MARCIA CROSS as Dr. Kimberly Shaw (1992-97)
Marcia never had any doubts that she would grow up to become an actor, although later in life she considered a career change.
“All of my friends were like, 'When I get married, I'm going to have my bridesmaids wear mint-green dresses. But all I wanted was to be an actress and go to New York."
The Marlborough, Mass native was accepted at Julliard School, a performing arts school in Manhattan, and recalled that she "saw my first cockroach and hooker and I was in heaven.
"I came to New York pretty much a naïve kid. However, that naivete was soon pushed aside and I began learning my craft.”
Marcia first appeared on TV on the daytime soap “The Edge of Night” during its final six months on the air, followed by a stint on “One Life to Live.” Before “Melrose” she played Rebecca Howe’s (Kirstie Alley) younger sister in “Cheers” and appeared in TV shows “Who’s the Boss?” and “Knots Landing.”
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
THE WOMEN OF "MELROSE PLACE": Heather Locklear, Josie Bissett, Marcia Cross, Jamie Luner, Laura Leighton, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Kristin Davis, Kelly Rutherford, Brooke Langston, Daphne Zuniga, Lisa Rinna
"Melrose Place" was bitching TV, tailored for its cool and hip audience of the 1990s, The stars were young and beautiful, most of them in their 20s or early 30s. Even the series' breakout star, Heather Locklear, was only in her mid-30s during Melrose-mania.
Melrose was soap opera TV served up for a prime time audience with its usual fare of bizarre, implausible storylines: affairs, adultery, divorce, jealously, backstabbing, amensia, kidnapping, murder... everyday stuff for the apartment dwellers of 4616 Melrose Place.
"Melrose" had its share of good looking men, but it was the stunning women that kept men glued to the show.
Here are the top female stars of "Melrose Place."
HEATHER LOCKLEAR as Amanda Woodward (1993-97)
Amanda was written into "Melrose" in Season 2 to add spice to the storyline and shore up ratings after a dismal first season. And did she ever spice up the show!
As the ruthless advertising executive, Amanda was named as one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years by Entertainment Weekly and was included in TV Guide's list of Best TV Bitches.
"It's more fun to be the flamboyant one," she said on her website, www.heather-locklear.net. "When you're playing these outrageous characters, it gives you freedom to do so much that we could never do in real ife."
Playing the four-time married Amanda, Heather was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards. When Heather returned to the 2009 edition of the series, the Los Angeles Times proclaimed: "The world's cruelest miniskirt-wearing landlady, boss and sex kitten is coming back to Melrose Place."
No. 14
DAPHNE ZUNIGA as Jo Reynolds (1992-96)
When the new 2009 "Melrose Place" was in the development stage, Daphne made it clear she wasn't happy with her paycheck from the first go-around.
"I've said that if we were going to do a reunion, they have to pay me the money they should have paid me when I did the original."
She did return, however, for two episodes in 2009-10.
In the original "Melrose," Daphne played Jo, a photographer who moved to LA from New York to escape her abusive husband.. Afterwards, Daphne was disappointed to discover that producers weren't clamoring to hire Melrose actors.
"After I finished 'Melrose Place' I figured I'd just go right into indie movies, but the Sundance gang didn't really want to hear from 'Melrose' people," Daphne said in an interview posted on www.Zap2It.com.
"More importantly, I needed to find out who I was. 'Melrose' was so huge. I looked in the mirror and became confused about who I'd become to give people what I thought they wanted. I needed time to just travel and hang out and fade away a bit. I didn't necessarily want it all the time, but I know now how much I needed it."
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Melrose Place
JOSIE BISSETT as Jane Mancini (1992-97)
Although she missed most of one season by leaving the show after Season 5 after suffering a miscarriage, Josie was the only female character to appear in both the series premeire and the finale.
"I needed to stop and it was fortunate that it worked out so I could," Josie said of her hiatus from "Melrose." "What I learned was to listen to my body, follow my instincts."
Jane endured a rocky marriage with Dr. Michael Mancini, then discovered that he was also sleeping with sister Sydney (Laura Leighton).
With a longer blonde shag cut, Josie returned as the new landlord to the 2009 edition of the series. She inherited her sister Sydney's real estate, as well as some of her scheming ways.
