Hottest 80s pin-ups and what happened next – stalkers, rock star flings and drugs hell

Colourful makeup, big shoulder pads, bright clothing, and lots of hairspray was the norm for women, and some men, in the 1980s.

But, in spite of all these extra layers concealing the leading Hollywood ladies, it was still a decade that delivered a bumper crop of iconic celebrities who appeared on our television screens and in cinemas.

From coming-of-age comedies, to sitcoms, to raunchy eyebrow-raising cinema, these starlets made viewers sit up and pay attention.

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While there are plenty more we could have named, we’ve whittled down a list of 10 icons of the era to take a look at what they’ve done in the years since they hung on the walls of millions of bedrooms and dorm rooms.

Heather Thomas

Few who were a certain age would forget the eye-popping entrance of Heather Thomas in a small bikini during the opening credits of The Fall Guy.

Thomas starred as Jody Banks, a Hollywood-stunt-performer turned bounty hunter, on the TV action drama, alongside Lee Majors of Six Million Dollar Man fame.

Thomas certainly grabbed fans’ attention, however, unfortunately during and after the series run, some of Thomas’ fans crossed the line into stalking.

Incidents included one fan climbing her fence with a knife, while another was slapped with a restraining order after showing up at her home uninvited, and sending her his screenplay, which she said was “clearly the work of a disturbed person.”

Though her career had already slowed, Thomas, now 65, explained that these incidents and others like them contributed to her decision to retire from acting altogether in 1998.

She did, however, land one more role, in the 2014 webseries, Girltrash!, and is now an activist and campaigner for voter registration.

Kelly Le Brock

Who can forget Kelly LeBrock’s first screen appearance on Weird Science?

She stood in a smoking doorway in a crop top, while Gary and Wyatt shook their bra-wearing heads in disbelief.

It’s safe to say the boys’ plan to make their dream woman had definitely worked, and, in a world that hadn’t quite grasped the internet yet, she made a lot of teen boys wonder if they were getting the most out of their consoles.

The American-born actress, who was raised in London, had already been married once when she met actor and martial artist Steven Seagal, with whom she had a daughter in 1987 before the couple married later that year.

They had another two children before LeBrock filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences” in 1994.

She has since been married and divorced for a third time, and devotes her time to the terminally ill, following the death of her brother Harold in 2008

The 62-year-old has also been active as a spokeswoman for Club Carson, whose members are children suffering from cancer.

Heather Locklear

Heather, 61, was in high demand in the 80s, and made the glitzy Dynasty very watchable for a whole new collection of viewers when she appeared as Sammy Jo Carrington from 1981 to 1989.

Locklear also starred as the red hot cop that we’d happily be frisked by, alongside William Shatner, when she played officer Stacy Sheridan on T. J. Hooker.

Locklear achieved a steady stream of success, including four consecutive Golden Globe nominations, and has been married to rockstars, Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe (1986 to 1993), and Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora (1994 to 2006).

However, since the latter part of the noughties, Locklear has battled mental health issues, and has fallen foul of the law on a number of occasions, with arrests relating to reckless driving, battery and domestic assault.

In one incident in 2018 the Dynasty actress was “hospitalised after threatening to shoot herself”.

Publication TMZ claimed Heather Locklear was taken for a psychiatric evaluation after a family member called the police and said they were concerned about her behaviour.

According to the US website, police were told Heather was acting “erratically” and that she was “trying to find a gun to shoot herself”, although it was claimed she did not have access to a weapon at the time.

Kim Cattrall

While modern audiences will know Cattrall, 66, for her sexually-assured Samantha Jones in the long-running series Sex and The City, the actress rose up through the 80s playing her part in other saucy roles in films such as Porky’s.

The British-born Canadian-American star has also never been shy to strip down in her roles too, and has often shown off her amazing physique while the cameras are rolling.

Off-camera, Cattrall’s lovelife has seen been just as busy, with three marriages under her belt, as well as briefly dating former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

She has also been connected to Brazilian-American actor Daniel Benzali, American musician Gerald Casale, French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, and British-Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig.

Tragedy struck for Cattrall in 2018 when her brother Christopher disappeared in Alberta. He was discovered several hours later, having taken his own life.

Linda Kozlowski

Before Linda starred in the Crocodile Dundee trilogy, she was a well-known Broadway actress, but it was the simple task of filling up a water bottle on the silver screen in 1986 that left an indelible mark on the minds of a generation.

She met husband to be, Paul Hogan, while shooting the blockbuster and went on to feature in the subsequent sequels which, sadly, featured fewer trips to the creek to top up her refreshments.

Kozlowski continued to feature alongside Hogan in Almost an Angel, and racked up other acting credits before rejoining her spouse in Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles in 2001.

The 65-year-old has since left the world of showbiz and acting behind, explaining to the Scripps Howard News Service in 2001: “These straight-to-video schlocky films I was getting were giving me an ulcer, basically because I was the only one on the set that cared about anything.

