Tracey Gold (born May 16, 1969)[1] is an American actress and former child star known for her role as Carol Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains.
The actress chosen for the pilot was Elizabeth Ward, who had starred alongside Gold in The Hand-Me-Down Kid, a 1983 ABC Afterschool Special.
On January 2, 2012, she appeared on the ABC network's reality series, Celebrity Wife Swap, trading places with singer Carnie Wilson for a week.
On July 24, 2013, Gold returned to sitcoms with an appearance on the Melissa & Joey episode, "Something Happened," as one half of a lesbian couple with a home-schooled daughter.
She competed on and won the twenty fourth season of Worst Cooks in America, the show's seventh celebrity edition titled That's So 90s, airing in April and May 2022.
[4] Gold said around the age of seven, she thought about dieting, having learned the word and the concept on the many television production sets she worked on as a child actress.
She became preoccupied with the television movie The Best Little Girl in the World, starring actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, about an anorexic teenager.
That season, her problem with weight loss was touched upon slightly on her television series, when Gold is seen looking at her body in a carnival mirror, and describes to another character the distorted image in her head.
After several years' struggle, Gold eventually recovered, and starred in the television movie For the Love of Nancy (1994) with Jill Clayburgh.
As she entered her thirties, Gold maintained a normal weight for her body structure, and often holds speaking engagements warning young women about the dangers of eating disorders, while continuing work as an actress.
[7] As a result, she was placed on three years' probation and ordered to complete 30 days of work release and 240 hours of community service.