Victoria Principal
Vicki Ree Principal, later known as Victoria Principal, is an American actress, producer, entrepreneur, and author, best known for her role as Pamela Barnes Ewing on the American primetime television soap opera Dallas. She spent nine years on the long-running series, leaving in 1987. Afterwards, she opened her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions, focusing mostly on television films. In the mid-1980s, she became interested in natural beauty therapies, and in 1989, she created an eponymous line of skincare products, Principal Secret.
Principal became a best-selling author, writing three books about beauty, skincare, fitness, well-being, and health: The Body Principal, The Beauty Principal, and The Diet Principal. In the 2000s, she wrote a fourth book, Living Principal. She is also a two-time Golden Globe Award nominee.
Early life
Vicki Ree Principal was born on January 3, 1950 in Fukuoka, Japan, the elder daughter of United States Air Force sergeant Victor Rocco Principal and Bertha Ree Principal. She spent her first three months of life in Japan.Because her father was in the U.S. military, the family moved often. She grew up in London, Puerto Rico, Florida, Massachusetts, and Warner Robins, Georgia, among other places. She attended 17 different schools, including the Royal Ballet School while her family was stationed in England.
Principal began her career in TV commercials, appearing in her first at age 5. After graduating from South Dade Senior High School in 1968, she enrolled at Miami–Dade Community College, intending to study medicine. However, months before completing her first year of studies, she was seriously injured in a car crash while driving home from the library. The other driver was convicted of drunk driving and served jail time. Principal spent months in recovery and was faced with the prospect of having to retake her first year of studies. After serious introspection, she drastically changed course by moving to New York City to pursue acting, and shortly thereafter to Europe. She studied privately with Jean Scott in London, and in 1971 moved to Los Angeles.
Career
Early acting
Principal won her first film role as Marie Elena, a Mexican mistress, in John Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean , for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. On the basis of the positive response to Principal's acting work, her role was enlarged by writer John Milius. During this period, Warren Cowan flew in, introduced himself to Principal, and offered to represent her free-of-charge for the next year. She went to Arizona as an unknown; when she returned to Los Angeles three months later, the commercial flight she was on was greeted by paparazzi. She then had a starring role in the risqué comedy film The Naked Ape, which was co-financed by Hugh Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine. She appeared nude in the September 1973 issue of Playboy to promote the film. The film failed at the box office, which was a disappointment to her.In 1974, she was cast in the blockbuster disaster film Earthquake. Principal won the supporting role of Rosa Amici, beating out both Susan Sarandon and Kay Lenz for the part. Prior to her third callback audition, she opted to cut her then waist-length brown hair, and have it styled into an Afro. Director Mark Robson was stunned, but impressed by Principal's risky transformation and dedication to look closer to the character. The film went on to become one of the era's highest-grossing films and received four Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. She continued to act in lesser-known films such as I Will, I Will... for Now and Vigilante Force. Principal signed a three-picture deal with Brute Productions.
Behind the scenes, transition, and return to acting
Principal decided to leave acting and became a Hollywood talent agent and booking agent, which was her profession from 1975 to late 1977. She then had ambitions to study at law school and would support herself if needed through small acting roles on television and film, so as to fund her future college tuition. In 1976, she returned to her character in Earthquake by shooting additional scenes to expand the running time of the original picture for the broadcast premiere of that film, and in 1977, she made a guest appearance on the pilot of the television series Fantasy Island which aired on the ABC network, and in the 1977 television film The Night They Took Miss Beautiful on the NBC network.The urge to return to acting came when television producer Aaron Spelling offered Principal a role in the pilot of his television series Fantasy Island, which she accepted.
