Dallas star Charlene Tilton, 64, delves into difficult childhood with her mentally ill mother after her father left: ‘Bringing things out in the open is so helpful’

Charlene Tilton opened up about her ‘tumultuous’ childhood and her struggles being raised by her mentally ill mother in a new interview with People published on Wednesday.

The 64-year-old actress, who starred on Dallas for the majority of its run in the late 1970s and ’80s, revealed that her mother’s schizophrenia progressed throughout her childhood to the point that she was institutionalized for several years.

Tilton described how her mother Katherine got pregnant after she began seeing an Air Force pilot during a period when she was working as a secretary at the Pentagon.

However, her father didn’t stick around after Charlene was born.

‘My biological father didn’t want anything to do with me,’ she said, noting that her fame as an adult didn’t change that. ‘He had to have known about me — Dallas was so huge — but he never reached out.’

She later learned via a DNA test that she had three half-siblings who had also never met their father, though she also learned that he had died six months before her discovery. Despite never being able to speak to her father, she stayed optimistic. 

‘I don’t carry a chip on my shoulder. I don’t get into self-pity,’ she said. ‘I see the bright side of things, and that’s served me well during tumultuous times/’

But Tilton went on to recall a sense of instability while living with her mother as a young child.

She recounted seeing her mother furious after their television set was repossessed as she was trying to watch Captain Kangaroo, as well as a train trip from Los Angeles, to Omaha, Nebraska, where they were forced to get off at an early stop because her mother suffered a break down.

Another disturbing memory was of police taking her mother away, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar place, and she shared the traumatizing memory of seeing Katherine outfitted with a straight jacket.

In that atmosphere, she turned to movies to help her escape her fears and troubles.

‘Everything was magical on screen,’ Tilton said. ‘I saw Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and The Sound Of Music and thought, “I want her to be my mother.”‘

Her mother’s illness progressed to the point where she was institutionalized, beginning when Tilton was five and concluding with her release shortly before she turned eight.

All alone: Tilton (seen second to right on Dallas in 1979) grew up without a father, and her mother was institutionalized from whens he was five to almost eight

Without her parent, she was forced to travel between relatives’ homes for years. 

‘I remember the kids saying, “When is she going to go?” and the parents said, “We’re trying to send her off but we can’t get anyone to take her.” I thought, “I’m never going to depend on anybody to take care of me,”‘ she recalled.

After she was able to live with her mother again in California, Tilton described how there were ‘always a lot of pill bottles around,’ but medication didn’t seem to make much of an impact on her mother’s condition.

Their home was filthy, and Tilton revealed that her mother refused to use a toilet and would only urinate in plastic food storage containers. 

‘That went on for years. I could never bring friends over,’ she lamented.

At the time, Tilton’s mother’s struggles were even more stigmatized than today. ‘Back then mental illness wasn’t talked about,’ she said. ‘It was swept under the rug.’

Katherine’s illness spilled over into Charlene’s school life when her mother offered to chaperone a school dance, but then had an episode in which she carried on an argument aloud with herself. 

Now, though, she finds solace in being able to share those stories without shame. ‘Bringing things out in the open is so helpful,’ she said.

Disturbing: Her mother’s home was ‘filthy’ and she struggled with schizophrenia and would only urinate in plastic food storage containers; seen in 2019 in Hollywood

Tilton eventually moved out of her mother’s apartment after a rat crawled across her. ‘”I can’t live like this,”‘ she thought at the time.

It wasn’t until 1978, when she began starring on Dallas, that she gained a sense of stability, though her mother’s mental illness still intruded. 

She shared that Katherine would write ‘crazy’ letters to the primetime soap opera’s producers, though she stayed focused on her acting.

Now that she was making $15,000 per week, it was easier to help her mother, but the money only went so far. She recounted learning that police had picked up her mother after she was found walking around in the nude in Hollywood, though she was released since she didn’t pose a danger to others.

While appearing on Dallas, Tilton said she empathized with her character Lucy, who had been raised by her grandparents. 

‘She was desperate to find the love of the parents she never had. I understood what made her tick,’ she said.

After her stint on the series ended in 1990, Tilton dealt with a ‘lot of stress,’ as she ‘wasn’t working and I wasn’t taking care of myself.’

In the wake of her failed two-year marriage to country singer Johnny Lee, which she called a ‘disaster in the making,’ she was left with her ‘beautiful daughter’ Cherish, whom she doted on.

The cost of raising her daughter alone and caring for her mother, who eventually moved to an assisted-living facility, sapped most of her savings.

‘My house was foreclosed. I left everything except what we could fit in a one-bedroom house.’

Giving everything: Tilton (front) helped her mother after getting a role on Dallas, but she eventually exhausted her savings after the show by caring for her mother and her daughter; still from Dallas

After her mother’s death in 2001, Tilton began to work on screen again with modest roles, and she found new love with the cinematographer Cheddy Hart. The two were eventually engaged, but then Hart died unexpectedly of heart failure in 2009, leaving Tilton devastated.

‘I just sat on the couch drinking and smoking cigarettes,’ she said. But she found new motivation after a friend encouraged her to volunteer with Actors for Autism. ‘I fell in love with the students,’ she gushed. ‘To get out of your own depression or grief, you go help somebody.’

Now, Tilton spends plenty of time with her grandsons and acts occasionally in faith-based movies, and she mused that aging suits her.

‘When I was on Dallas and doing bathing suit magazine covers, I couldn’t wait to get older,’ she admitted. ‘I always saw myself as a character actress. I’m petite and curvy, not tall and thin. I’m not elegant, I’m spunky. What I love about the age I am now is it brings different characters.’