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‘The Brady Bunch’: Christopher Knight Explained Why He ‘Hated’ Early Days of Child Acting

The Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight, who played Peter on the hit ’70s sitcom, once opened up about how much he couldn’t stand being a child actor.

Even before starring on The Brady Bunch at the age of 12, Knight’s acting career began much earlier. The actor’s parents pushed him to get into acting at a very young age. At just seven years old, Knight started taking roles in commercials because of his parents. However, he quickly found out that the process of auditioning and acting wasn’t something he enjoyed.

“I think I was only seven, so the conversation was ‘we’re going to get you an agent and do commercials.’ I said okay, even though I didn’t know what it meant. Once I learned what that meant, I hated it,” Knight said in a 2012 interview with Hollywood Chicago.

For a young Christopher Knight, acting ruined some of his childhood fun. Instead of getting to play with his friends after school, he was stuck auditioning and shooting commercials late into the night. Additionally, his parents forced his brother to audition as well, but he never once received a callback. Therefore Knight joked that their parents eventually “released” him from acting. Yet Knight wasn’t so lucky.

“It meant coming home from school and seeing my mother dressed up. I knew that whatever I had planned with my buddies, that wasn’t happening. I was getting in the car, and she smoked, and we drove a hour in traffic, and then we’d get home late. My brother did it with me. He went on every interview with me for at least three years, and he never worked. He was eventually released from that, when it became futile,” Knight said with a laugh.

‘The Brady Bunch’ Star Explains Change of Heart After Not Wanting to Be a Brady

Even though The Brady Bunch only lasted five seasons, it became engrained in pop culture. Christopher Knight has spoken openly about his previous contempt for the show and his role as Peter Brady. He said the fame from The Brady Bunch was too much to bear at times. So much so that for a time Knight had no desire to be connected to the Bradys in any form.

“I went through my period where I didn’t want to be a Brady. I wanted to ignore it and I wanted it to go away,” Knight said honestly to PopEntertainment.com. “But then I had an epiphany that this thing is bigger than I am. It’s always in the room before I am, it’s always in the room after I am.”

It took him years to kick his disdain for the hit show. Knight did finally learn to live with the fame that came from his five years on The Brady Bunch. But he struggled with fans only knowing his character Peter, and not the man who is Christopher Knight. Eventually, he learned to differentiate the two himself. And he made sure that people realized his TV persona is different from who he is in everyday life.

“As a matter of fact, for most people, Peter is the identity they know,” Knight explained. “This thing doesn’t die, and it probably won’t. Then it’s something I have to either learn to live with, and at best learn to love it and appreciate it as others have, or it is going to be a very difficult life. I learned to make certain that it was a great anecdote, but it wasn’t the full me.”