Jill Whelan (born September 29, 1966) is an American actress.
Whelan was born in Oakland, California. After attending summer acting camp at age 7, Whelan landed a series of commercials. At age 11, she was cast in the short-lived TV series Friends (a little-known, but critically acclaimed, 1979 series). Later that year, Whelan played the role of Lisa Davis, the sick girl, in Airplane! She is probably best known for her role in the hit television series The Love Boat. In the series she played Vicki Stubing, the daughter of Capt. Stubing (played by Gavin MacLeod). After the show was canceled in 1986, she worked on an album titled Our Time.
During the early 1980s, Whelan served as a national spokesperson for First Lady Nancy Reagan's Just Say No anti-drug campaign.
Whelan graduated from the The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California and continued on to college in England at Guildford College.
After returning to the United States, Whelan moved to New York City and acted in several Off-Broadway productions before leaving the stage to work as an event producer at Madison Square Garden. It was here that she met her second husband, whom she would marry over a decade later.
Shortly after leaving Madison Square Garden, Whelan met her first husband, Brad St. John, and was married, becoming pregnant soon thereafter. Moving back to her native California in preparation for the birth of her first son, Harrison, Whelan soon accepted another acting role on the long-running TV soap opera The Young and the Restless. She then left acting and started working as an investigative producer at the Los Angeles KCOP television station, where she remained for 4 years before moving back to the East Coast to get married again.
She married Michael Chaykowsky in April 2004 aboard the cruise ship Caribbean Princess. It was her second marriage. Her second son, Grant, was born on July 1, 2006.
She lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania and hosts a Sunday afternoon radio show on WPHT 1210AM in Philadelphia. The show airs Sunday from 3 pm-4 pm EST. Additionally, Jill teaches acting to children and teens.
On Friday September 10, 2008 Whelan appeared with several other cast members from the movie Airplane! in a reunion segment on NBC's the Today Show.
In October 2008, Whelan made her New York City cabaret debut with her one-woman show, Jill Whelan: An Evening In Dry Dock at The Metropolitan Room.
From September to November 2011, Whelan appeared in the British farce Move Over Mrs. Markham at Stage West Theatre Restaurant in the Toronto, Ontario area.
Whelan was set to replace Mark Thompson, who retired on August 17, 2012, after 25 years co-hosting The Mark & Brian Show on KLOS in Los Angeles, but during Thompson's final broadcast, co-host Brian Phelps announced that he, too, was quitting KLOS. Phelps and Whelan will instead be co-hosting a comedy podcast at www.brianandjillshow.com. The podcast is expected to launch in September 2012.
Famous quotes containing the word jill:
“Jack and Jill
Went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down,
And broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th18th century. Jack and Jill (l. 16)