Valerie Bertinelli’s Son Wolfgang Van Halen ‘Is Her Hero’: He ‘Makes Her Want to Do Well’

On a Monday night in a New York City hotel, Valerie Bertinelli stripped down to her bikini underwear and liked what she saw. “Right now every lump, bump, wrinkle and saggy part of me just feels acceptance and simple appreciation,” said the One Day at a Time alum, who posted a photo of herself in the mirror to Instagram, where it went viral.

Valerie, 64, has trod a long, rocky road in her quest to truly love and accept herself. A people pleaser since childhood, the actress, Emmy Award–winning Food Network star and new contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show has spent her life fighting feelings of insecurity and unworthiness. A few weeks before the underwear photo, Valerie posted a video of her shaking hand as she fought to calm herself after an anxiety attack. “I know it’s just my brain overthinking and catastrophizing, but my body goes into overdrive and I have no control over it,” she said.

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Valerie Bertinelli’s Family Experienced Tragedy

Valerie, who has three brothers and one sister, was born into a family torn apart by unthinkable sorrow. “While my mother was pregnant with me, my older brother, Mark, died after wandering unwatched into a friend’s barn and drinking poison out of a soda bottle,” she revealed in her 2022 memoir, Enough Already. “He was 17 months.”

Valerie didn’t learn about Mark’s death until she was a teenager, but a shadow always hung over her parents’ marriage. Her paternal grandparents blamed the tragedy on Valerie’s mother, Nancy, who “ate her feelings” and threw herself into being the perfect homemaker. Her father, Andy, whom Valerie also called “a people pleaser,” shut down and never spoke of the loss. “Before I was ever born, there was a message sent to me that my role was to please others and bring enough happiness to fill a gaping hole,” she says.

The twice-divorced actress admits that her father was a “complicated” man who cheated on her mother and made cruel comments about her weight and appearance. He was also hard on Valerie and her siblings. “My father had crazy high expectations,” she says. “He was a stern and aggressive father to his sons and a loving but judgmental father to me.”

Watching her parents’ strained relationship likely affected Valerie’s perceptions about love and marriage, too. “I don’t even know how to explain how [my father] treated my mother,” she says. “I am still trying to undo the tangled yarn of being modeled [by] what love is between two people.” Adds a friend of the actress: “Valerie doesn’t want to blame her father for the men she’s picked, but his influence on her definitely played a part.”

Valerie lost her dad in 2016. It’s taken her years to understand him and the circumstances that shaped him. She describes his father, her grandfather Nazzareno Bertinelli, as an “angry” man, who “scared the hell” out of her as a child. A coal miner who had abandoned his first wife and child before fleeing to America, he could be “kind and yet scary,” she says, adding that she never knew “which I was going to get.”

Her father, Andy, she reasoned, had no role model of how to be a good father and husband. “I loved my father,” she says. “I still do. I just see him with clearer eyes now. And not without some guilt for judging him and his behavior. I have compassion for him. He was only able to work with the knowledge and experience that he had.”

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Valerie Bertinelli Learned to Love Again

Valerie’s known a lot of good fortune in her life — she was just 15 when the role of Barbara Cooper on One Day at a Time turned her into America’s sweetheart — but she still has trouble loving herself as much as her longtime fans do. She’s been trying to change that, but it’s been a difficult two years since her split from her second husband. “I am learning that until I love myself and accept myself, all of me, my light and dark sides, I can never give someone else the love and emotional vulnerability that they need and deserve,” she says. “You must give it to yourself first before you can share it.”

Valerie’s recent long-distance romance with New York City–based writer Mike Goodnough fizzled after 10 months, but she is surrounded by people who love her, including her son, Wolfgang Van Halen, 33. “Her son, Wolfie, is her hero and a great influence on how she lives her life,” says the friend. “He makes her want to do well. She’s happiest spending time with him and his wife. She can’t wait to become a grandmother!”

Having work that Valerie finds satisfying has also been a balm. In addition to her appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Valerie has signed on to host the game show Bingo Blitz. “She loves to work, and she’s always been a hustler,” says the friend, who adds that Valerie “gives her father, Andy, credit for making her strong about going after what she wants.”

Unraveling her family’s complicated history, and the way that it has influenced her approach to life and her view of herself, has also been a step in the right direction. “I want to be the best, most authentic version of myself heading into the last chapter of my life,” she says. “I’m working on it.”