 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 By Jim Calio
 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 Mötley Crüe. "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'Oréal. 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.
|
