She was nanny to some of Hollywood’s biggest legends and knew many of their secrets.
Now Janette Moor has lifted the lid on her time nannying for the stars and revealed some fascinating insights into the lives of Farrah Fawcett, the 1970s television star and sex symbol and her husband Ryan O’Neal, an American actor famous for starring in the 1979 blockbuster Love Story and a former boxer.
The couple who enjoyed their own tempestuous love story for three decades were the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of their day.
At the height of her fame she posed for an iconic swimsuit poster that became synonymous with American glamour and sold 12m copies worldwide.
Many British people will remember her as from the hit TV detective series Charlie’s Angels which first aired in the mid 70s.
She became known as the most beautiful woman in the world while he had a reputation for his volcanic temper and as a ladies’ man who bedded some of the biggest stars in the world with effortless ease.
Her jobs meant she met many of the planet’s biggest stars including one memorable day at a nursery when she says: “There was Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger and that was just the A-list.”
As a former Greenhead High School pupil, Janette Ollivier had grown up in much more modest circumstances, her mother Aileen Ollivier lived in a terraced house in Lockwood for nearly 50 years before her death at 82 earlier this year.
But Janette took to the world of Hollywood glamour with aplomb after qualifying as a professional nanny following a two year course at Huddersfield Technical College.
She was 21 when she flew off to Texas for six months and never looked back as her services were always in demand from clients all over the world with offers of work from as far away as Thailand and Canada.
She came back to England for a while but decided that she had had enough and one day found herself in the hotel off Ainley Top roundabout being interviewed by some people from Los Angeles and ended up eventually going to nanny for Lisa Weinstein, producer of the monster 1990 hit thriller Ghost starring Patrick Swayze, and Lisa’s husband film director Martin Brest best known for Beverly Hills Cop.
At the time she says Martin was directing Robert de Niro in Midnight Run and she remembers him exercising on a treadmill. Janette said: “I was jetting all over the place but it turned out they were difficult people – again!”
Fortunately, doors always seemed to open for her and she says: “Marty and Lisa’s maternity nurse Christine put me in touch with Farrah and Ryan’s nanny who was leaving, that was around 1988/89.
“I went up to meet them and they were fine. The ‘star-struck’ movie bit had worn off so I was not fazed by it all. She was lovely. She was always lovely. He was certainly not easy to live with. You could hear her shouting at the other end of the house.
“Her assistant Jimmy Toulson and I would just move to the other end of the house to escape it.”
Her duties centred around looking after their three-year-old son Redmond who she says, even then, was “a handful” – he went on to struggle with heroin addiction for much of his adult life and has spent time in jail.
She says: “He was a lovely little boy by himself but I remember once picking him up from nursery and the teacher asking to have a word with me.”
It turned out he had been using foul language. “Farrah actually put a bar of soap in his mouth to wash it out but of course it didn’t make any difference. But when he was with me he was fine, just a cheeky so-and-so. I had him until he was five years old.
“Farrah was a really lovely person and a very loving mum. She was always nice. Occasionally I would make them dinner if they had friends round and cook them Turkey Schnitzel and they loved that.
“They were very generous and very flexible and I had free rein to do what I wanted with Redmond. We went to Aspen for Christmas. I got to meet Candice Bergen, (an award-winning American actress) and feminist and Cybill Shepherd, an American actress, singer and former model.”
Janette smiles as she recalls “Ryan telling me off because I smiled too much and told me to stop pulling faces. I didn’t say anything. I just ignored him.
“They had separate bedrooms and he would be smoking his weed in his room. He was a very moody person and how he was depended on what drug he was on. He was either completely withdrawn or completely in your face and sometimes he wouldn’t leave you alone, just annoying. I just let it wash over me.”
She stayed with the couple for 18 months when she was 28/29 during the years 1988/89.
One of the highlights of her time over there was when she paid for her mom Aileen to fly over in January 1989. Janette, 57, said: “She came over for 10 days and the first thing she wanted to do was go to a Michael Jackson concert and I got her to the front of a Tom Jones concert. She was made up about that.
“Ryan and Farrah were fine when I left. It had got to the time when Redmond was in school and they didn’t have another nanny after me.”
She stayed in America for eight years and came back to England in 1995 and went on to marry John Moor and have three children. She now lives in Harrogate.
Janette said: “They were great years. It was fascinating to observe the lifestyle of the rich and famous and meeting all those people. Henry Winkler who played the Fonz was absolutely adorable. Bruce Springsteen he was lovely but tiny!
“I met Robert Downey Jnr who was in a movie with Ryan. He was lovely.
“And I recall meeting Lou Ferrigno of The Incredible Hulk fame and he sat on a little chair which had everyone in hysterics.”
Looking back through her diaries she finds an entry about her having lunch with Tracey Ullman and Miami Vice star Don Johnson.
Hilariously she recalls an agency wanting her “to do nannying for Paris Hilton and her sister but they wanted me to do the ironing so that didn’t happen!”
Another star she turned down was Schwarzenegger who she had an interview with but says: “He was well-known for being a cheapskate and he didn’t like my pay demands.”
As for Farrah and Ryan the couple reunited in 2003 after she was diagnosed with cancer, and Ryan was at her bedside when she died on June 25, 2009, at the age of 62.
