Puttin’ on the glitz, Dynasty style
Pamela Bellwood dazzled viewers in Claudia Carrington’s jewels
In the autumn of 1984, 22 million people in America were glued to their TV sets every week watching Pamela Bellwood.
That was the year Dynasty (1981-89) was the most popular series on television in the US, garnering huge audiences and many awards. Bellwood, then 33, played Claudia, an emotionally fragile young woman who, she says, ‘slept with, or married, every other main male character in the life of the series’.
Bellwood, 69, did not have the leading role (that was Joan Collins as Alexis) but her character had a huge following.
Dynasty parties were all the rage, and a friend at one of these rang Bellwood to ask if she would speak to another guest, who was dressed as Claudia: ‘She’d told my friend she would die if she couldn’t speak to the “real” Claudia. He handed the phone over and I said, “Hello,” and the woman fainted.’ Bellwood says Hollywood was the
last thing her parents wanted for her. Her father was a businessman in New York and her mother had been an executive at Macy’s. ‘Hollywood was an anathema to them.’
As a child, she dreamed of being a writer and a poet. ‘But in drama class at school, I realised that I could make an audience follow where I was looking by a slight change of expression, and that gave me confidence to explore acting.’
She was still at school when she got her first parts and studied in between scenes, wearing earplugs. Later she studied with the renowned drama teacher Sanford Meisner and then went straight onto Broadway in Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man, for which she won accolades.
As a result, she was asked to try for a TV drama in California – where she was offered more parts, ‘and my career kind of transferred from the East to the West Coast’. She met her British husband, photographer Nik Wheeler, on the set of a plane-crash movie ( Airport ’77), in which she played James Stewart’s daughter. ‘They were filming on a navy destroyer and I remember seeing this dishy-looking guy. I reacted like a character in a Road Runner cartoon where sparks fly from your heels.’
She was camping with Wheeler in the desert when she received the news that she had been offered the Dynasty part. ‘I let Dynasty bite me because I wanted to make our lives free – Nik was often abroad on assignments and I figured out that I could go almost anywhere in the world with him and still be back within 24 hours to shoot.’
When she became pregnant with their first child, Dynasty were furious – she was made to conceal her baby bump: ‘I’d be made to hold a prop of some sort in front of my stomach.’ She was fired – but so many viewers protested that she was brought back. ‘When the producer called me in to negotiate my return, she said, “I know all these letters can’t possibly be from your mother,” but I looked down and saw at least three of them with my mother’s handwriting on them.’
Dynasty is credited with giving middle-aged women a more powerful
image – and wide shoulder pads and big hair. Its stars had it good: ‘We travelled on private jets. Places were opened up for us. We were mobbed wherever we went. I was photographed drenched in Harry Winston jewels. I am a private person – so this was not something I sought.
‘And I like to dress simply – basically anything that’s loose and comfortable. I remember going to a party at Charlton Heston’s house with our boys and Nik saying, “Doesn’t Mummy look good?” and one of them replied, “No, too good.” I learned to leave well alone.
‘In California, I mostly wear jeans and T-shirts but in France, where we spend each summer, I wear dresses, mostly bought in the local markets. I think I have reached the stage now that I have enough clothes to see me out.’
Bellwood walks in the hills around her Santa Barbara home, does the occasional Pilates or yoga session, and swims. A famous Hollywood hairdresser used to do her hair; now she goes locally. Once a month, she has a facial. She likes Kiehl oils: Midnight Recovery (‘Oh, if only it were true!’) and Line-reducing Concentrate.
Recently she was asked to pose for a headshot and decided to brighten her smile using the old tooth-whitening trays she had left over from Dynasty days. ‘I put them in and settled down to watch The Crown, which was so terrific I forgot to take them out after 15 minutes. Next morning, I looked like a platypus. It was a miracle my swollen lips didn’t suffocate me!’