Cheryl Ladd is an American actor, singer and songwriter best known for her supporting role as Kris Munroe in the ABC network television series Charlie’s Angels. She joined the show in its first season to replace Farrah Fawcett Madden, who had been fired from the show following an altercation with a member of the audience. Ladd also made a guest appearance in the third season as Cotton Wood. The actress is best known for her memorable role as the headstrong and domineering Matriarch on Charlie’s Angels. She has since portrayed other major characters in both films and television, including the headstrong yet loveable Rose in Finding Forrester and the cynical and strong minded Assistant to the President in Scrubs.
As an actress, Cheryl Ladd achieved some notable roles such as those in Moonlighting and Rosemary in Rosemary for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Drama. After being nominated for an Oscar for Rosemary, Ladd appeared in a number of movies in the 1980s including Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Blues Brothers. Following the release of her last film Granny, Ladd retired from acting but remained busy in both theatre and TV work. In the late seventies and early eighties, she also appeared in a number of TV shows including M.A.S.H., Come Here To My Spy and appeared in the pilot episode of the X-Files.
Cheryl Ladd was born in Detroit, Michigan in September of 1948 and grew up in nearby Farmington Hills. Her father, a renowned carpenter, taught her to be self-sufficient and to be creative, and the young lady was often encouraged to contribute her ideas to projects around the house. In fact, her father would often leave the room when she was working on a television show, only to return and hand her the script for the next scene. Cheryl Ladd eventually went on to study acting at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she pursued a degree in English. While at the university, she also met her future husband, Tom Selleck, whom she later married in 1969.
By the time she was thirty years old, Cheryl Ladd had established herself as one of the more popular and well-known characters on television. Her many small acting roles throughout the seventies and the eighties made her one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. Her association with the FBI, which started in the early sixties, also made her one of the more recognizable faces on American television. In the series Webster, Cheryl Ladd played the first female Special Agent in the history of the agency. A number of other popular actresses who have appeared on American television including Brooke Burke, Linda Ellis and Jennifer Beech were also raised in the suburbs of Detroit and became known by the name of Cheryl Ladd.
Following the television series Webster, Cheryl Ladd continued to receive recognition as actresses in films including Love Letter to Friday the 13th, The Hard Way, Leave Her to Die and Witness. She also had some success in the theatre, playing opposite musical artists in such films as Saturday Night Fever and Stagecoach. However, it was in 1984 that Cheryl Ladd’s acting career really began to prosper, culminating in the role of Gloria Jeanette in the movie Saturday Night Fever.
A steady rise to prominence continued into the late seventies, when she appeared in such movies as Saturday Night Fever, Rosemary and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which earned her three Oscar Awards. Another popular role that Ladd achieved during this period was playing the title role in the critically acclaimed movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although Ladd never won an Academy Award for her acting career, she did find success, playing lead roles in several films throughout the late eighties and early nineties. After the turn of the millennium, when Jennifer Aniston became famous, and gained critical acclaim for the very first film that she acted in, Missing, Cheryl Ladd once again found herself cast in well-known films including Dances With Wolves, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Edward Scissorhands.
