Tom Lynch

Suzanne Hansen used to have a really tough job.

Right after college she hit Hollywood and became a nanny to superstars, essentially hired as a live-in parent substitute while there were countless cocktail parties and movie premieres to attend. First she worked for super-agent Michael Ovitz and his wife--which ended poorly when Hansen announced she was leaving and Ovitz threatened to ruin her career, hence the title of Hansen's telling new memoir, "You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again."

Hansen's biggest beef with celebrity parents is that they insist they do everything themselves as far as raising their children, when truthfully they're enjoying much more assistance than your average working-class duo armed with three troublemaking rugrats. "I think they are like everyone else--some devoted, some not," Hansen says of celeb parents. "I think their idea of being with kids is not like ours. When they say comments like, `When I'm in town I drive my kids to school.' Well, of course you do! That's what you're supposed to do! That just doesn't enter into the vocabulary of normal people."

With run-ins with megastars like Tom Cruise, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman, Hansen spent much of her time around Hollywood elite and saw the actual lives of these people. "Just think of one of the women. Even if she does four magazine shoots a year, all that planning. They don't call the neighborhood babysitter, or call the mother-in-law. They have a built-in support system. And if the nannies can't do it, they have assistants. You can't tell me all that time they're on movie sets there isn't someone watching the kids."

Was she nervous offering up details of the personal lives of her former employers? "Yes," she says without hesitation. "I really refrained from saying the private, ugly things I witnessed. I was like, is this really my story to tell? Am I invading their privacy? I could've said a lot more, but the point wasn't to put any of these people down."

Hansen burned out on the nanny business while living with Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman, who she says are great parents. She went back to school, became a nurse and had a child of her own. But don't expect her to hire help anytime soon. "I wouldn't consider getting a nanny," she says. "I'd love to have a cook and a maid, but I really want to be with my kids. I always said, about celebrities, `Okay you got all this money. Shouldn't that buy you freedom to be with your kids?' So if I had all that, I'd get somebody to pay the bills and stuff. That would be my dream."

(2006-02-28)

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