Heather Deen Locklear (born September 25, 1961) is an American actress known for her role as Amanda Woodward on Melrose Place (1993–1999), for which she received four consecutive Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. She is also known for her role as Sammy Jo Carrington on Dynasty from 1981 to 1989, her first major television role, which began a longtime collaboration with producer Aaron Spelling.
Other notable television roles include Officer Stacy Sheridan on T. J. Hooker (1982–1986) and Caitlin Moore on Spin City (1999–2002), for which she earned two more Golden Globe nominations, this time for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. She had a recurring role on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland and a main role on the TNT drama-comedy television series Franklin & Bash in 2013. Her film roles include the science-fiction thriller Firestarter (1984), the action comedy Money Talks (1997), the live-action/animated comedy Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) and the romantic comedy The Perfect Man (2005).
Heather Deen Locklear was born on September 25, 1961, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Diane née Tinsley (b. 1933), a production executive, and William "Bill" Robert Locklear (1929–2024), an administrator at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and former colonel in the United States Marine Corps. She has Lumbee ancestry. She has three older siblings: Laurie, Mark and Colleen.
While at UCLA, she began modeling and working in commercials for the school store. She made her earliest screen appearances in the early 1980s with small roles in episodes of CHiPs, 240-Robert and Eight Is Enough. Locklear auditioned for Three's Company in 1980—producers were looking for someone to replace Suzanne Somers—but she did not get the role. Later, she was screen tested with then-unknown Tom Cruise for the lead roles on The Powers of Matthew Star, a 1982 NBC short-lived TV series.
1982–1992: Breakthrough with Dynasty and T.J. Hooker
In 1982, Locklear began a long term association with television producer Aaron Spelling. First, she was cast in a recurring role as Sammy Jo Dean on Spelling's Dynasty. The following year, while still appearing on Dynasty, Locklear took on a starring role as Officer Stacy Sheridan on the police drama T.J. Hooker. She would shuffle between both series until 1986, when T.J. Hooker was cancelled; after that, Locklear became a full-time member of the cast of Dynasty and would stay with the series until its conclusion in 1989.
At a fan convention in Florida in 2024, Locklear described how the process of moving her from series to series worked: "I'd be in my police uniform, padded bra, all that s***, and then I'd have to be all glammed up, and they’d drive me to the Dynasty set, and so it kind of went back and forth...I just had two jobs!"
Following Dynasty's success, Locklear appeared in her first starring film as Drew Barrymore's mother in Firestarter (1984).
Locklear had a leading role in the 1989 film The Return of Swamp Thing, for which she won the satirical Razzie Award for Worst Actress. She also starred in the short-lived sitcom Going Places created for the TGIF block. It was her "first time filming in front of a live audience", she said in an interview with Barry Roskin Blake on Inside Entertainment in 1990.
1993–1999: Melrose Place (1992) and worldwide recognition
In 1993, Heather Locklear began playing another of her best-known roles, Amanda Woodward, on Aaron Spelling's drama series Melrose Place created by Darren Star. Spelling originally signed Locklear for a limited four-episode run to boost interest, the first of which aired on January 27, 1993. Locklear is credited to boost ratings at the end of the first season and became a full-time cast member, though she continued to be billed as Special Guest Star in the opening credits from season two until its cancellation in 1999.
"It wasn't until Heather Locklear came on that she unlocked something, maybe because she brought this Dynasty cred. She literally could not say “hello” without an agenda", said Darren Star to Vulture. Years earlier, he talked to The Hollywood Reporter: "[I] meet with Heather and at the time, Amanda was a fairly innocuous part with a four-episode arc. Once we started writing for her and saw how she was able to take an innocuous line and give it devious subtext, that inspired so much in terms of where the show could go". Locklear remembered: "I just said, 'I wanna be a businesswoman. I don't wanna be Sammy Jo from Dynasty. I don't wanna, like, be a quirky girl".
According to The New York Times, "playing Amanda, Ms. Locklear has also taken a career that was sliding dangerously toward movies-of-the-week and given it new momentum". Locklear earned four Golden Globe Awards nominations for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama from 1994 to 1997.
Locklear was the guest host on Saturday Night Live on May 14, 1994. Two of her best-known skits included her as an elderly Jewish woman on Coffee Talk with Mike Myers and her acting as Amanda Woodward in a Wayne's World skit with Myers, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and Phil Hartman, wherein Wayne has a dream that he is a character on Melrose Place.
Locklear also made a cameo in Wayne's World 2 in 1993. In 1996, she appeared as the main guest on Muppets Tonight, performing in a spoof of Melrose Place titled "Muppet Heights". She was also the subject of a Lifetime Intimate Portrait special in 1997, and of an E! True Hollywood Story special in 2004.
Locklear was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine on May 19, 1994, as Melrose Place reached the height of its popularity. She was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People twice, first in 1994, and again in 2001.
In 1996, Locklear starred in NBC movie Shattered Mind directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal in which she plays a woman with multiple personalities. The actress receive compliments from critics but no praise. According to Variety, "Locklear interps the roles with vigor and theatrical flair, if not plausibility" but "doesn't make the character convincing". Entertainment Weekly added: "Locklear is, if at times uneven, always admirable".
At the time, Locklear said her work in this made-for-television film was important in her career: "I don't think I thought of myself as an actress probably until I've just done this movie. But I did know there was a lot more I could do, given the opportunity... With this last movie, I think I can say I'm an actress."