Wagner was born in Los Angeles, California on June 22, 1949, where at the age of seven her parents divorced. Lindsay’s mother then moved her daughter to Pasadena. Her mother remarried and another move took the family to Oregon where Lindsay attended David Douglas High School. Lindsay then went on the Oregon University where she was a successful student, even over coming dyslexia.
For a while she worked as a model in Los Angles and appeared in Playboy’s Playboy After Dark, a successful TV series produced by Hugh Hefner, made to appear like a cocktail party, and starring such Playboy models as Barbi Benton and celebrities including Carol Burnett.
After contacting a friend who worked at Universal Studios, Lindsay was given a small part in the TV series Marcus Welby MD, starring James Brolin and Sharon Gless, which was the point at which Lindsay’s career really started to take off.
She went on to play The Bionic Woman, a tennis professional who sustained enormous injuries to her limbs when her parachute failed to open while skydiving, in the series The Bionic Woman. In the first series, as Jamie Sommers, her body rejected her limb transplants and died but the program had become so popular with the public that the character of Jamie was resurrected and the series ran for a further two years.
Wagner had a battle with the TV series producers to allow her to appear with no makeup as she didn’t feel that the character of Jamie Sommers should be running around looking like a model, as with the stars of Charlie’s Angels, Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Jaclyn Smith.
Along with being a star herself, she is also related to Linda Gray, famous for the part of Sue Ellen Ewing, the long suffering wife of J R Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, in the series Dallas.
Lindsay Wagner was honored with a star of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
From four marriages Lindsay has two children, Dorian and Alex, both from third husband Henry Kingi. Lindsay Wagner went on to appear in many TV films such as, The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel in 1979, Callie and Son in 1981, Convicted in 1986, I Want to Keep My Daughter, and I Want To Live, the story of convicted killer Barbara Graham.
Today Wagner continues to act. Recently, she has appeared in infomercials for Sleep Number bed.
YUDDY
