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Redbook
Magazine - July 14th, 1999
Heather
Locklear - Long live Amanda!
Without
a show to call her own for the first time in seven years, television's
favorite vixen, Heather Locklear, confronts her deepest fears about the
future.
The cast and crew of
Melrose Place gathered at the Century Club in Century City, California,
in March to bid an emotional farewell to the show that had become a
national guilty pleasure. After filling their plates from an overflowing
buffet, the partygoers hit the dance floor and the blackjack and
roulette tables that had been rolled in for the occasion. When the piles
of chips had all been gambled away, Melrose executive producer Aaron
Spelling climbed onstage. A veteran producer with a miles-long list of
hit shows to his credit (Beverly Hills, 90210; Dynasty; Charlie's
Angels), he'd hosted good-bye parties like this many times. But
something was different that night - he just couldn't address the cast
and crew alone. So he brought up the woman he calls his "good luck
charm": Heather Locklear. Holding hands with Spelling, tears
filling her eyes, Locklear thanked the assembled crowd and announced,
laughing, "If anyone needs a special guest star; I'm
available."
The end of her reign as Melrose Place's
"special guest star" - and the bitchiest landlord and
advertising executive on television - has left Locklear, 37, without a
steady paycheck for the first time in recent memory. It's certainly an
unwelcome situation for a woman who once said she "could never get
enough work. I always worry about work - that it will go away tomorrow
or that I'm not going to be good." She's been here before: With the
end of Dynasty in 1989, she found herself making do with cheesy movies
of the week, an exercise video, and a forgettable role in a forgettable
movie called The Return of Swamp Thing, until Spelling came calling with
the sink-your-teeth-into-it role of Amanda Woodward.
While Spelling may again come to her
rescue, Locklear won't be waiting by the phone. Her latest role - that
of devoted mother and wife (to Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, 40) -
is clearly the one she loves most.
Her 21-month-old daughter; Ava Elizabeth,
was a constant presence on the set during the waning days of Melrose.
Whenever Locklear was doing a scene, Ava "never took her eyes off
her mother," reports Carol Mendelsohn, executive producer and
writer for Melrose Place. "She even walks like Heather," adds
Melrose writer and director Charles Pratt Jr. During takes, the baby
wouldn't utter a peep. "It was almost as if she was born on that
set. She must have been listening to that call, 'Rolling,' in utero and
knew that it meant you had to keep quiet." Mendelsohn says Ava was
born to perform: "She can dance. [Melrose costar] Jamie Luner
incited her to do it."
Sambora would also put in the occasional
on-set appearance. And though he politely turned down requests to play
the guitar, his music was used over the show's credits for three
episodes.
THE DEN MOTHER OF MELROSE PLACE
Locklear's costars credit her arrival
with a dramatic jump in the ratings. "She deserves a lot of credit
for our success," said Courtney Thorne-Smith, whose character,
Allison Parker; was Amanda's recurring victim. "She brought an
element we really needed - a villain. And she brought her energy."
Yet from the start, Locklear refused any
star treatment. "I've never heard her complain about a
script," says Spelling. "I've never heard her complain about
dialogue. I've never heard her complain to the wardrobe woman. And she's
never been late." Instead of hiding out in her trailer between
scenes, Locklear would tromp around the often heavily air-conditioned
set, clad in her fur-lined boots to keep her warm.
Her eating habits were another of her
endearing on-set idiosyncrasies. "Heather eats the worst food in
the world," says Melrose costar James Darren, who played Tony
Marlin and directed a few episodes. "I don't know how she manages
to look like that. My mother used to say you are what you eat. Well,
Heather has put a lie to that. We were on the set early one morning, and
they came around and asked what we wanted for breakfast. Heather ordered
a cheeseburger."
"She was always eating," agrees
Mendelsohn. "During rehearsal she would sit on a little sofa near
the door and eat hamburgers and fries while saying her lines between
bites." Mindful of her love of Taco Bell, the producers would order
up lots of MexiMelts and soft tacos for everyone on late nights.
"She was the glue that held the set
together;" says Darren. "Everyone loved her; they would do
anything for her."
Darren Star, the creator of Melrose
Place, couldn't agree more: "She's funny, self-deprecating, and
warm. She has a natural charisma, and that's what makes people
stars."
"I think her beauty gets in the way
of how people look at her;" adds Stephen Gyllenhaal, who directed
her in the 1996 TV movie Shattered Mind. "She's extremely
smart."
Even crafty at times: "We found that
the beginning of [Shattered Mind] just didn't work," recalls
Gyllenhaal, "but the network wouldn't give us any more money to
reshoot it." So Locklear invited the crew over to her house to film
it again with her home video camera. "And the network never knew
it."
At the start of the show's final season,
Locklear added another title to her credits: coproducer. "Knowing
Heather; it's hard to imagine her as a producer;" says Darren.
"Producers are supposed to crack the whip, and that is so unlike
her. But I think she did it to help the show along artistically. She
wanted it to be good, unlike a lot of producers, who only care if it's
on time."
"She was like a den mother;"
recalls Mendelsohn. "She wanted everyone to get along."
