Cosby's Advice May Reunite TV Daughter With Her Father

by Anne James

� Star, June 17 1986

Transcribed and sent in to Lisa Bonet Online by Purr_11, member, Yahoo's Lisa Bonet Club

Bill Cosby, whose wise and loving advice holds his family together on The Cosby Show, is now playing that role off screen - with some gentle advice that may reunite his TV daughter with her real father.Lisa Bonet, who plays Cosby's daughter Denise on the Number One series, had not seen her father for 12 years, and was cold to his efforts to
get back in touch with her - until Cos stepped in.

" My real-life dad separated from my mother when I was six and stayed in San Francisco when we moved to Los Angeles,and I haven't seen him since," says 18-year-old Lisa." Lately he tried to get in touch with me, but I haven't responded.He wanted us to get together. To me it was a strange idea. The idea of looking him up. I never used the word ' Dad ' in my life,and I guess I hadn't realized I had missed out on not having a father around. "

So far, Lisa has not been reunited with her father. " At frist I felt a bit insulted," she says."I thought maybe he was doing it because I was on a hit series. "But I spoke to Bill about it and he said,' Meet him, make your peace.'

" Bll is not my substitute father, but I consider him a very close and good friend."

For Lisa, Cosby's solid guidance on how to cope with her mixed feelings on how to cpoe with her father was vital.

"When I told him the whole story of me and my father, he urged me to make peace with my dad. He said if I didn't, it would dog me all my life. So now I'm workng on it slowly."

Cosby spoke from wisdom born of experience. He was eight when his own father gave up the struggle of raising a family and left his wife and children to join the Navy. Cosby remembers how bewildered his was when his father took him aside and said: "This means you're the man of the house."

The youngster struggled to help his mom make ends meet, and to grow up without the firm presence of a father.

Likewise,Lisa grew up without a father's guidance after her parents - Arlene, a schoolteacher, and Allen, an opera singer and artist - split up.

"I never really knew my father," she says,"I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Encino ( a San Fernando Valley bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles).
"All my friends had more money than I had. My mother worked hard as a teacher. My father would call on Sundays, but I guess he had a problem with responsibility. He never spoke with e just my mom."

Lisa, who was plucked from obscurity to star as the precocious and pretty Denise, says Cosby also helped her adjust to the new-found fame that came with the role. Cosby, author of the best-selling book Fatherhood, has encourged Lisa to srtike out on her own.

As a result, she will be making her big-screen debut in Angel Heart, a new $20-million dollar film for award-winning British director Alan Parker.

And Lisa finds herself in heavy-weight company, starring opposite such established stars as Robert DeNiro, Mickey Rourke, and British actress Charlotte Rampling. Lisa has a racy role in the movie. She plays a young woman who has a sexual flirtation with Mickey Rourke, which is very different from her TV teen character.

" When I took the role in the movie, I didn't have to ask Bill"s permission," says Lisa. " But because we're close, I went to him anyway. I asked him because I felt I owed it to him. He could have said that the part would not good for the show's image, but instead he said go for it - and that's what I did."

For Lisa, growing up in a predminantly white neighborhood in Los Angeles posed early problems which she eventually overcame. "My mother is white, and when I used to walk down the street, the looks we got...if looks could kill, we'd be dead," she recalls. "But things have changed. I'm not hired as the token black in the film. In Alan Parker's picture, I play a dirt-poor young woman who believes in voodoo and who is attracted to the Mickey Rourke character. He, in turn, has been hired by Robert DeNiro to hunt for a missing musician.

"Funnily enough, Alan Parker hired me fo the role after several interviews. He had never seen me on the Cosby Show. I've discovered that you don't have to have blond hair and blue eyes for box-office success, and you don't have to role your eyes and talk black to get a role.
"It's a thrill working with Alan Parker, because I really enjoyed his films Bugsy Malone and Fame."

Just as Lisa career is taking off comes word that producers may spin off her Cosby character into a show of her own.

"It's just in the talking stage," she says. "But if that happened, I might not be able to make movies."

And she would miss working with her TV family on a regular basis.

" Our series is an ensemble show with Bill as the star, and it has been a wonderful experience," she says." We have been in the trenches making the show, and suddenly we climb out and discover that it's Number One.

" It's like a dream. Two years ago, my major worry was who was going to be my escort to the high school prom."