Marcia’s Kimberly was a doctor who staged and on-again, off-again relationship with Dr. Michael Mancini during her five seasons on the show. Kimberly died after suffering an aneurysm.
While “Melrose” launched Marcia’s career, “Desperate Housewives” turned her into a full-fledged TV star. As Bree Van de Kamp, She appeared in 177 of the show’s 180 episodes and was nominated for a Golden Globe award.
“I will miss Bree immensely,” Marcia said in an interview with www.digitalspy.ca before the series ended in 2012. “We’ve tackled marriages, babies, death… She will be like an old friend that I will miss dearly, although as an actor you always look forward to doing other things.”
Comparing the two biggest TV shows of her career, Marcia told www.assignmentx.com, “I thought of Melrose Place as like Andy Warhol and I think of this [“Desperate Housewives”] as like [the paintings of] Francis Bacon. One was like pop art, but it was like of its time and very famous, but [Housewives] is much more complicated and rich and interesting.”
JAMIE LUNER as Lexi Sterling (1997-99)
Jamie has made a career out of playing the sexy redhead vixen.
"I love playing the vamp, and I get sent out [to audition] for a lot of that stuff, maybe because I do it well," she said.
A year before "Melrose," she was cast as the devious Peyton Richards, a character described as "the latest bitch from Aaron Spelling and she makes Dynasty's Alexis look like your fairy godmother," in the nighttime soap "Savannah."
Originally Jamie was set to play a good girl in that prime-time soap that lasted just one season.
"In the middle of the audtion I was asked if I could play a bad girl," she said in an interview with The Mirror. "I went into the bathroom, got out of my neat little skirt and jacket and let my hair down. I put on a slinky dress, and I guess they saw a wicked twinkle in my eye because I got the part. It's more fun being a bitch."
Jamie said while she worked on "Savannah," "people kept coming up to me calling me a bitch."
COURTNEY THORNE-SMITH as Alison Parker (1992-97)
Over the past 20-plus years, Courteney has landed in one successful TV series after another.
After a five-year stint as Alison, Courtney became series regular Georgia Thomas in “Ally McBeal” (1997-2002). Then came a nine-year run as Cheryl, Jim Belushi’s TV wife in “According to Jim.” And since 2010, Courtney has played Lindsey MacElroy, the love interest of Jon Cryer’s character in “Two and a Half Men.”
“It’s so interesting that as I’ve gone from show to show that the demographic is different,” Courtney told the website www.tvequals.com. “Different people come up to me. There’s the ‘Ally’ people, the ‘Melrose’ people, the ‘According to Jim’ people and now the ‘Two and a Half Men’ people and they’re very different. It’s funny. I could almost tell you when someone comes up to me where they know me from. "
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When she signed on for “Housewives,” Marcia never dreamed the series would endure. She had gone back to school, earned her masters degree in psychology at Antioch University in 2003 and considered giving up acting to become a therapist.
“I went from thinking I was giving up my acting career to working on a hugely successful show.”
Marcia’s resolve caught the attention of Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry.
“When I wrote the character of Bree, I thought that her strength is that she’s a woman who says, ‘I’m not going to freak out when my life is falling apart. I’m going to take action and do something,” Cherry said in a Good Housekeeping article. “Marcia has a similar quality. She’s had hard times, but she’s smart enough to say, ‘I’m going to deal with it and move on.’
“I’ve met a lot of actors who are neurotic and let their struggles incapacitate them. Marcia is not the type to be incapacitated by anything.”
Courtney as Alison worked in the advertising business and also waitressed at Shooters, the favorite bar of the Melrose crowd. Alison was set to marry Billy Campbell (Andew Shue), but when she recalled the memories of being molested by her father as a child, she fled the ceremony.
"On Melrose nobody thought we got the joke. They would look at us sadly,” Courtney said. “Daphne Zuniga and I would start scenes, and we'd go, 'OK, wait. Are we friends? Did I just make you lose your baby? Did you just steal my boyfriend?' We weren't kidding, we'd have to figure it out."
