Breaking: Brady Bunch star traded drugs for sex and had affair with co-star

She was America's most wholesome girl, with the most adorable ponytails and the cutest little Valley Girl twang.

So who would ever have thought that Marcia Brady would end up as a cocaine addict, partying at Sammy Davis Junior's house and trading drugs for sex?

Yet that, according to Maureen McCormick, the actress who played Marcia in The Brady Bunch, is exactly what happened.

For those too young to remember the 1970s, or who had not yet got over the 1960s, The Brady Bunch was the sitcom which introduced the world to the idea of a modern, California-style "blended family".

It tells the story of how Mike Brady, a divorced man with three boys, marries Carol Martin, a divorced woman with three girls. Everyone takes the name Brady and lives happily ever after.

Except for Marcia, the oldest girl, who was always a little too perfect, even for her own siblings. According to McCormick's new memoir, 'Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice,' real life was very different.

The book spills the beans on McCormick's affair with her co-star Barry Williams, who played her step-brother Greg Brady. It claims that the two got steamy while filming episodes in Hawaii.

"We couldn’t hold back any longer," she writes. "It was our first kiss, and it was long, passionate and deep. It was wonderful, too, though as we continued to kiss and press against each other so closely that we could feel each other’s body heat, a part of me - a tiny part, admittedly - said to myself, 'Oh my God! I'm kissing my brother. What am I doing?'"

McCormick, 52, also discusses her dates with Michael Jackson and the comedian Steve Martin.

It was several years after The Brady Bunch ended that McCormick went out with Martin, who had asked for the actress’s phone number through friend Chevy Chase.

"I remember him being a very good kisser," she writes. "But I was insecure and either high or spaced out (most likely both), and I didn't laugh at his jokes.

"Though Steve was too polite and confident of his talent to say anything, I’m sure my inability to carry on a normal conversation or respond intelligently put him off. We never spoke again after that date. I’ve always regretted my behavior because he impressed me as an extraordinary guy. I would’ve enjoyed a second date."

McCormick’s time with Jackson was innocent. They met while she was still starring as Marcia, and he was fronting the Jackson 5.

"Once we went ice-skating and he held my hand as we glided around the rink," the book recalls. "I wondered if he might try to kiss me, but he didn’t. After another outing, he did give me a kiss goodbye. But it was only a gentle peck on the cheek."

There were more men in McCormick’s life, which spiralled into substance abuse and depression as she struggled to reconcile her Marcia Brady image of the girl next door with her private pain.

In the book, she discusses cocaine binges, parties at the Playboy Mansion and at the home of Sammy Davis Jr, the famed member of the Hollywood Rat Pack, an unwanted pregnancy and trading sex for drugs.

McCormick was 14 when The Brady Bunch made its debut on the ABC network, running from 1969 to 1974. Despite her role as a sunny Miss Perfect, she grappled privately with anxiety and insecurity, the youngest of four children born to a mercurial father who abused and cheated on their mother.

"As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world," she writes in the book. "Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady. ... No one suspected the fear that gnawed at me even as I lent my voice to the chorus of Bradys singing, 'It’s a Sunshine Day.'"

When the series had its final bow, she took up a hard-partying lifestyle in Hollywood, using drugs including cocaine and quaaludes. She struggled to regain her earlier success, landing some TV and movie roles, but developed a reputation for unreliability due to her addiction, even botching an interview with Steven Spielberg for a role in Raiders of the Lost Ark because she was high.

After interventions, stints in rehab and experimental therapies, McCormick began sobering up in 1985 when she married actor Michael Cummings, with whom she has a daughter, Natalie. She continued to fight depression through therapy, medication and the help of old cast mates from The Brady Bunch.

She insists that she has no regrets: "I’ll always be struck by how much a part of people’s lives Marcia is and always will be. But now I’m not bothered by the connection. It took most of my life, countless mistakes and decades of pain and suffering to reach this point of equanimity and acceptance."

[link to www.timesonline.co.uk]