Heather Locklear Bio

Heather Locklear Bio

Pets: She has two dogs. One of her dog's names is Kitty, whom is a Yorkie dog. Her other dog is a Matese dog named Harley.
Education: Attended U.C.L.A. for a short period of time. She chose to pursue an acting career, in lieu of the completion of her studies towards a bachelors degree. Her father, William Locklear, was the Dean of the School of Engineering at UCLA during that time period.
Roots: In a "Parade" magazine article, the blue-eyed, blonde- haired actress admits she is part Native American. Locklear says her last name is very common to members of a tribe called the "Lumbee," and she traces her roots back to that tribe way back on her father's side. She attributes her Caucasian-dominated looks to her mother's side of the family, which is predominantly Scottish. Misc: Started modelling for the UCLA school store; Has been romantically involved with Scott Baio, Tom Cruise, Mark Harmon, and Tommy Lee, and Richie Sambora
Fan Mail: C/O Endeavor, 9701 Wilshire Blvd. 10th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, USA
C/O William Morris Agency, Inc, 151 S. El Camino Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, USA

Intro

After graduating in 1979, she enrolled at UCLA. After posing as a model, she hired an agent and became noticed. Then it all began, her sophmore year, Heather dropped out to become an actress. First she landed small jobs in commercials for California Dairy Council, Sea & Ski sun lotion, Poloroid Cameras, Tame hair Products, Toyota trucks, and both Pepsi & Coke. After landing two small shows( Dynasty 1981-89, and T.J. Hooker 1982-86) , she hit it big with the bomb show MELROSE PLACE!! Beyond television, Heather has also had parts in hit movies such as "Wayne's World 2" and the "First Wives Club". Heather has been romantically linked to such stars as Scott Baio, Tom Cruise and Mark Harmon. Heather Locklear has proven to be one of the most resiliant actresses in the world.

Longer Biography

High School Heather: "I Had Crooked Teeth And Was Stick Thin"

Make that a Valley Girl: her roots are deep in the San Fernando Valley's Ventura County. Heather doesn't hide her background - she's proud of it.

She is the product of a loving and supportive home. "I've had such a good life and a good childhood," she's said. "My family is real normal and close." But that doesn't mean Heather was always happy with herself.

By her own account, she was far from attractive, and as meek as a mouse. "I was always shy. Somebody else had to start the conversation or make the first move." Awkward around people she didn't know, Heather was just as fearful of offering her opinions even around the family dinner table. "My sisters [she has two] and I were taught to be nice girls," Heather relates. "We wouldn't speak up."

The Locklears lived in a large two-story Tudor home in Canoga Park, an upscale suburb out in the farther reaches of the San Fernando Valley. Many of their neighbors were involved in show business in one way or another. The Locklears were not. Heather's dad, Bill, has spent his entire career at the University of California at Los Angeles - UCLA. He has been a dean of admissions and is now director of the registrar's office. Heather's mom, Diane, worked at the Disney Studios in the administration office. Later she worked with a film editor, and she's now in casting. But when Heather and her three older siblings were growing up, they were not encouraged to become performers. Not surprisingly, academic studies were stressed, and each Locklear child went dutifully through the Los Angeles school system and then on to college. "Mom and dad pushed us to study hard and get somewhere," Heather remembers. Education was the family's focus.

The four years Heather spent at Newbury Park High School, however, did not provide her with happy memories. By her own admission she was neither the best of students nor part of the most popular crowd. Heather puts it bluntly, if painfully: "In high school I was nothing." That might not have been everyone's perception, but clearly Heather thought of herself as a loser. "When I started school, I had crooked teeth and was stick thin," she says, adding that her spindly frame wasn't by design: "My whole family is skinny." Ashamed of her appearance, Heather used to wear sweatshirts to school even on the hottest days, "to hide my bony arms and knobby elbows." Orthodontia would help straighten her pearly whites eventually, but the years spent wearing braces did nothing to help shore up her limp self-confidence. "I could never get up in front of the class to speak. My heart pounded so hard you could see my blouse move," she said. She was exaggerating, of course, but surely that was the way it felt to her. Heather was so painfully bashful that she once opted to take an F - a failing grade - rather than...?

Combining College and Commercials: But Not For Long

"When my friends suggested I give acting a try, I had to muster up as much courage as I could," she said, no doubt remembering the stinging rejection of not making the high school chearleading squad. But Heather remembered something else as well: how good she felt playing a part, not having to be herself. She also knew how well commercials paid. Making money for herself was a big motivation.

With that in mind, during her freshman year she enrolled in a commercials workshop. The course didn't teach acting technique so much as it provided advice on how to get work doing TV commercials. Before she'd completed the course, however, and in that fairy-tale way that only happens...well, in fairy tales, she was spotted by a talent agent from Wilhelmina Artists who whisked her off into the exciting world of show biz.

She started modestly, modeling for print catalogs. But within only a few months, while still in her first year at college, she began landing lucrative TV ads. Heather appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, in which she smiled and braided her long blond hair; and Tame creme rinse, in which she smiled and flipped her luxuriant blond hair. She posed with Pepsi at Disneyland and winked at James Garner during a Polaroid spot. Before long she'd racked up a total of sixteen commercials.

