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I Know What You're Thinking – I'm Fat !

Originally posted Thursday April 05, 2007 12:00 PM EDT

"I'm old-fashioned and I'd like to get married," says Vitale. The couple informally exchanged rings, but have no wedding plans. Photo by: STEPHEN DANELIAN

It's the kind of regular-gal earthiness that helped make Bertinelli a star at 15 playing Barbara Cooper, the wholesome younger daughter of a single mom (Bonnie Franklin) on One Day at a Time. As a teen star "I felt no pressure to be sexy. I never thought about breast implants or anything like that," she says, laughing. As for her costar MacKenzie Phillips, who played her older sister, "Mac was tall and thin and I just couldn't compete with that." Even as Bertinelli developed a large fan base of teenage boys who helped make the show a hit, "I preferred being the girl next door," she says. "Now I'm the mom next door."

But even before her breakthrough role, Bertinelli says she faced scrutiny from casting directors about her weight. "I was told I was too fat at age 13," says the Delaware-bred actress, the daughter of a former General Motors exec and a homemaker. The criticism did have an effect. "God knows I've starved myself," she says. "I've been down to 98 lbs." But unlike actresses in similar situations who succumb to eating disorders, "I never got in trouble, because when I would get to a certain point I'd go, 'This sucks! I want to eat!' and stop myself from destroying my body. I would say I'm a survivor."

It's a quality that helped see her through the rough parts of her 20-year marriage to Van Halen, 52. After meeting backstage at a concert in 1980 – she was 20 and a TV star; he was the guitar god of a wildly successful band – the pair quickly became the ultimate good girl-bad boy couple. They wed the next year, and after a miscarriage followed by years of trying to conceive, in 1991 Bertinelli gave birth to Wolfie, named for Van Halen's favorite composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Even as Wolfie became "the joy of my life," her husband's well-documented battles with alcoholism strained the family. (Recently Van Halen called off the band's planned summer tour, for which Wolfie was to play bass, to check himself into rehab.) "We all know Al-Anon," Bertinelli says of the support group for friends and families of alcoholics. In 2002, shortly after Eddie successfully battled oral cancer for the second time, the couple announced their separation. "I still love Eddie and always will, but we just can't live together," she says. Their divorce is not yet official, but "we'regetting there," she says. "We all have painful pasts we have to get through. My addiction is food. His is something else. And only the two of us know how it feels to love Wolfie the way we do."