“I’d say, ‘Well, this scene doesn’t make sense.’ ‘Aw, so what, just say the lines.’ I thought, ‘This isn’t fun anymore. This is not why I studied, it’s not what I love.’ Between that and my biological clock, I decided to give it all away.”

In October 2013, Kozlowski filed for divorce from Hogan, citing irreconcilable differences, with the divorce finalised in 2014.

Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie Lee Curtis, 64, had already fought off the advances of Jason in Friday the 13th a few years earlier, but it was the moments before she told Dan Ackroyd that she was off limits in Trading Places that a nation of teens sat up and took notice.

Curtis has continued to grace the big screen, although generally whilst wearing more clothes in the decades since.

She even picked her husband out of a magazine; after seeing a feature on This is Spinal Tap, in Rolling Stone, she told her friend Debra Hill, “Oh, I’m going to marry that guy”, referring to Christopher Guest. The pair were married five months later.

Curtis is a recovering alcoholic, and was once addicted to painkillers that she began using after a cosmetic surgical procedure.

She became sober from opiates in 1999 and maintains that her recovery is the single greatest achievement of her life.

After her father Tony’s death, she learned that her entire family, including her siblings, had been cut out of his will.

Christina Applegate

From 1987 to 1997, Applegate played the ditzy blonde bombshell daughter, Kelly Bundy, on Fox’s first sitcom, Married… with Children.

Following the series’ cancellation in 1997, producers were keen to keep the rising star around, pitching a spinoff centered on the Kelly character, but Applegate declined.

Since her decade-long introduction to the mainstream, she has managed to regularly land roles, which have kept her close to our hearts.

Behind the camera Christina, 51, has had to battle some serious health issues, starting in 2008 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The Anchorman actress underwent a double mastectomy and was said to be cancer free.

In August 2021, Applegate announced that she had been diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative disease multiple sclerosis.

The disease heavily affected her ability to perform on set during the final season of Dead to Me, and the show took a five-month production break while Christina received treatment.

Brooke Shields

Model-turned-actress Brooke Shields, 57, first hit the big time when she appeared in the coming-of-age film Blue Lagoon in 1980, at the tender age of 15.

By the age of 16, Shields had become one of the most recognisable faces in the United States, because of her dual career as a fashion model and child actress.

In 1985, at the age of 20, Shields shocked the world when she announced that she was still a virgin, a confession which she said “never left her alone” as she was branded “the most famous virgin in the world”.

Before her two marriages, including once to former tennis star Andre Agassi, Brooke was in a relationship with Michael Jackson and spoke at the memorial service for the late pop star.

In 2005, Shields came under fire from Tom Cruise after she spoke publicly about her battle with postpartum depression, an experience that included depression, thoughts of suicide, an inability to respond to her baby’s needs and delayed maternal bonding.

Cruise — a Scientologist whose beliefs frown upon psychiatry — condemned Shields, both personally and professionally, for using and speaking in favour of antidepressants.

Shields responded that Cruise’s remarks on antidepressants were “irresponsible” and “dangerous”.

Lisa Bonet

At the age of 17, Lisa landed the role of Denise Huxtable and became a breakout star on one of America’s most popular sitcoms in the 1980s and early ’90s, The Cosby Show.

The most free-spirited of the children on the landmark programme, she was also a free spirit in real life and her personality led to butting heads with the sitcom’s creator, and executive producer, Bill Cosby.

Following her departure from the sitcom, she joined a spin-off, set to follow her life through university but moved on after one season.

Her private life was no less free-spirited as she eloped with American rock singer, Lenny Kravitz, in Las Vegas, on her 20th birthday.

The pair had one daughter and divorced in 1993.

In 2005, Bonet began a relationship with actor Jason Momoa, and had a 12-year relationship before they married in October 2017.

The hunky Aquaman star, 43 and actress, 55, had two children during their time together before announcing their separation in January 2022.

Kim Basinger

Throughout the 80s and into the 90s the name Kim Basinger was synonymous with the term sex symbol, and it was in no small part to her role in 9½ Weeks.

Starring opposite Mickey Rourke, Kim played an art gallery assistant lured into a dark world of sexual experimentation, and it made her a household name.

We’ve probably all heard the phrase ‘a way to man’s heart is through his stomach’, but in Basinger’s case it’s through her hair and make-up.

The actress married make-up artist, Ron Snyder-Britton, whom she met on the film Hard Country.

After the pair split Basinger had romantic relationships with hairdresser/producer Jon Peters as well as singer Prince.

In 1990, Basinger met her second husband, Alec Baldwin. The pair married in 1993, and had a daughter, before separating in 2000, while starring in a cameo role on The Simpsons.

In 1989, Basinger spent $20 million buying 1,691 acres of private land in the small town of Braselton, Georgia, to establish it as tourist attraction with movie studio, but encountered financial difficulties.

The failed investment, combined with losing a costly court battle with studios after she pulled out of the controversial film, Boxing Helena, saw Basinger file for bankruptcy.

In 2014 she began dating Mitch Stone, who, like Snyder and Peters before him, she met while he was doing her hair on a movie set.

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk