From PEOPLE Magazine
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Boyfriends and bedtimes aside, the Peldon sisters are anything but babes in the Holly-woods. In her seven-year career, Courtney has done more than 400 commercials and voice-overs, a Broadway play—1989's Meet Me in St. Louis—and is currently cracking wise as Matthew Broderick's sister in the movie Out on a Limb. Ashley, meanwhile, already has under her 19-inch belt a two-year, Emmy Award-nominated stint on daytime television's Guiding Light; big-screen spots playing daughters to the likes of Belle Midler (in Stella) and Goldie Hawn (in Deceived); and, on Sept. 29, her first starring role—as a sexually abused little girl on the CBS made-for-TV movie Child of Rage. Says Courtney of their shared success: "It's so exciting."
And for their bicoastal mom and dad—exhausting. "It has been crazy," says Wendy, 35, taking a breather in the family's five-bedroom Hollywood Hills home. Each day she shuttles the kids back and forth between auditions, shoots and—twice a week—professional-school classes that supplement their on-set and at-home tutorials. Once a month their father, Jeffrey, 37, a lawyer and real estate developer who holds down the family's 12-room suburban New Jersey fort, flies in for a week of quality time. Unless, of course, a job sends Mom packing with, say, Ashley to Toronto. In that case he quickly hops a plane to stay with Courtney. "I live on the fly," says Jeffrey, laughing. "We try to make sure the right body is in the right place at the right time."
For the Peldon family, the fun began eight years ago when Wendy brought Courtney to the pediatrician and a nurse suggested she contact a local talent agent. "There are a million great-looking kids out there," Wendy remembers thinking. "I was sure no one needed mine." Still, at her daughter's urging, she set up a meeting. The next day, Courtney was acing auditions and, in the months and years that followed, peddling products—from Burger King food to J.C. Penney wares—in millions of living rooms across the country. "You couldn't turn on the TV and not see her or hear her," says Jeffrey. "We really didn't know what to make of it."
Ashley did. By the time she was 3, little sis decided she wanted in. "Ashley is feisty, very opinionated," says Wendy. From day 1, the younger Peldon's here-I-come confidence has won praise—and parts. Her sister, on the other hand, makes the most of a more gentle demeanor. "Courtney is the proper young lady, polite and sensitive," says Wendy. At one recent audition, the director asked Courtney to play sad. "When the tape started rolling," recalls Wendy, "she got out her teddy bear and started crying hysterically, then looked up and asked if that was enough, or did they want more tears. She's an excellent crier."
Not, of course, that sudden sobs always provoke applause. A few years back, for instance, a classmate called Courtney a name and she burst into tears. "The principal called me up asking if she was under stress because of the business," says a still indignant Wendy. "How about the fact that kids just do cry?" Still, she is hardly naive about the potential pit-falls of show business. "I've questioned myself about how healthy this life is," she says. "I've gone into bathrooms at auditions and seen mothers yelling at their daughters because they were having trouble memorizing their lines. But that is not going on in our family. We're doing this because the girls enjoy it."
Courtney and Ashley are quick to agree. "Hearing an audience laugh and applaud me makes me feel good inside," says Courtney. And yet both know that acting is not always about getting laughs. Says Ashley of the emotional trauma she enacted in Child of Huge: "I thought. "How would I feel if I was this sad little girl?' I'm just glad people can see how other kids have been hurt and then maybe care more about them.
What the future holds, for two so young in an industry so fickle, is anyone's guess. The money that each of the girls earns (the parents won't disclose the sum) goes directly into a trust fund. If Wendy has a concern, it is that someday one sister will still be making it and one will not. "I just hope they're secure enough to handle that," she says.
The girls, who have never acted together, have a more pressing concern: Both yearn to play sisters—a long shot, they know. "We don't look enough alike. says Ashley with a shrug. "We'll have to play friends."
KAREN S. SCHNEIDER
DAVID HUTCHINGS in New Jersey and Los Angeles
