcoholic. “It runs in our genes; I’ve written several books about my father, the first one starting the adult children of alcoholics movement, which was called Keeping Secrets,” she says of the bestseller that became a movie she produced. “It was the first time a celebrity ever told the tale on themself — it’s easy to tell the story about your alcoholic dad. The other story is, what did it do to me? And what’s the part I played in it? I remember being berated over and over again as a child and I realized how bullies have to bully you to stay with you: ‘You’re nothing, you’re stupid, you’re hopeless, you’re worthless, you’re a piece of crap.’ And I believed it.”

Suzanne’s story is just getting started. Please scroll down for more.

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