Locklear has come a long way since her
days as Sammy Jo Dean in Dynasty. Her career was launched when her
father; Bill, the director of the registrar's office at the University
of California at Los Angeles, recommended that his daughter pose for the
cover of a campus sportswear catalog. As it happens - this is Hollywood,
after all - two alums of the school who were casting agents saw the
cover.
"They called me in and I couldn't
even speak," she has said. "My voice was really high. And they
said, 'Oh my God, what'll we do?'" What they did was send Locklear
out on calls for such products as Pepsi and Polaroid - commercials where
she didn't have to say anything, just pose.
She soon found herself auditioning for
Aaron Spelling, who promptly plunked her into his hit show Dynasty, then
cast her in another series, T.J. Hooker, at the same time. "All the
guys on the show were in love with her;" recalls costar William
Shatner. "She flirted with all of us. The three male actors on T.J.
Hooker were torn between a feeling of lust and a feeling of protection.
Unfortunately, protection won out."
Shatner wonders if Locklear paid a heavy
price for achieving so much so soon. "It's an unnatural state of
affairs for anyone to get all that money and acclaim at a young
age," he says. "Heather was 20 when she came on the show.
Perhaps she paid for it in the turbulence of her personal life. What you
eventually learn is that it's all meaningless - the money and the fame -
unless you have love in your life too."
Locklear has also acknowledged that it
was a rough way to learn. "I hated making mistakes," she has
said. "When I was growing up, I wanted to be the perfect girl.
That's why I can't say no a lot." Which might explain her
attraction to "bad boys" like first husband Tommy Lee, the
drummer for Motley Crue. "It was a way of living through
someone," she has said. "I rebelled through Tommy. I couldn't
do it, so I watched him do it. Let's not forget that my dad was a
colonel in the Marines."
Though Spelling admits he was shocked by
her wild streak (on meeting Lee, he has said, "I almost had a heart
attack"), he believes it adds to her talent. "You'd think
Heather came from Iowa and was so sweet and innocent that she should
star in Little Women," he once joked. "But she has a streak
that likes fast cars and tattoos and rock stars. It's what makes her a
good actress - she wants to experience life."
AT LONG LAST, LOVE
"The biggest misconception about me
is that I'm like Amanda," Locklear has said. "I put on the
clothes, and I read the lines." Even so, she has admitted, "I
think I've learned from Amanda. She does things I wouldn't do."
Perhaps that's why she was "wild about playing a bitch," as
Spelling once put it. "[Amanda] came along at a time in my life
when I needed to confront myself and other people, both personally and
in business, and say things that I would normally be afraid to
say," Locklear has said. "This character has helped me to be
strong."
That strength sustained her while she
went through rocky times. After a highly public split from Lee, a friend
fixed her up with Sambora; they married less than a year later. The
divorce from Lee hadn't made her gun-shy, Locklear said, only more
determined to make a marriage work and have children. In the aftermath
of the divorce, "I didn't know if I'd ever fall in love
again," she told an interviewer. "At first I was a little
pathetic. I thought, I'll just take what comes along. That lasted about
a minute. Then I was just testing myself to find out who I really was
and what I really felt, rather than keeping everything inside. I was
never good at communicating my feelings, confronting people. But divorce
made me see what I wanted."
Early in her relationship with Sambora,
she said, "I don't even know if it is love, but I know
compatibility and who I am and who he is. We're the same, we're not
opposites. We mirror each other. So it's not so much that I know I'm in
love now, it's that the second time around I know what I want. And I
know it's not just lust."
On October 4, 1997, Ava entered the world
after 35 hours of labor that ended with a cesarean section. Locklear
remembers her pregnancy as one of the best times of her life, because
her husband was so attentive. He even serenaded the baby while she was
still in the womb.
"He was very sweet," she
recalled shortly after the birth. "During those 35 hours, he went
out and bought a rose for me and a rose for the baby." Locklear
noted that Ava inherited her nose and her mouth. But as a newborn,
"She had a round face, and that's more like Richie. And she came
out with really big feet. I said, 'Oh, Richie, that's what she got from
you, big feet.'"
Rumors abound about Locklear's next move:
another TV series, a feature film, more modeling for L'Oreal. In one
version of the series finale of Melrose Place (which hadn't aired at
press time), her character faked her own death and then snuck off with
one of her ex-husbands. Was this one of those Dallas-like endings, which
would allow the show's creators to bring Amanda back someday in her own
series? Spelling isn't giving anything away, though he's quick to say
he'd cast her again. "Hell, yes, although it would have to be a
show worthy of her."
In the past, Locklear has entertained the
idea of going back to school or moving into comedy. "It would be
fun to be a kook, a nut," she has said. "She'd be great in a
comedy," Spelling says. "I'd have thought every studio in town
would have a holding deal with her now. But I don't know how much she
wants to work now, what with the baby and all."
"I think the hardest lesson I've had
to learn is not to put all your eggs in one basket," Locklear said
after she landed the Melrose gig. "Things change from one day to
the next. I'm very lucky. The good that I've had so far outweighs the
bad. I know that this go-round with my career, that it could go away
tomorrow. So I appreciate it. But I keep in mind that if it all goes
away tomorrow, I may have another chance."
We'll be waiting.
By
Jim Calio |