At first it was all very exciting. She would run up and down the dorm corridors searching for someone with a TV, so she could see herself when one of her ads was running. Her friends were thrilled for her; her parents, just a little less so. Of course, they had reason for concern, for Heather soon found it hard to combine the grind of early morning lectures with the heady flush of TV success. One morning, after having pulled an all- nighter to complete a paper, Heather decided she'd had enough. "It was five A.M., and I just said, 'That's it.' I wasn't interested [in school] anymore." She marched into her dad's office to give him the news: "I'm quitting college. I'm going to do TV full-time." Looking back, she realized, "I never even found out what grade I got on that paper - I didn't care." That happened during the first semester of her sophomore year.

Understandably, Bill Locklear was less than thrilled. But Heather persevered and, in the end, triumphed. Didn't take her very long either. Within nine months of quitting college, she'd launched a career. She did a few more commercials while auditioning for acting roles. Soon bit parts in TV shows began coming her way.

Heather's first role was in TV's cops-on-cycles series, "CHiPs." She played a teen hostage. She'll never forget her first line: "Make them stop! Please make them stop!" Well, it was a start. And being rescued by two teen idols-of-the-moment, Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox, wasn't so bad either.

Heather nailed numerous bit parts and guest-star roles after that. She played another hostage in "240- Robert," which starred Mark Harmon. She appeared in "The Fall Guy," where another blond California Heather - last name, Thomas - ruled; over the next several years, the two would often be compared and confused by viewers. And she was cast as Willie Aames's love interest on "Eight is Enough." She was in the "Beverly Hillbillies Special," and she finally got to be a baton-twirler - if not in real life, then in reel life - in an NBC special movie called "Twirl."

She followed those appearances with featured roles in "Matt Houston," "Hotel," "The Love Boat," and "Fantasy Island," the last two of which were produced by Aaron Spelling Productions. That company and, more specifically, the man behind it, would come to play a very large role in Heather Locklear's life and career.

To hear Heather tell it, in spite of having left school to become an actress, and despite her easy-come success at television, she still "didn't take it all that seriously." But that attitude took a sharp turn in the spring of 1981 when, on the advice of her agent, she answered a large "cattle call" audition for another Aaron Spelling production, a television series called "Dynasty."

"Dynasty" Days: "Hey, You Might Just Have a Career"

"We decided to add a young person to the cast, a fun character who could eat hamburgers and slide down banisters," said producer Elaine Rich, explaining why she put out a casting call for a new "Dynasty" player. The character would be called Sammy Jo Dean. She would be playing Linda Evans's niece, so she had to resemble the fair-haired star. But Sammy Jo was from the wrong side of the tracks, and also had to have a bit of a bad-girl spark to her. Over 450 Sammy Jo wanna-be's tried out, and when "Dynasty" returned in November 1981 for its second season, it was Heather Locklear who'd locked up the part - make that, one very excited Heather Locklear.

She remembers exactly how she felt at the time. "When I was told that I got the part, I was moving out of my college apartment. There was no one there to tell...Dad was in a meeting. There was no one. I remember going downstairs to find someone - the mailman, even. And I wondered what people would think, people like my first grade teacher. I wondered, were people going to change toward me? Was I going to change toward them?" Heather hoped not. "That night I prayed that if I got a big head or got too big for my britches, something would happen to me so I couldn't work anymore."

A noble, if bizarre, thought, but as it turned out, there was little chance of her getting too big for her britches. At least not right away.

The producers knew they'd taken a risk with the very raw Heather. Freely acknowledging that they had hired her because of her looks, at first, they wondered whether they'd made the right decision. "Dynasty" creator Esther Shapiro has sharp memories of the first time she saw Heather in rehearsal. "The look was there, but the experience wasn't," she told a reporter. "Heather was only twenty. I walked on the set one day, and she was doing a scene where she had to come through a door, pause, and then begin speaking. She came through the door all right, but couldn't seem to pause. I said, 'Oh, my God! Have her learn to count to three!'"

Ouch.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Elaine Rich had problems with Heather's voice. "I said, 'Send her to a voice coach to learn to lower that screech a couple of octaves,'" the producer remembers.

Gamely, Heather worked with an acting coach and a voice coach. She knew exactly why she'd been hired, but was determined to disprove the "looks great, can't act" stereotype, because she'd become quite serious about acting after landing the role in "Dynasty." "I thought, hey, wait a minute - you just might have a career here." Heather turned out to be a quick study, and though she couldn't have known it at the time, luck was very much on her side.

Sammy Jo had been dumped on the Carringtons by her dad - later played by Rock Hudson - and quickly made a play for their youngest son, Steven. She was eager to get her claws into the Carrington fortune, and during her season on the air, she and Steven got married.

Heather loved being on "Dynasty," and she loved playing vampy, trampy Sammy Jo, whose personality was so very far from her own. She could hardly believe her good fortune. "It all seemed too good to be true," she said - and it was. After thirteen weeks the writers ran out of juicy story lines for Steven and Sammy Jo. Through no fault of her own, Heather Locklear was dropped from the cast. "I had no contract, so I was out on my own," she lamented.

Not for long.

Although Heather's role wasn't particularly challenging - and the ratings weren't great - she felt she was becoming a better actress, and the network was about to renew the series. Off-camera, she'd gotten friendly with the cast; they were like her second family. She couldn't hear it at the time, but across town on the Culver City studio lot another "family" was calling for her. One year after letting her go, "Dynasty" suddenly wanted her back!

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