After becoming an award-winning, platinum-selling writer, producer/director Willie Aames took a 5-year hiatus and became a 6-star cruise director spending his time circling the globe and visiting over 127 countries. Recently Aames returned to his roots in acting and film making, splitting his time between Los Angeles and Vancouver, BC, with his wife, Winnie Hung. Aames has two children, Christopher and Harleigh.
Willie Aames
Movies
Family
The trials and tribulations, joyous occasions and heartbreaking moments of the Lawrence family: lawyer father Doug, housewife Kate, married (and quickly divorced) daughter Nancy, teenage son Willie and just-hitting-puberty daughter Buddy. In this critically acclaimed series, we watched various Lawrences fight, fall in love, become ill, graduate school, begin new…
Fun Facts
Dated his Eight Is Enough (1977) TV sister Connie Needham.
Has two older brothers and an older sister.
Met his second wife, actress Maylo McCaslin, on the set of Rocky Road (1985), a cable-TV show in which he was guest-starring, in 1984.
During his Eight Is Enough (1977) years, he formed a rock band (Willie Aames & Paradise). His band made appearances on an Eight Is Enough (1977) episode, The Easter Seals Telethon, United Cerebal Palsy Telethon, and Kids Are People Too.
Son, Christopher William Upton, was born on 25 June 1981. Daughter, Harleigh Upton (aka "Harleigh Jean Upton"")
Quotes
You get to a point where you have one of two choices. You either put a gun to your head or you pray.
I didn't become an actor because I wanted to act. Actually, I wanted to become a marine biologist. But most of all, I wanted to be accepted.
I had older brothers and sisters who were high achievers, and I felt different, misunderstood by my family. That's not my family's fault; it was my perception.
[about his church's influence on his finally getting clean and sober] When I listened to this guy on the radio, he seemed to understand what was going on with me. So Maylo and I checked this guy out at his church. We sat in the back and had a terrific time. People were warm and friendly. They didn't seem to mind that I was dressed in leather and that my girlfriend had purple hair. It didn't matter to them what we looked like or who we were. It only mattered that we were there.
When you're a celebrity, people think they know you, but they don't have a clue.
I never thought of myself as handsome.
[2007 interview] Since I was 9, I'd been told what to say, what to think. I plan to spend the second half of my life free. I've never been happier.
[on his on- and off-screen chemistry with [Dick Van Patten], who played Tom Bradford]: He knew when to laugh, and Dick always had us laughing. He was just a very wonderful, sincere man.
[on the death of [Dick Van Patten]]: I'll miss him. Dick was the best. He was just the best. He was always upbeat. Dick would always get us together on the set and would say, 'I want you to remember these days, gang.' Because these are the good old days.
[Of Dick Van Patten]: In all the years that I knew Dick, I never saw him get angry; ex. once and I had a stalker that was stalking me around and I had detectives stand with me and he was taking me where I'd been everyday and any claim that he was a friend of Vince Van Patten, Dick's son; but told me where I'd been; the night before and everything else and he called the soundstage at Warner Bros. and I said, 'Dick, it's the guy,' He said he knows Vince; and Dick tore him to shreds. I mean, I never seen such and he was protecting me; but that was Dick. That's the only time in 40 years that I ever saw Dick got upset.