Plenty of milder (but still bizarro) incidents from the 33-year-old actor's childhood in L.A. have been filtered into his new WB series All About the Andersons, on which he plays a struggling actor stuck at home with his folks. Anderson's stepfather, Sterling Bowman, 64, who raised him and used to own a chain of plus-size-women's stores, really did padlock the fridge. "Anthony and his friends were eating all the food," says Doris, 50, a phone operator for L.A. county. "And he did put a pay phone in the living room. Where I got my hair done they had one, so I ordered one. You had to put a quarter in every three minutes." Anderson and his three siblings knew this wasn't normal. "But I realized my family was funny, because nobody ever wanted to leave our house."
He took his share of the fun with him—"He's a character and a half," says his friend, actress Vivica A. Fox—but he prefers to live quietly with his wife, homemaker Alvina Anderson, 32, and Kyra, 7, and Nathan, 3. "I have barbecues, swim in the pool with my babies. I'm a man of simple pleasures." And many calories. "I'm 5'11" and 272 lbs.," he says, patting his gut. "But my weight shifts. Like those continental plates in the ocean."
Fine, so long as he doesn't try to slide out of a promise to his mom. "Anthony told everyone he was gonna buy his mamma a house by the end of the year," says Doris. "By the end of the year! Make sure you print that in your article."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
