Valerie Bertinelli Recalls ‘Growing Up Too Fast’ With Cheeky Underwear Photo

Valerie Bertinelli looked back wistfully on her Hollywood career this week with a cheeky throwback photo.

The actor-turned-celebrity chef shared a publicity shot of herself on Instagram Thursday that dated back to 1979, roughly four years after her portrayal of Barbara Cooper Royer on CBS’s “One Day at a Time” catapulted her to stardom. In it, she wore a flannel shirt and black panties, along with a pair of stiletto heels.

After noting in the caption that the image had been taken “at the end of one of many throwaway photo sessions I would have at CBS,” Bertinelli recalled how a similar photo had been used alongside a less-than-flattering headline.

“A shot from this session ended up on the cover of Us with a headline about me growing up too fast,” she wrote.

As eyebrow-raising as that assessment was, however, she believes it might not have been that far off the mark.

“I mean, they weren’t really wrong…months later I would meet Ed, get engaged and be married within the span of eight months,” she wrote, alluding to rock musician Eddie Van Halen, who died in 2020 at the age of 65.

Bertinelli and Van Halen were married from 1981 to 2007. In 2011, she and financier Tom Vitale tied the knot, but split in 2022.

More recently, Bertinelli was in a relationship with lifestyle writer Mike Goodnough. The pair ended their romance in November of last year after about 10 months together.

By all accounts, Bertinelli and Goodnough appeared to be on amicable terms at the conclusion of their relationship. Earlier this month, however, Goodnough shared a cryptic note on Instagram accusing his ex of “lapsing into a place where she has been playing a one-woman tennis match thinking there is someone on the other side of the net.”

“I am not communicating with Valerie via my posts. I am not engaging with the things she posts,” he wrote. “While I am disappointed in the array of hostile, dishonest, and uncalled for backhanded swipes she continues to take at me, there is no war between us. She just won’t stop shooting.”

“Valerie is in a war with her ghosts,” he continued. “I’m just the guy who catches the bullets. And that isn’t new.”