Audrey Landers

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Audrey Landers
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Nationality:	USA
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IMDb profile

Audrey Landers (born 18 July 1956) is an American actress, singer, songwriter and producer. To television audiences, she is best known for her role as Afton Cooper in the 1980s series Dallas, as well as various appearances in series from the late 1970s to the 1980s, including Battlestar Galactica.

Her younger sister, Judy Landers, is also a well-known actress who worked on Vega$ and the Glen Larson series, B.J. and the Bear. Due to their close-knit nature, both Audrey and Judy Landers were often the combined focus of various news publication articles of the 1970s and 1980s, notably the January 1983 issue of Playboy magazine, a non-nude pictorial in which both Landers' sisters appear in lingerie.

Biography

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Landers and her fellow sister, Judy, were raised solely by their mother, Ruth, after their father "drifted away". Ruth Landers, a professional model at the time, subsequently relocated herself and her family to Rockland County, New York, where she introduced a three-year old Audrey to show business when Audrey would accompany her on modeling assignments. It was since this that Audrey Landers pushed her mother to take her to auditions, as well as subscribing to various trade publications to find auditions.

At age 12, Landers assembled a demo tape of "The Apple Don't Fall Far From the Tree", which Landers' wrote, and sent it to Merv Griffin. This demo tape landed her an appearance on The Merv Griffin Show and an agent, although her mother still retained her status as Landers' manager. The aforementioned song also became a well-played, popular Country/Western single, which began a career that would result in 10 gold singles, 4 gold albums, and 2 platinum albums. None of which have been officially released in the United States

At 13, Landers auditioned for, and landed, a role on the daytime drama, The Secret Storm. Later on in 1974, she starred in the daytime soap, Somerset.

During her tenure at soaps, she participated in an accelerated program with advanced courses at Ramapo High School, where she maintained a straight-A average and graduated early, despite the demands from both the soaps and schooling. After graduating, Landers studied music composition at the Juilliard School in New York. She later majored in psychology at Columbia University, as well as earned a degree in pre-medicine. Despite this, she found that she was happier performing. Between both daytime dramas, which were filmed in New York, she took the summer off in 1973 for nearly four months to guest star on various television series, including Emergency! (which starred fellow BSG guest star, Rudloph Mantooth) and Marcus Wellby, M.D..

After completing Somerset in 1976, she moved to Los Angeles, California, and continued her guest starring career, which included Police Woman, Happy Days, Battlestar Galactica, and Charlie's Angels (which starred Cheryl Ladd). On these appearances, she lamented that "[t]he parts I was getting were nice, but nothing heavy. I guess I was spoiled by the soaps, where I got to do every sort of dramatic scene imaginable."

In 1981, while being managed by Stuart Ehrlich, she auditioned for the role of Afton Cooper on Dallas, which she later won in a competition that she recalled as being fierce. The role of Afton Cooper was originally a two-episode guest starring role, which was upgraded to a recurring role after she completed her first episode on the series. Despite her successful career at that point, she was propelled in the world spotlight due to this role, which she wished to use to further her singing career. It was Dallas that began her singing career in Europe, where she would travel back and forth between filming Dallas and performing in various shows. During this time, she made various appearances on Fantasy Island, as well as The Love Boat along with her sister, Judy. Outside of acting, she pursued various interests, spanning from donating time to charities to writing poetry, as well as songwriting.

During the seventh year of Dallas, she took a leave of absence to film Sir Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line, which took over a year to film and starred w:Michael Douglas. For the movie, which fared better overseas than in the United States, she rigorously trained for the role, which Attenborough himself commented on in interviews. According to landers, "He [Attenborough] always said in interviews that I wore out 2 dance coaches because I'd go in 3 hours before everybody came to work in the morning at 9 AM in the morning. Then I'd stay an additional 3 hours after everyone went home at night at 6 PM. So I had 6 hours of additional dance training a day." After training for months, the movie took five months to film, and was shot entirely in New York's [[w:Mark Hellinger Theatre|.

External Links

• Landers Productionz website