Colleen_Camp

Colleen Camp

Colleen Camp

American actress and film producer


Colleen Celeste Camp (born June 7, 1953) is an American character actress and producer. After appearing in several bit parts, she had a lead role in the comedy The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974), followed by roles in two installments of the Police Academy series. Camp had supporting roles in Lady of the House (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Seduction (1982), after which she played Julie’s mother in Valley Girl and Yvette the Maid in the 1985 comedy Clue.[2]

Quick Facts Born, Education ...

Camp has continued to have minor and supporting roles in various independent and studio films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Election (1999), Factory Girl (2006), Palo Alto (2013), American Hustle (2013), and The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018).

Early life

Colleen Camp was born in San Francisco, California. She has two brothers, Don and Glen.[3] She moved to the San Fernando Valley at a young age and attended John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, Los Angeles Valley College, and California State University, Northridge, where she majored in English and minored in theater arts.[3]

Career

To help pay for college, Camp trained macaws at Busch Gardens on weeknights, weekends, and then during summers performing for crowds of up to 2,000 in six shows a day, six days a week.[4] Aspiring to be an actress, Camp took private acting and singing lessons. She was noticed by a talent agent for her hour-long Busch Gardens television special featuring her and her birds, and hired for national-television commercials for Gallo wine and Touch of Sweden hand lotion.[3][5] This exposure led to small television parts in shows such as Marcus Welby, M.D., Happy Days, and Love, American Style, as well as a six-episode stint on the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man.[3]

Camp in The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974)

Camp landed small early roles in films like Funny Lady with Barbra Streisand and James Caan, and Smile with Bruce Dern and Barbara Feldon in 1975.[3][4] She also appeared in the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death (1978) as his girlfriend, Ann, the young aspiring singer (her scenes were shot with a lookalike as Lee had died before she became involved) performing the film's love theme "Will This Be The Song I'll Be Singing Tomorrow". Camp went on to portray a Playmate in Francis Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now (followed by an actual pictorial in the October 1979 Playboy), though most of her footage was cut from the initial theatrical release. She would later feature more prominently in Coppola's Redux cut. She was also the first actress to play Kristin Shepard, the sister of Linda Gray's character, in the primetime soap opera Dallas in 1979. Mary Crosby later replaced Camp in this role.[6]

Camp worked steadily in film comedies like Peter Bogdanovich's 1981 comedy They All Laughed, 1983's Valley Girl, 1985's Clue, and the 1994 Michael J. Fox comedy Greedy. She played a police officer in two of the Police Academy films and in Die Hard with a Vengeance. Camp was nominated twice for the Worst Supporting Actress Golden Raspberry Award – first, in 1982, for The Seduction, and then, in 1993, for Sliver. In 1999, she had a small part as character Tracy Flick's overbearing mother in the film Election, with Reese Witherspoon as Tracy.[7] She appeared in the episode "Simple Explanation" of House in 2009.

In 2013, she appeared in a supporting role in David O. Russell's American Hustle[8] The following year, Camp co-produced a Broadway production of Love Letters[9] and in 2015 co-produced and appeared in Eli Roth's thriller Knock Knock[10] — a remake of Game of Death (1978, filmed 1972) she'd acted in.[11]

Personal life

In the late 1970s, Camp dated Dean Tavoularis, whom she met in the Philippines while filming Apocalypse Now.[3] In 1986, she married John Goldwyn, a Paramount executive; they later divorced in 2001.

In November 2020, Camp's engagement to 34-year-old Garrett Moore, son of photographer Derry Moore, 12th Earl of Drogheda, was announced.[12]

Filmography

Film

More information Year, Title ...

Television

More information Year, Title ...

References

  1. "Celebrity birthdays for the week of June 6-12". ABC News.
  2. "Actress Returns To Sex Symbol Role - Sun Sentinel". Articles.sun-sentinel.com. December 13, 1985. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  3. Morning News staff (October 31, 1974). "True Blond". The Morning News. Wilmington, Delaware: Gannett Company. p. 38. ISSN 1042-4121.
  4. Herefore Brand staff (April 6, 1975). "On the TV Scene". Hereford Brand. Hereford, Texas: Ray, Googer & Co. p. 14. OCLC 13695046.
  5. Curran, Barbara A. (2005). Dallas: The Complete Story of the World's Favorite Prime-Time Soap. Cumberland House Publishing. ISBN 978-1581824728.
  6. "Colleen Camp | Movies and Biography - Yahoo Movies". Movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  7. "Review: 'American Hustle' shakes things up in madcap style - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. December 12, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  8. "Colleen Camp". Playbill. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
  9. Horn, Shawn Van (March 26, 2023). "Before John Wick, Ana de Armas & Keanu Reeves Starred in This Erotic Horror Story". Collider. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  10. Cope, Rebecca (November 9, 2020). "A 1970s pin-up is engaged to the Earl of Drogheda's son". Tatler.

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Colleen_Camp, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.