List of Melrose Place characters


Melrose Place is an American prime time television soap opera that aired on Fox from July 8, 1992, to May 24, 1999, for seven seasons. The series follows the lives of a group of young adults living in an apartment complex at 4616 Melrose Place, in West Hollywood, California. Created by Darren Star and executive produced by Aaron Spelling, Melrose Place stars an ensemble cast that includes Josie Bissett, Thomas Calabro, Doug Savant, Grant Show, Andrew Shue, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Daphne Zuniga, Heather Locklear, Laura Leighton and Marcia Cross.
A continuation of the series, also called Melrose Place, aired for one season from September 8, 2009, to April 13, 2010, on The CW.

Overview

;Cast notes

Main cast members

Jane Mancini

Jane is portrayed by Josie Bissett.

Michael Mancini

Michael is portrayed by Thomas Calabro.

Sandy Harling

Sandy is portrayed by Amy Locane. Sandy is an aspiring actress from South Carolina, and Rhonda's roommate. During her duration on the show, she works at Shooters, the group's favorite bar. It is revealed that she was once in a relationship with Jake Hanson. She leaves in the thirteenth episode of season one, after getting a job on a soap opera in New York City. After her departure, she is only mentioned again once in season 1 episode 14, when Rhonda is looking for a new roommate.

Billy Campbell

Billy is portrayed by Andrew Shue. In the pilot, he moves in with Alison Parker after her roommate moves out in the middle of the night. In the first season he is an aspiring writer and taxi driver. He later works for a newspaper, and later starts working at D&D Advertising with Alison and Amanda. His relationship with Alison starts off platonically. In season one, he dates Amanda briefly and she becomes pregnant with his child, but soon miscarries. After this, he and Alison become a couple. He and Alison get engaged in season two, but she gets cold feet on the day of the wedding due to personal issues with her father. Despite no having a romantic relationship with Alison, he's always there to help her during times of need. At the end of season three, after Alison moves to Hong Kong for a job offer, he marries his coworker Brooke Armstrong. His marriage to Brooke puts a strain on his friendship with Alison. After Brooke's death, Billy becomes very angry and hostile towards others. These feelings eventually go away, after he visits Brooke's grave.
In season 5, he begins a romance with Samantha Reilly, and in season 6 they get married. The marriage ends after Samantha has an affair with baseball player, Jeff Baylor, the same time that Billy became interested in Jennifer Mancini. Billy and Jennifer fell in love, and in season 7, Billy receives a job offer in Rome, and the two leave Melrose Place together.

Matt Fielding

Matt is portrayed by Doug Savant.

Jake Hanson

Jake is portrayed by Grant Show.

Alison Parker

Alison is portrayed by Courtney Thorne-Smith. Alison is originally from Wisconsin. She has many romances during the show, perhaps the most notable being with Billy Campbell. She works at D&D Advertising during much of the series. Alison also experiences many traumas during the course of the show; in season one, she moves to Seattle with her boyfriend Keith Gray. She travels to Los Angeles to attend the funeral of Billy's father, and while she's there she decides to break up with Keith and move back to L.A. Keith returns to Los Angeles to try and win Alison back, and when she tells him she does not want a relationship with him, he attempts to rape her. He later commits suicide while talking to her on the phone. It is revealed in the season two finale that her father molested her. In season three, she develops a drinking problem, which causes many problems with her friends and coworkers, and she is sent to a rehab center. When Kimberly Shaw blows up the apartment complex in the season four premiere, Alison is left temporarily blind. After recovering, she dates and marries Hayley Armstrong, Brooke's father. Hayley dies soon after by accidentally falling off of his yacht while drunk. When he dies, she finds out that he tricked her into signing divorce papers, and therefore Alison does not receive any of his money.
Alison eventually leaves D&D Advertising. At one point she was working at the bar Shooters, during which she fell in love with Jake. Initially, Alison and Jake wanted to keep their relationship a secret from their exes, Billy and Jane, respectively. In season 5, Alison becomes pregnant with Jake's baby and he proposes to her. She doesn't feel ready to have a child just yet and considers an abortion. She and Jake go to a courthouse to get married, but she gets cold feet. She eventually decides to keep the baby, and after a brief separation from Jake, they get back together. Eventually, Alison is told that her pregnancy is life-threatening, and must get an abortion in order to survive. She is later told that she can never have kids. Jake is okay with this, and they get married. During their honeymoon, Alison's alcoholism returns. They are later rejected by an adoption agency when the agent discovers that they own a bar and that she's an alcoholic. Alison feels that she is taking away Jake's dream to start a family, and she pushes him back to his son and the boy's mother, Colleen.
After her break-up with Jake, Alison moves to Atlanta, leaving the show. A year later, Amanda, having kept in touch with Alison, reveals that she had problems adjusting to Atlanta, and that she is back in rehab.

Rhonda Blair

Rhonda is portrayed by Vanessa A. Williams. Rhonda is a fitness instructor. She is also Sandy's roommate and Matt's confidante. She had a relationship with Terrence Haggard, whom she broke up with after he proposed to her too soon. However, they soon reconciled and she proposed to Terrence, who accepted. She moves out of the apartment building sometime after season one after her engagement. After her departure, she is only mentioned twice, in the second-season premiere and the sixth-season premiere, both by Matt.

Jo Reynolds

Jo is portrayed by Daphne Zuniga.

Amanda Woodward

Amanda is portrayed by Heather Locklear.

Sydney Andrews

Sydney is portrayed by Laura Leighton.

Kimberly Shaw

Kimberly Shaw was portrayed by Marcia Cross for the first five seasons from 1992 to 1997.
Kimberly first appears in the first season as a resident doctor at Wilshire Memorial, as a colleague of Michael Mancini. The two become friends, and begin to have an affair. In later seasons, it is revealed that Kimberly has severe mental problems, including dissociative identity disorder. In the final season, she is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Brooke Armstrong

Brooke was portrayed by Kristin Davis. Brooke was introduced in season three as the daughter of Hayley Armstrong, a wealthy businessman, and she was first an intern and then an employee at D&D Advertising. She immediately took an interest in Billy and they began a relationship, though Brooke didn't inform Billy that she was engaged at the time to a man named Lowell. Brooke broke it off with Lowell and, wanting to have Billy all to herself, did her best to cut others out of his life. This was especially true with regard to Alison Parker, whom Brooke convinced to move to Hong Kong. After Alison moved to Hong Kong Brooke and Billy continued their relationship and eventually became engaged, marrying at Brooke's father's estate. Hayley didn't have a lot of respect for Billy and was not convinced the marriage is a good idea, but went along with it to make Brooke happy. Brooke and Billy's marriage had some high points, but they had issues with trust and at one point, Brooke was lying to Billy about being pregnant. She originally thought she was pregnant but then learned she was having a hysterical pregnancy, and rather than telling Billy the truth she pretended she'd lost the baby in a miscarriage.
After Brooke's father died, she learned that he had changed his will to disinherit her. Billy, fed up with Brooke's lying and controlling ways, decided to divorce her and she moved out of their shared apartment and into a hotel. In the season four episode "No Lifeguard on Duty", Brooke showed up at the Melrose Place apartment complex and antagonized Billy as he left the building. She then slipped at the side of the pool, hit her head on the edge, and drowned.

Peter Burns

Peter is portrayed by Jack Wagner. Dr. Peter Burns first appears in the third season as the chief of staff at Wilshire Memorial Hospital, where Michael, Kimberly and Matt also work. He has been in a relationship with Amanda several times. He is often very manipulative around people, particularly Michael and Amanda. In season four, after Kimberly is institutionalized, he takes a romantic interest in her, and also tries to help her get her life back together. Towards the end of season four, while Kimberly is running a mental hospital under the personality of "Betsy", she gets Peter institutionalized, despite the fact he is sane, while she is not. Michael and Amanda eventually rescue him. After he is rescued, it is revealed his real name is Peter Howell, and he was once married to a woman named Beth, now deceased.
In season five, it is revealed Beth is Taylor's sister, and he eventually starts a relationship with Taylor, while still married to Amanda. This affair would put an end to both his marriage, and Taylor's marriage to Kyle. As his relationship with Taylor began to deteriorate, Taylor told him she was pregnant in an attempt to save him. This plan does not work however, as he finds out the truth and humiliates her at their wedding.
Peter then entered a relationship with Lexi, but he broke up the relationship because he still had feelings for Amanda. Peter attempted to get Amanda back with no success, so he began a relationship with Eve. Soon after, Peter and Eve got married. Although Lexi tried to break them up, Peter and Eve stayed together. Their relationship began to fail however when Peter and Amanda went on a business trip and became close again, realizing they have always loved each other no matter who they are with, resulting in Peter being unfaithful to Eve. Eve and Peter then get divorced.
When Eve discovers Amanda was guilty of a murder she was imprisoned for prior to the show, Eve becomes mentally unstable, and becomes destructive towards their relationship.
At the end of the series, Peter and Amanda became rich and moved to an island, escaping the country to avoid jail time. The couple then gets married and decides to have a family, and Peter says they will name their kids after the former residents of Melrose Place, promising Amanda they will not name any of their children after Kimberly.