The Nancy Drew Mysteries, Dynasty
Advertisements:
$4 Million
Many people that get into acting will have to wait for years and years before they get any roles that might pay them well. In the case of Pamela Sue Martin, however, she didn’t have to wait long, finding her fame as a teenager. Martin played a couple of very big roles, which included playing one of the most famous detectives in writing history, as well as a long-running series that captured audience’s attentions in the 1980s. Now in her late 60s, Martin is still acting occasionally, so don’t be surprised to see her on TV every now and then.
Martin was born on January 5, 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut, and spent much of her childhood in the state. Talking about her upbringing, Martin said that “We were comfortable - I never felt an overabundance or a lack of anything…My parents regarded me as a very grown-up and never worried about me.”
It didn’t take long for Martin to start finding work, as she became a model during her teenage years. Like many that get into modeling, Martin made the jump to acting and didn’t look back. “I decided to leave the fast food joint I was working in and go to New York City to become a model, and make some money for college,” Martin said of this time in her life. “And that was kind of the beginning…While all my friends were going to college, I was going to the ‘College of Hollywood.’”
In 1972, Martin started her acting career by appearing alongside Darren O’Connor in the film “To Find a Man”. That same year, she also starred with Gene Hackman in “The Poseidon Adventure”. One year later, Martin made her small screen debut with a TV movie called “The Girls of Huntington House”.
Over the course of the next couple of years, Martin would appear in the films “Our Time” and “Buster and Billie”, as well as adding a few more television movies. In 1977, Martin had one of her most notable roles when she played the famous book character Nancy Drew in the series “The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries”. The series didn’t last long, however, but Martin continued working by wrapping up the 1970s with the films “Human Feelings” and “The Lady in Red”.
During the 1980s, Martin appeared in just two films with “Torchlight” and “Flicks”, instead focusing most of her time on television. Martin became part of the cast of “Dynasty”, playing Fallon Carrington Colby for the first half of the show’s run. After her time with the show wrapped up, Martin had appeared in more TV movies, as well as an episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”.
Martin used her fame during this time to speak out politically, as well as standing up for environmental awareness. “I used to stand up and make speeches to make people aware, but most of them didn’t want to hear it,” she said. “But once you get involved and take on an environmental consciousness, you never really let go.”
In 1990, Martin had some of her final roles with the film “A Cry in the Wind” and TV movie “Sky Trackers”. Martin walked away from acting for the rest of the decade, and didn’t pop up again until 2002 with a guest appearance on “That 70s Show”. Since then, Martin has had a guest spot on the show “The L Word” with movies such as “Soupernatural” and “McTaggart’s Fortune”. Her most recent acting role came in the 2017 TV movie “My Christmas Prince”.
It was announced in 2019 that there would be a revival for her famous mystery character, with the CW Network coming out with “Nancy Drew”. While Martin won’t have a full-time spot on the series, she was still cast for the pilot episode, playing Harriet Grosset to revive her time in the Nancy Drew realm.
These days, Martin tends to stay away from the spotlight by choice. Instead of the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, Martin lives in the country. “I tend to worry about the minutiae of life,” she said. “But living in the mountains of Idaho and having retreated from fame, I am more in tune with life.”
A lot of her recent time has been spent playing polo and tennis. “I like games, but I do not consider myself a particularly competitive person except in the moment of a game,” she said. “I think that competition in life is a very American trait and has a huge dark side…I have an egalitarian side, and I enjoyed crushing arrogance in a metaphorical sense. Look, I was partially insane.”
“It’s the ‘outside in’ thinking that gets me, rather than ‘inside out,’” Martin added. “Santa Claus or the red carpet do not bring it to me. Excitement comes from within my being when I approach life with an open heart. A beautiful day, the breeze rustling the leaves, my dogs running down my driveway to greet me with boundless love get me excited.”
“A good book can thrill me beyond any of the hundred ‘Dynasty’ scripts I used to read,” Martin continued. “We all succumb to thinking that the flash is where the excitement comes from. I did, as I watched that glamorous Shirley Jones. But think again. I lived it, and I wouldn’t trade any of my days today for ‘the old days.’ I think excitement is an inside job. ‘Are you making any movies lately?’ That’s a good one. Do I look like I’m making a movie?”
->
