Glamour Part-Time Virtue For Former Charlie’s Angel
Glamour, says this woman with perfect skin and exquisite eyes, this woman who’s probably never taken a bad photograph, has been somewhat of a hindrance in her life.
“People don’t take you as seriously,” she says. “I think they see you as a certain type, and sometimes you want to be seen differently.”
And yet …
During a recent interview and photo session in Philadelphia, a photographer is instructed by her entourage to shoot only her left side.
Glamour may sometimes be a handicap, but it’s also a very nice living for Charlie’s Angel-turned-Kmart pitchwoman Jaclyn Smith.
She’s 47 now, though she looks maybe 30. It has been two decades since “Charlie’s Angels” first hit television and turned her into a household name.
She played Kelly Garrett, the sophisticated Angel, for five phenomenally successful seasons. In the years since, she has portrayed characters ranging from Jackie Kennedy and Florence Nightingale to battered women and rookie cops. But, thanks in part to the miracle of syndication that has assured “Charlie’s Angels” eternal life on cable, she is still most famous as one-third of a team of gun-toting girl troubleshooters - big-haired Farrah Fawcett and brainy Kate Jackson were the other original Angels - lured away from the Police Academy by the wealthy, mysterious, unseen Charlie, played by the voice of John Forsythe.
She may never be able to completely escape that “Angels” image but, despite three failed marriages and some occasional harsh words from the critics, it would be hard to see Smith as anything but a very successful woman. Not only has she stayed popular with TV audiences (and therefore casting directors) through her TV movies and miniseries, she is also a serious businesswoman.
This year she is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her signature sportswear line for Kmart, the most successful celebrity line out there. A consumer survey by Women’s Wear Daily in 1993 rated it the fourth-best-known sportswear collection in the country, though it’s sold only in Kmart stores.
It’s not just her name that she has given to the clothes and accessories, either. She is involved at all levels of the production, from design to packaging.
“It’s a team effort,” she says of the design. “Some collections have more of me in them than others.”
She wears the clothes, too.
“I’m a big one for white shirts and khaki pants,” she says, “but I wear these clothes a lot, certainly more than 50 percent of the time.”
Kmart is not her only big business involvement. She has been a spokeswoman for Max Factor cosmetics since 1974. Six years ago, the company introduced her own vanilla-based fragrance, Jaclyn Smith’s California.
Along the way, Smith has also
released a beauty and exercise video - a natural spinoff for the former ballet dancer - and “The American Look,” a beauty book published by Simon & Schuster.
Smith was 19 and a struggling model when she met actor Roger Davis, her first husband. By the time “Charlie’s Angels” started, she was already divorced.
She was swept off her feet by second husband Dennis Cole when he made a guest appearance on the series, but that marriage lasted only 16 months.
Then came British cameraman Tony Richmond, the father of Smith’s two children. Their marriage lasted for nearly a decade, ending about five years ago amid tabloid headlines about another woman. Smith kept her dignity through it all.
“I’d sort of forgotten about the effect it can have, that gross exaggeration of your personal life,” she told the Los Angeles Times shortly after that. “It just seems that what happened was between the four of us, and no one else.”
Her children from that union - son Gaston, 13, and daughter Spencer-Margaret, 9 - are “the biggest, the best, part of my life,” she says.
There’s also the little girl she fell in love with because of her involvement with the Crippled Children’s Society of Southern California.
“She’s very special,” Smith says. “We’ve sort of adopted her. Her mother left, and her dad is raising her and doing a wonderful job. She’s an incredible little girl.”
After three terms as honorary chairwoman for the society, Smith was named permanent honorary chairwoman and continues to be deeply involved, including visiting summer camp for the children.
“It’s good for my children to take part in this too,” she says, “because sometimes we take what we have for granted.” Two years ago when Smith’s father was terminally ill, she met Bradley Allen, a Chicago heart surgeon who was one of the doctors who had operated on her father.
He is now the only man in her life, and she doesn’t preclude the possibility of marriage.
And her children?
“It would have to be a three-way decision,” she says quickly.
Fortunately, she adds, they think the world of him.