''Dallas'' TV series
When Principal obtained the pilot audition script for Dallas, her academic career ambitions changed, and she decided to return to the full-time acting profession. As Principal explained to TV Guide Network in 2004, "I had left acting to be an agent and was on my way to law school, but when a friend dropped off a Dallas script, I read it. When I finished, I knew my life had changed - that part was mine. So I called the person and said, "I'm sending someone in." She said, "Who?" I said, "Just put down my name. It will be a surprise." And it certainly was a surprise - I showed up with me! I sent myself in for it!" Principal landed the role of Pamela Barnes Ewing on the long-running prime time TV soap opera Dallas that aired on the CBS network from 1978 to 1991. Principal explained to People in 2018, "When I went in for the part on Dallas, I had already fallen in love with the show and with the part. So my feeling from the moment I read it was that it was incredibly special and that I really, really wanted to be a part of it. I could not imagine not being Pam." As Principal told TV Insider in 2018, "I believed that Dallas would be a hit from the moment I read it. In fact, I turned down a major role that would have conflicted with Dallas in the belief that I would be offered the role of Pam. So that happened!"Principal was her own manager in contract negotiations with CBS and Lorimar Productions, which produced Dallas. When Principal signed her Dallas contract, she removed the clause that would have given the network the right to consent and profit from her outside endeavors. She explained, "As a result that's why, you can only notice in hindsight, I was the only person in the cast who did commercials, who was doing movies of the week, who wrote books and these all belong to me. I retained the control and ownership of my image. No one owns me."
Dallas became a global phenomenon with the 1980 "Who shot J.R.?" cliffhanger mystery reveal. At the time, it was the highest-rated aired television episode in American history. Titled "Who Done It" the episode is the fourth episode in the fourth season of Dallas, and remains the second highest rated prime-time telecast ever.
In 1981, Principal appeared on the song "All I Have to Do Is Dream" with her then/boyfriend singer Andy Gibb. The single reached #51 on the US Hot 100 chart.
In 1983, Principal earned her second Golden Globe nomination, this time as Best Actress in a Television Series for Dallas. Principal took to other ways of improving her character, such as taking voice lessons for a better Texas accent.
Principal's character Pamela Ewing's relationship with Patrick Duffy's character, Bobby Ewing, was one of the major components of the series. Duffy's character, however, was killed off. When Duffy returned to Dallas in 1986, after being killed off a year earlier, the entire previous year was written by the show's writers as a dream that Pam had. Being told that the entire previous year was nothing more than a dream that one of the characters had didn't go over very well with some of the show's fans. Consequently, that season of Dallas is sometimes known as the show's "dream season" as the entire ninth season was only Pam's dream.
In 2018, recalling the first days of filming on the Dallas set in 1978, Principal told TV Insider, "What I remember most about the first day of shooting Dallas was an unexpected feeling of déjà vu. Everything was new to me; I was nervous, and yet I felt strangely sure that I was where I was supposed to be and with the people I was supposed to be with as though this had happened before. I remember looking at Patrick when he did not know it and thinking, 'this is a nice person.' And that made falling into his arms and our love scenes that day so much easier and natural.
Describing the on-screen relationship between Principal and Duffy, or Bobby and Pam, Duffy stated to The Huffington Post in 2017, "We had great chemistry on the show and that just fell into place. It was the luckiest bit of casting, I think, that has occurred in a long time on television. Everybody was absolutely perfect for the parts they played. For a Romeo and Juliet basically subject matter for Bobby and Pam, we were absolutely the most comfortable two actors when we were working together. Victoria had a wonderful sense of humor. We could just go crazy between takes and then get right back into the moment.
Over the course of her nine-year run on Dallas, Principal found worldwide fame. Principal left Dallas in 1987, after a two-year decision to prepare with the series' producers for the final season of her character's arc. However, as an actress, she intentionally worked on separating her own persona from that of her on-screen character, as she explained in 1987 to The New York Times in an interview during her final week of shooting on the Dallas set, "A lot of work has gone into keeping Victoria Principal separate from Pam Ewing. To stay on the show any longer would really seal my fate in the industry."
Reflecting on her time at Dallas, Principal stated to People in 2018, "At year seven, it was time for me to renegotiate my contract and I was very candid about my concern and my disappointment, that we had had such good writing and so many wonderful plots, and that when the time came to renegotiate the writers' contracts, I felt that a number of writers had left because they had not gotten the right deal." As she further explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2018, "The first five years on Dallas were so unbelievably wonderful — then some key writers departed, and by year seven there was a decline in the writing, which was an enormous part of my decision to leave. I informed the producers during renegotiations in the seventh year that I would only stay for two more. They wanted a longer contract, and I said no. I was completely transparent. I learned a lot from playing Pam. She was someone with such innate goodness and who was courageous in fighting for what she believed in. It was really a privilege to play her."