Annette O'Toole

A vivacious, red-haired actress who began her career as a dancer on a Danny Kaye special and now often plays wives and girlfriends, Annette O'Toole began her acting career in earnest with an episode of "Gunsmoke". She made her feature film debut as a savvy beauty contestant in "Smile" (1975) and next was Robby Benson's leading lady in "One on One" (1977), in which he was a misunderstood college student on a basketball scholarship and she gave him the support he needed. O'Toole had a similar role opposite Eric Roberts in "King of the Gypsies" (1978), in which he was a gypsy warring with his family and his background and she was his "American" girlfriend. She has subsequently played Lana Lang, the high school sweetheart of Clark Kent in "Superman III" (1983) and co-starred with Martin Short in "Cross My Heart" (1987).

O'Toole has had better luck with her TV roles. She made her TV-movie debut with "The Girl Most Likely To..." (ABC, 1973) and played country singer Tammy Wynette in the biopic, "Stand By Your Man" (CBS, 1981). Among her other roles were Lola Lamar, love interest for Barry Manilow in his TV-movie debut, "Copacabana" (CBS, 1985), Pamela Sue Martin's roommate, a woman who only wants to get married, in the syndicated "Arthur Hailey's Strong Medicine" (1986), the wife of Oliver North (David Keith) in "Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North" (CBS, 1989), and Rose Kennedy, matriarch of "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" (ABC, 1990). In 1996, she took on series TV for the first time as Don Johnson's first ex-wife in the CBS series "Nash Bridges".