Loni Kaye Anderson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loni_Anderson

Loni Kaye Anderson (born August 5, 1945) is an American actress who played the role of Jennifer Marlowe on the television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and for playing Jayne Mansfield and Thelma Todd in television movies.

Early life

Anderson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, August 5, 1945, the daughter of Maxine Hazel (née Kallin), a model, and Klaydon Carl "Andy" Anderson, an environmental chemist and grew up in suburban Roseville. As a senior at Alexander Ramsey Senior High School in Roseville in 1963, she was voted Valentine Queen of Valentine's Day Winter Formal. She attended the University of Minnesota. As she says in her autobiography, My Life in High Heels, her father was originally going to name her "Leiloni," but then realized to his horror that when she got to her teen years it was liable to be twisted into "Lay Loni." So it was changed to just plain "Loni."

Career

Anderson's most famous acting role came as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982). She was offered the role when producers saw the poster of her in a red bikini; a pose similar to Farrah Fawcett's. She remained on WRKP until its end in 1982, after four seaons. She and then-husband Burt Reynolds made one film together, the 1983 stock-car racing comedy Stroker Ace, a huge box-office failure.

Shortly after her divorce from Reynolds, she appeared as a regular in the final season (1993–1994) on the NBC sitcom Nurses. Anderson portrayed 1950s actress/sex symbol Jayne Mansfield in a made-for-TV biopic, The Jayne Mansfield Story in 1980, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mansfield's husband, Mickey Hargitay. She teamed with Lynda Carter in a 1984 television series, Partners in Crime.

Anderson made a series of cameo appearances on television shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as the Spellmans' "witch-trash" cousin on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Vallery Irons' mother on V.I.P.. In 1991, she played the 1930s comedienne actress, Thelma Todd, in the TV movie White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd.

Personal life

Anderson has been married four times; her first three marriages were to: Bruce Hasselberg (1964–1966), Ross Bickell (1973–1981), and actor (and one-time co-star) Burt Reynolds (1988–1993). On May 17, 2008, Anderson married musician Bob Flick, one of the founding members of the folk band The Brothers Four. The couple had met at a movie premiere in Anderson's native Minneapolis a few years after Flick's group hit No. 2 on the pop charts with "Greenfields" in 1960. The ceremony was attended by friends and family, including son Quinton Reynolds.

She has two children: a daughter, Deidra Hoffman (from her first marriage), who is a school administrator in California; and a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds (born August 31, 1988), whom she and Burt Reynolds adopted. Her autobiography, My Life in High Heels, was published in 1997.

Anderson is currently a practicing Lutheran.

Filmography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loni_Anderson#Filmography