Making A Miracle

Hunter Tylo's autobiography


Making A Miracle
Pocket Books, March 2000, (352 pages) Hardcover
ISBN: 0-671-02778-6 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/Women

Making a Miracle


Review extract
by L Ramsay
2000

"Making A Miracle is a very easy read and a fascinating journey and insight into the life of a lady who has lived so much yet has not even turned 40. What a life, what a remarkable miracle this book is, and what a remarkable and inspirational lady."

The full review is here.

Book Spoiler

This is what appeared in the 'alt.showbiz.gossip' newsgroup on March 20th, 2000:

Message 1: (Subject header: "Re: Hunter Tylo's ... past"):

NATIONAL ENQUIRER....
 
IN ONE OF THE MOST brutally honest celebrity bios ever, gorgeous soap star Hunter Tylo blows the lid off her wild and sordid sex life after successfully hiding it from fans for years.
 
"The Bold and the Beautiful" actress describes her descent into hell in her just-published autobiography "Making a Miracle" and discloses how she battled back from the sins of Hollywood -- including an affair, raunchy sex games and drugs -- and rescued her life and marriage.
 
"Hunter courageously holds nothing back in this soul-baring book," a publishing insider revealed. "Everyone in the business is talking about its raw honesty and shocking details.
 
"Hunter should be applauded for taking control of her life -- after rending it apart -- and sharing the details with readers in the hope others' lives can be saved from self-ruination.
 
"Through her strength and belief in God, Hunter and her husband were able to find their way back to each other and a deeper love. After all they'd been through, that in itself was a miracle."
 
Hunter married her husband Michael in 1987 after an earlier marriage collapsed. The Tylos became friends with fellow "Bold and Beautiful" actress Kimberlin Brown Pelzer and her husband.
 
Hunter says a new sick side of her emerged with Kimberlin's assistance. She got into raunchy, sexy talk -- telling graphic jokes for anyone who would listen. The two even got into reading erotic fairy tales together -- Anne Rice fables containing sadistic, sexual scenes.
 
Soon she found herself caring only about seeking pleasure.
 
The two friends played a weird game they called "body shots." They licked salt off the wrist or neck of their husbands, each other and each other's husband, and then slammed down a shot of tequila.
A SERPENT dance was part of the act on TV. In real life, Hunter was bitten by a black cobra in India.
 
They did it at trendy Spago and the Bistro Garden in Los Angeles. The drunker they got, the wilder they became -- ripping off their bras and tossing them like bridal bouquets to stunned patrons.
 
"I thought our newfound high life liberating," Hunter writes in her sizzling book. "We didn't have to be so jealous anymore. Sexuality could really be a harmless diversion and didn't always have to be about love."
 
The partying continued with more showbiz friends, at more clubs and restaurants. The actress confesses she was plastered much of the time -- a bottle of Jack Daniel's a night was common -- and didn't recognize the thread of destruction that continued to weave itself through her life.
 
But despite her party-hearty lifestyle, even Hunter drew the line at outrageous moves action star Steven Seagal put on her.
 
The run-in occurred when her hubby Michael was filming in Spain and Hunter was called to audition for a Seagal film in his bungalow.
 
The macho actor told Hunter in very blunt terms that his wife Kelly LeBrock had made it big because she was willing to show her breasts in movies. Seagal informed Hunter he didn't want to read through the script until she relaxed. The lights dimmed, soft music started to play, and Seagal pulled out a massage table.
 
Hunter climbed on and let him go to work on her back.
 
Despite her apprehensions, she started to relax -- until he flipped her over to massage her chest!
 
Her heart pounding, she panicked, jumped up and ran out.
 
Another time, as her marriage to Michael ran into trouble, an offer to do a film in India arrived. Hunter jumped at the chance to be on her own.
 
But while on location, she promptly fell for a Hindu spiritual leader, who was also a stuntman. She recalls he was darkly handsome, sexy, wise -- and married. When a black cobra used in one scene bit her, he sucked the venom out of the bleeding wound.
 
She writes that she smoked opium and had a passionate love affair. She looked to him as her spiritual leader.
 
He brought her gifts and they even began living together -- despite his wife calling Hunter and telling her she'd kill herself and her children if Hunter didn't leave!

Message 2: (Subject header: "Re: Hunter Tylo's ... past"):

Hunter forgot about life at home in Las Vegas except to call up Michael and tell him she was in love with another man. He didn't want to fight anymore. He was drinking heavily and having his own affair with a waitress, she claims.  Hunter and her onetime playmate Kimberlin Brown Pelzer engaged in sexy games.
 
When the filming ended, Hunter knew she had to go home, and her lover promised to visit her. She says she returned to the States only to learn that one of her two kids had tried to commit suicide -- and Michael's drinking and womanizing were rampant.
 
Things turned very ugly as Michael had her served with a restraining order to stay out of the house and away from the kids she cherished.
 
A stinging document written by her onetime friend Kimberlin was attached to the order attesting to her incapacity as a mother.
 
She was depicted as neglectful, abusive, and provoking fights -- while strung out on cocaine, which she claims was untrue.
 
The marriage was over and the family was shattered. She and Michael each hired big-gun lawyers to go after each other. The divorce was to be final on New Year's Day 1995.
 
With everything gone in her life, a grief-stricken Hunter began to see through the haze of her wild existence. She rendezvoused with her Indian lover in Las
 
Vegas. But the affair no longer had the seductive foreign aura that had once captivated her.
 
She threw away the religious icons he had given her and sought refuge in her own spiritualism. Searching her heart, she realized that she was still in love with Michael and wanted back her once-happy family life.
 
Her brother-in-law had committed suicide; her father had died; she feared losing her children and the only man she realized she wanted in her life.
 
Fortunately, Michael wanted her back, too. They confessed all of their faults to each other and promised they would spiritually fight to save their love. Instead of divorcing on New Year's Day, they renewed their vows on New Year's Eve.
 
"I had once worshiped at the shrine of sex and money," a much-wiser Hunter writes. "Now I wanted God, as God is understood in the Christian faith, to direct my actions."
 
The 37-year-old beauty also details her brave fight with super-producer Aaron Spelling after being fired from "Melrose Place" in 1996 for being pregnant and discloses how it forced her to come to grips with an abortion she had years earlier.
 
"I thought of this child I had lost only with the greatest reluctance and kept the actual memories of that event as far away, psychologically speaking, as possible," she writes.
 
But perhaps the greatest pain she had to deal with came at what should have been one of the most joyous times of her life.
 
Her precious baby daughter Katya was born with cancer in both eyes on Jan. 15, 1998. The youngster lost her right eye but chemotherapy saved the vision in her left eye.
 
Hunter reveals that her faith in God and the Bible and her love of Michael helped pull her through.
 
The publishing insider concluded: "Hunter was gutsy to be so honest in her private agonies -- but it will only win fans and save some lost souls."