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Actor:

Victoria Principal

  • Born: Jan 03, 1950 in Fukuoka, Japan
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '70s-'90s
  • Major Genres: Drama
  • Career Highlights: Naked Lie, Michael Kael Contre La World News Company, Nightmare
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Biography

Born in Japan to American parents (her father was a career officer in the Air Force), brunette leading lady Victoria Principal spent her teen years in Florida, where she was elected Miss Miami in 1969. While studying acting at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Principal became romantically involved with a much-older British financier named Bernard Cornfield. Thanks to Cornfield's show-business connections, Principal was able to meet enough of the "right people" to begin a movie career in 1971. After appearing without distinction in such films as Earthquake (1971) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), she tried to give her flagging career a shot in the arm by posing nude in Playboy magazine. She then quit acting for nearly three years, becoming a talent agent for other actors, all the while seeking out the right "comeback" vehicle for herself. In 1978 she found that vehicle when she was cast as Pamela Barnes Ewing on the internationally popular TV serial Dallas. During her early Dallas years, she briefly pursued a singing career in the company of her then-boyfriend Andy Gibb. This came to naught, but Principal's other business enterprises -- her clothing and cosmetic lines, her self-help books The Body Principal (1983), The Beauty Principal (1984) and The Diet Principal (1987) -- made her a millionaire many times over. Since leaving Dallas in 1987, Principal has, through an unbeatable combination of talent and persistence, transformed herself into the Queen of Made-for-TV Movies, far outflanking such possible competitors as Cheryl Ladd and Jane Seymour. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
 
Wikipedia: Victoria Principal
Victoria Principal
Victoria_Principal_at_the_39th_Emmy_Awards_cropped.jpg
Victoria Principal at the 39th Emmy Awards, 1987
Born January 3 1950 (1950--) (age 57)

Victoria Principal (born January 3, 1950[1] in Fukuoka, Japan) is an American actress, best known for her role as Larry Hagman's sister-in-law and Patrick Duffy's wife, Pamela Barnes Ewing, "Pam", on the long-running CBS nighttime drama Dallas from 1978 to 1987. She is well-known for her line of cosmetic products.

Biography

Born in 1950, she was the elder of two daughters born to Victor Principal and Bertha Ree Veal. On Lifetime Television's Intimate Portrait, she revealed that she is of English, Italian, and Filipino descent. Her father was a sergeant in the Air Force, and like most military brats, Principal moved often, growing up in London, Florida, Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, and Georgia, among other places, and attending 17 different schools. She studied at the Royal Academy of Ballet while in England.

She acted in a commercial when five, and began modeling in high school. She enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College, intending to study medicine. She continued modelling, winning the Miss Miami title in 1969, but serious injuries in a car crash made her refocus her energy on acting. She moved to New York City, working as a model and actress. After a modelling job in Europe, she studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1971.[2]

Principal confirmed a 1950 year of birth in an interview with the official Dallas website. She stated that she "felt that was the only way to clear this up once and for all. My name is my real name; my age is my real age. Someone on the internet, years ago, printed a different age than I am and I’m in the process legally of clearing that up, because I have never lied about my age."[3]

Acting

Victoria Principal, in a still from Dallas.
Enlarge
Victoria Principal, in a still from Dallas.

Her first film was as a Mexican mistress in Paul Newman's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean for which she earned a Golden Globe Nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. Her next film was The Naked Ape (1973) with Johnny Crawford, in which she went topless. (Years later, on The Tonight Show, she said that this was the worst movie of her career.) That year she appeared in a nude Playboy pictorial. She later claimed that she did not read the fine print for her contract for The Naked Ape when she signed it, as it was the fine print that required her to do the nude pictorial.

In 1974, she landed a huge break when she was cast in a co-starring role in the successful disaster film epic, Earthquake.

Two years later, disappointed with her career, she quit acting and for the next few years worked as an agent. Principal planned on going to law school, and later become a studio executive.

Aaron Spelling offered her one year's tuition to accept a role in the pilot of Fantasy Island. She agreed, and then landed the role of Pamela Ewing in Dallas. Her part of Pamela Barnes Ewing was the dramatic fulcrum point of the entire series—a Barnes marrying into the clan-hating Ewing family caused rifts which would erupt for years in and around Southfork. In 1983, her role earned her a Golden Globe Nomination as Best Actress in a Television Series.