Born in San Francisco, Courtney studied acting at the Ensemble Theatre Company in northern California. She appeared in 7 episodes of “Fast Times” and six episodes of “L.A. Law.”
Courtney branched out into writing, publishing the novel “Outside In” in 2007, the story of a TV actress.
“It was something I always wanted to do. I started writing and all of a sudden I started to write these characters. I just decided to commit and by the end of the year I had a book. As a writer, it was all mine."
Her character on "Melrose" stormed into town as the new bitch in Season 4 and created a heap of trouble with her take-no-prisoners approach to sleeping with men.
"I always have fond memories of 'Melrose Place,'" Jamie, a native of Palo Alto, said. "It was such an incredible show to be on. It's pop culture history, and one of those iconic shows... To come in as such a powerful character and be in a rivalry with Heather Locklear was so much fun. My character was written up to always be up to something. It was a blast to work on."
LAURA LEIGHTON as Sydney Andrews (1993-97)
Originally written to appear in just two episodes, Sydney developed into series’ most multi-faceted character and Laura relished the opportunity to play her.
“The nature of Sydney’s character is using sex,” Laura, who was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1995, said. “It’s all part of her plan.”
The older sister of Jane Mancini (Josie Bissett), Sydney was both a scheming blackmailer who poached on Jane’s ex-husband, and a victim, who was buried in a pit and locked in a psychiatric ward for a crime she didn’t commit.
People magazine named Laura as one of its 50 Most Beautiful People in 1996 and observed, “When the divinely twisted Sydney flashes a smile, something deliciously baaaad is going to happen.”
Although she was presumed killed in an automobile accident, more than a decade later, Laura reprised the role in the 2009 version of the show.
When she was hired the first time, Laura said she was working as a bartender “Struggling to make my rent and driving a cruddy little car with no air conditioning… I drove that to the set of my guest-starring episode and it wasn’t until I became a series regular that I got a new car with air conditioning and power windows.”
Comparing the two Melrose series, Laura said in an interview with www.thetvaddict.com, “It is definitely a nighttime soap, but this version is definitely modern and much more sophisticated than in the 90s, and I was there for that one. It’s more sophisticated cinematically and it’s more dark and edgier. It’s been everyone’s pleasant surprise to tune in and say, ‘Wow, they’ve done some interesting things with the show.’”
When her contract expired after the 1997 season, Laura left “Melrose” and was hired by Spelling as Sophie Burns on “Beverly Hills 90210” for a six-figure salary per episode.
Since 2010 Laura, a native of Iowa City, has starred in the ABC Family series “Pretty Little Liars.”
She called the series “Teen Noir” and described her character as “a single mother who keeps up appearances in the well to do community but struggles financially.”
ADD line or two
KRISTIN DAVIS as Brooke Armstrong (1995-96)
People magazine called Brooke, "The Nasty Girl... the perfectly manicured minx who ruthlessly stole saintly Billy."
Kristin said that people approached her on the street and called her the most evil woman on "Melrose."
For a character who appeared in only 32 episodes over one season, Kristin made quiet an impression.
KELLY RUTHERFORD as Megan Lewis (1996-99)
Kelly was one of the few Melrose actors to achieve success in the 21st century. She continued an enjoyable run as Lily van der Woodsen on the CW teen drama "Gossip Girl," 2007-12.
Kelly said she could easily relate to the extremely wealthy New York City socialite character, an ex-ballerina mother to Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) who’d been married and divorced numerous times.
“I don’t think it’s changed my style,” she said in a 2010 interview with www.pagedaily.com. “I’ve lived on the Upper East Side my whole life, so the character made sense to me, her style made sense to me. And having a role to express that? That’s the most exciting part.”
Kelly appeared in 90 episodes as Megan, an ex-prostitute whom Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross) hired to have sex with her husband Michael (Thomas Calabro).
A native of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Kelly said she took some of the clothes from “Melrose,” but she always felt like she was playing the character when she wore them.
Now in her mid 40s, Kelly’s stunning gorgeous looks still turn heads.
The website Askmen.com raved: “What a comely cougar she is. Silky blonde hair? Check. Penetrating green eyes? Yup. And what about pouty lips? Damn straight.”
