Betsy Lynn George: The ‘Cradle of Love’ girl

Actresses dream of working with David Fincher (”Seven,” “The Social Network”). But in 1990, when he directed Betsy Lynn George in Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” video, Fincher was still an unknown quantity. George’s manager even discouraged her from going to the audition. But the up-and-coming actress showed up in a trenchcoat and without a trace of the red lipstick that became a signature of the video.

“Fincher told me to take off my coat and a casting agent whispered that I should put on makeup,” said George, who was 18 at the time. “I was shy and didn’t want to show myself . . . Fincher is a control freak — in a good way. I think he saw that I could take direction and deliver.”

Idol was on crutches during the shoot, and is only seen from the shoulders up on a TV screen in the video. So it was built around George playing a hot girl borrowing a neighbor’s apartment to use his stereo. She then whips off her shirt and dances with abandon.

“After doing the sexy part a few times, where I have to crawl around,” said George, “I went [away] and cried a little bit. I got nervous and felt like I exposed some of myself.”

After it was done, Idol asked her out for dinner. “I was wearing these clunky, black, men’s shoes that I thought were cool and he made fun of them,” she recalled of the platonic date.

George — who moved back to her home state of Pennsylvania, runs an Etsy store called ArtistryVintage and recently produced and starred in the indie movie “Occurrence at Mills Creek” — deems the video tame by today’s standards. “I’d want nothing to do with most of the current music videos,” said the 49-year-old mother of three. “They’re way overly sexualized.”