Entrepreneur

When Principal signed her "Dallas" contract, she omitted the clause that would have given the network the right to consent and profit from her outside endeavors. She said, "As a result that’s why, you can only notice in hindsight, I was the only person in the cast who did commercials, who was doing movies of the week, who wrote books and these all belong to me. I retained the control and ownership of my image. No one owns me."[4]

She left the show after nine years, and began her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions, although she still works as an actress. On marrying Hollywood plastic surgeon Harry Glassman on June 23, 1985 she became more interested in natural beauty, and promoted a self-named line of skin care products, and has written three books about beauty and skin-care.

In late 1999, she appeared on the series Family Guy, in which she played her Pam Ewing role and parodied the infamous "shower scene" in which she dreamed up her Dallas husband's death. In the episode in which the show's family copes with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust on January 1, 2000, and by the end of the episode, it is revealed to be a dream of Ewing's.

She appeared in the NBC TV series Titans with Yasmine Bleeth in 2000, and in the 1990 TV movie Sparks: The Price of Passion, in which she played the mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The animated television series South Park features a school principal named Principal Victoria, a play on the actress' name.

Personal life

Principal dated numerous actors and personalities at the height of her fame in the late-1970s, including: Anthony Perkins, Andy Gibb (with whom she recorded a duet "All I Have To Do Is Dream" in 1981), Steven Spielberg, and Frank Sinatra.

Principal met Christopher Skinner in 1978 when he played a bit role on Dallas. After a very short time, she married him, but they later divorced in 1980. In 1985, she then married Hollywood plastic surgeon Dr. Harry Glassman after a three-year relationship and after he signed a pre-nuptial agreement. She has no children from either marriage.

In January 2003, her husband was arrested on a domestic violence charge. On May 27, 2006 she filed for divorce from her husband of 21 years, after they separated in March 2006 citing irreconcilable differences.[5]

On December 27, 2006 the divorce was finalized after Glassman, labeled "Dr. McGreedy" by the press, received Victoria Principal's Beverly Hills home and an estimated $25 million from Principal. Victoria Principal currently lives in Malibu, with homes in Utah and Switzerland. She is training for her booked flight on Richard Branson's commercial space flight venture, and is scheduled to be one of the first female civilian astronauts in June 2008.[6]

Filmography

Television work

  • Last Hours Before Morning (1975)
  • Fantasy Island (1977) (pilot for series)
  • The Night They Took Miss Beautiful (1977)
  • Dallas (cast member from 19781987)
  • Pleasure Palace (1980)
  • Not Just Another Affair (1982)
  • Mistress (1987)
  • Naked Lie (1989)
  • Blind Witness (1989)
  • Sparks: The Price of Passion (1990)
  • Don't Touch My Daughter (1991)
  • The Burden of Proof (1992)
  • Seduction: Three Tales from the Inner Sanctum (1992)
  • River of Rage: The Taking of Maggie Keene (1993)
  • Beyond Obsession (1994)
  • Dancing in the Dark (1995)
  • The Abduction (1996)
  • Love in Another Town (1997)
  • Titans (20002001)

Notes

  1. ^ Interviews at UltimateDallas from 2003 (retrieved 2006-12-04) and 2007 (retrieved 2007-07-07) list 1950, as does the (2007) The World Almanac & Book of Facts. World Almanac Books, p.225. “1/3/50.”  However, 1946 may be found listed in some older Almanacs.
  2. ^ Biography. VictoriaPrincipal.com. Accessed 2007-06-15.
  3. ^ Colin Hunter (2007). Interview UltimateDallas.com. Retrieved 2007-07-07
  4. ^ Colin Hunter (2007). Interview UltimateDallas.com. Retrieved 2007-07-07
  5. ^ Stephen M. Silverman and Howard Breuer (May 25, 2006). Victoria Principal Files for Divorce. People.com. Accessed 2007-06-15.
  6. ^ Natalie Finn (17 April 2007). Victoria to Be Principal Character in Space. EOnline.com. Accessed 2007-06-15.

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Actor. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Victoria Principal" Read more

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