The "Dallas" actress Linda Gray is celebrating her 80th birthday. And that without botox and cosmetic surgery, which are typical for Hollywood.
Mostly she was someone else. And this other one became world famous. Sue Ellen Ewing. The pitiful wife of the unscrupulous Kotzbrockens J.R. Ewing in the cult TV series "Dallas". Every time this diabolical guy betrayed his wife or somehow finished her off and she had indulged in a glass of whiskey too much because of sheer mental exhaustion, half the world sighed: poor Sue Ellen.
That was Linda Gray's professional life. The most successful phase. From 1978 to 1991, then again from 2012 to 2014. She was Sue Ellen. The betrayed wife who drank frustration and despair from her liver, a picture of misery. Actually a quickly boring role. Linda Gray endowed her with so much persuasive power of suffering that it became a life's work.
Her alternative life as an actress can be divided into two parts: before "Dallas", after "Dallas". On September 12th, Linda Gray, who now looks like Sue Ellen, who has aged gracefully and without alcohol, will be 80 years old.
From leg model to "Dallas" star
Before "Dallas" there wasn't a lot of work. The exceptionally pretty Californian modeled, appeared in commercials, had small film roles. In 1967 she was hired for the Hollywood film "The Graduation" with stars like Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. However, the audience only got to see her legs. In one famous scene, the mature Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) tries to seduce the young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman). She lasciviously rolls down her stockings – and there you can see Linda Gray's legs.
Then in 1978 comes "Dallas", an unprecedentedly successful soap opera about money, power and intrigue surrounding the Ewing family on the Southfork Ranch in Texas. Undisputed focus: J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), who outsmarts friends, enemies and all family members and who cheats on his wife Sue Ellen.
Gray is grateful for the social function of her "Dallas" role
The series runs until 1991 and is later revived for a short time. "Dallas" is translated into 70 languages and broadcast in 90 countries, from 1981 also in Germany. About the success of Dallas, Gray told the Dallas Observer, "It took people out of their normal everyday lives and showed them these very rich, dysfunctional people, and then they said, 'Oh, our own life is after all not that bad.'"
The role of the frustrated, constantly drunk Sue Ellen was mind-raising for Linda Gray. It was "a great merit" of the series to make the problems of alcoholism a social topic of conversation, she told "Bunte". "To this day, people tell me that this is the only reason why they dared go to Alcoholics Anonymous."
Gray had to take on the role of a mother early on
Linda Gray, who hardly drinks any alcohol, knows marriage dramas and alcoholism from her own experience. Her parents' marriage was a complete disaster, the mother was an alcoholic. "My sister Betty and I begged our father to get a divorce. But we were Catholics, there was no divorce," she once said in an interview.
The mother was a trained dancer and later worked as a fashion illustrator. She had married a watchmaker and had to give up all of her dreams when she became pregnant. Linda Gray thinks, "That's why she started drinking."
She herself took on the role of mother "at a very young age. My sister and I stood in the kitchen and I said what to cook. She was only five years old then."
Unhappy marriage
His own marriage to the photographer and graphic artist Ed Thrasher (1932-2006) was not a happy one either. Her husband was a despot, she once said: "In our house I felt like the maid. Every morning a yellow note was hanging on the refrigerator. A to-do list for Linda: iron my shirts, wash the car, bring it take the dog to the vet, paint the porch, feed the chickens. "
After 21 years of marriage (1962-1983), she divorced. "I moved to Malibu. My kids were mad at me. After the divorce, I moved back to our ranch, where I still live today."
The separation cost them all friends. "They took Ed's side, took care of him. Nobody invited me anymore. I was successful, attractive and single. Other women didn't want me around their fat old husband. And my kids made me for it." responsible for tearing the family apart. "
"Dallas" co-star took care of them after the divorce
Ironically, her wicked movie husband Larry Hagmann and his wife Maj took care of Linda. "You became my haven in the storm." It was a relationship "like that of an older brother to his little sister. For years Larry examined every man who crossed my life. None of them were good enough for me. He had something to complain about in each of them. It was ridiculous."
The days of "Dallas" are over for good, buddy Larry Hagman died of throat cancer in 2012 at the age of 81. It became quiet around Linda. She has had several minor roles and assignments as a director and producer, and has appeared in the popular TV series "Hollyoaks". She is committed to women's rights and better health care, and from 1997 to 2007 she was even the "UN ambassador of goodwill".
Biography became a bestseller
And she wrote a book about her experiences with dramatic life changes such as surviving polio, the drama at home and the death of her younger sister (breast cancer). Her autobiography "The Road to Happiness" became a bestseller, partly because it was written as a personal guide to aging gracefully. "I want to encourage women that life is not over at 40." Even without botox or cosmetic surgery.
She can't really imagine a second marriage, although on the other hand she says: "If I meet someone my age who wants to laugh, swim, go to the cinema or have a good meal with me: give it to me!"
Sometimes she relapses into the times of Sue Ellen in her everyday life: "Whenever I have a glass of wine in a restaurant, I often heard whispers at the next table: 'I thought she was drinking right away.'"