BROOKE LANGTON as Samantha Reilly (1996)
When Brooke earned her first important acting gig – a guest spot on the TV series “Freshman Dorm” with Matthew Fox in 1992 -- she almost blew the opportunity.
“I decided to celebrate [getting the job] by taking a road trip to Big Sur for the weekend,” she told Flaunt magazine. “I got back to nature – really back to nature – in the buff and got completely covered with poison something.
“I showed up for work, and Matthew looked completely repulsed that he had to touch me. I decided I would never play Jane in the Jungle again.”
Brooke starred in Season 4 as Samantha, the roommate of Jane (Josie Bissett) who married and eventually divorced Billy Campbell (Andrew Shue).
Born in an Arizona copper mining town, Brooke was raised in Illinois and Texas, and studied marine biology at San Diego State University. “The chemistry killed me, but I’m a sea creature. I have to be near the water. I love swimming, scuba diving – all outdoor stuff. Everything about me is tomboyish.”
Brooke modeled in Japan before she became an actress.
“I was never really a model. I did silly Japanese commercials wearing green lipstick with a dozen braids spouting from my head holding some liquid. Sometimes I didn’t even know what the product was, but I said my lines in Japanese even when I didn’t know what I was saying.”
Brooke was killed off when she drowned in the Melrose pool after hitting her head during a fall while getting intoxicated.
Kristin noted that after she left "Melrose" she was afraid that she'd only be offered roles as a "beast," but of course, "Sex and the City" came along and resurrected her career.
"I am blessed to have had a rich, wonderful creative success with 'Sex and the City,'" she said..
Brooke’s most notable film roles has been as Annabelle Farrell in the Keanu Reeves’ movie “The Replacements,” and as Nikki in the Jon Faveau classic “Swingers.” She continues to act in a number of film and TV projects.
“Not too many people know who I am, and I think that’s good,” she said. “I’ve tried to keep myself quiet the whole time, and my idea of the perfect professional situation is for some people to know my name, but not know anything about me.”
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Daphne returned to TV as a regular for "American Dreams" (2004-05), cast as a liberal single mother/Playboy bunny who, along with her teenage son, moved in next door to an ultra-conversative family.
"It's not a lawyer, it's not a cop, it's not even someone particularly book-smart," she said of her character, Shelly Pierce. "I just wanted to play a happy, sexy gal, and that's what really attracted me to this."
A year later she starred in another TV series, "Beautiful People," playing a mother who moved from New Mexico to New York to get a new start and work in the fashion world.
From 2008-12, Daphne starred in 42 episodes of "One Tree Hill."
LISA RINNA as Taylor McBride (1996-97)
Post-Melrose, Lisa stayed in the spotlight due to competing on "Dancing With the Stars" and posing nude for Playboy twice, 11 years apart.
Lisa told Sean Hannity that "DWTS" "inspired me mind, body and soul. I don't know why the dancing show would transform me. But it did. I've kept up the dancing. And I've been able to keep this body."
Lisa famously posed nude for Playboy while six months pregnant in 1998, then 11 years later she made an encore appearance in the magazine, showing off her stunning 45-year-old body.
"I'm 45 years old. I l;ook good right now. Why not celebrate the beauty of the female body?" she said. "When your body looks like that, you almost want to walk down the grocery aisle naked."
Lisa, as Taylor, appeared in "Melrose's" fifth season as the younger sister of Peter Burns' deceased ex-wife. Lisa starred in 66 episodes.
Born in Medford, Oregon, Lisa got her start acting in music videos. She earned a part in "Days of our Lives" in 1992, and has had three stints playing Billie Reed, including working on the show in 2013.
Lisa hosted "Soap Talk" for four season, receiving a Daytime Emmy nomination, then got back into acting appearing in numerous TV and film projects, including appearances on "Veronica Mars."
"I got hit with the acting bug again," she said. "I've been doing all these talk shows, but I loved series work and might do that again."
In 2009, Lisa published "Rinnavation," a self-help/semi-autobiographical book that she said began as a diet and fitness book.
"The whole thing morphed into a book about everything that I believe in," including spicing up a woman's sex life. "I go into sex in a way that people will be really shocked by. I am very open about things that I feel witll help women."
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