Corey Feldman
On why his son won't eat meat or be a child actor.
by Sarah Hepola
August 10, 2007
You've been a vegetarian and an animal rights activist. I'm curious how you guys handled the issue of meat with your son.
Corey: Our son has never had an ounce of meat in his body from the time that he was conceived.
Susie: We eat meat substitutes but we call them burgers, since you can't really explain what fake meat is to a toddler. But he's got these farm animal books, and there will be a chicken, and he'll say, "Yum yum." I had to tell him there's a difference between the animal chicken and the chicken we eat.
Corey: The tough part is going to be when he goes to school. The other kids will be eating sloppy joes. He's going to be forced into being different. What do you mean you're not eating meat? What do you mean you're bringing your own lunch? We hope that he can be an influence on other children to do the right thing. It's a much more healthy way to eat, for one thing. But it's also about caring for other beings in the universe. We care about every creature who lives on the earth.
Your son was a preemie. Can you talk about what that experience was like?
Susie: He was two months premature, and he was only three and a half pounds, and he spent five weeks in the NICU, hooked up into the machines. I had a perfect pregnancy, no problem, and all of a sudden our perfect family was crashing down around us. All these fantasies that he would ride a bike, throw a ball, all ofWe care about every creature who lives on the earth. it was being threatened. He had wrapped himself up in the umbilical cord, but they couldn't tell in tests. The doctors told us he could have mental retardation.
Corey: It was the weekend of her baby shower, and she didn't feel him kicking or moving, so after a few hours we took her to the hospital and when we got there, we saw he was fine, and we were getting ready to go, and they were like, Well, no, she's in labor. The end result was, you can take him out now and try and revitalize his signs, or we can keep him in there and hope he fixes himself. We made the right choice. If we had left him in there, he might not be alive.
Susie: Corey had to shoot a film in Bulgaria after he was born. I had a preemie on life support while he was gone. It was hard. And once we could take him home, all bets were off. Normal rules that refer to babies don't apply to preemies.
Corey: He had almost every illness an infant can have.
Susie: Jaundice. A double hernia. He had to have surgery at two months, when he was only seven or eight pounds. It's a true test of how strong your marriage is. If you can find time for your spouse through that, you're doing good.
©2007 Sarah Hepola and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sarah Hepola has been a high-school teacher, a playwright, a film critic, a music editor and a travel columnist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, and on NPR. She writes the Scanner blog for Nerve and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. |
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