Biography
Early life
Locklear was born in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Diane (née Tinsley), a production executive for Disney, and William Robert Locklear, an administrator at UCLA. She went to Newbury Park High School.[1][2] She is the youngest of four children and a cousin of Donald Trump's second wife, Marla Maples. She is of Scottish and distant paternal Lumbee ancestry.[3][4]
Career
While attending the University of California, Los Angeles, Locklear began modeling and working in commercials for the school store. In 1979, Locklear landed her first roles appearing in Tales of the Unexpected, and an episode of CHiPs a year later. She landed a few more bit parts in shows, including Eight Is Enough, before Aaron Spelling cast her in the role of Sammy Jo Dean during the second season of his TV series Dynasty. It would be the beginning of a highly successful long-term collaboration with Spelling who, the following year, cast her in the cop show T.J. Hooker with William Shatner. Until the mid 1980s, Locklear would appear as a series regular on T.J. Hooker while making semi-regular appearances on Dynasty. She later became a full-time cast member on Dynasty until its cancellation in 1989.In the 1990s, after the failed sitcom Going Places and the three-hour mini-series Dynasty: The Reunion,Locklear went on to play another of her best known roles, that of scheming vixen Amanda Woodward on the FOX network's primetime soap opera Melrose Place. The show, which was a spin-off from the hit series Beverly Hills 90210, was struggling in the ratings during its first season. The producers initially brought in Locklear for a limited episode run, but then felt that she could blaze a trail across the show and boost ratings, much in the way that Joan Collins had for Dynasty in the early 1980s. Although she became a regular cast member from the second season onwards, Locklear was billed as a "Special Guest Star" until the end of the series in 1999. Locklear also won a First Americans in the Arts award for Best Actress in a TV series for her role on Melrose Place. After the show ended, she was immediately cast on the TV sitcom Spin City (opposite Michael J. Fox and later Charlie Sheen) until 2002. Locklear later starred in the short-lived drama LAX in 2004. With official news that the CW is reviving Melrose Place for its 2009-2010 season, Locklear has opted not to return as her character Amanda Woodward, for now at least.
Throughout her career, Locklear has starred or guest-starred in no fewer than seven different television series produced by Aaron Spelling, these being Dynasty, T.J. Hooker, Matt Houston, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Hotel, and Melrose Place. She played in a Lifetime Movie Channel movie Flirting With Forty, and she starred as a divorced woman named Jackie who goes to Hawaii for a vacation but she falls in love with a 22 year old and he falls for her.
