Life and Career
Dawber was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Thelma M. (née Fisher) and Eugene E. Dawber, a commercial artist. She attended North Farmington High School and Oakland Community College. She began her career as a fashion model with Wilhelmina Models and went on to a career as an actress. From 1978 to 1982, she played one of the title roles in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy: Mindy McConnell, the comedic foil and eventual love interest for the extraterrestrial Mork from the planet "Ork", played by Robin Williams. The show was extremely popular in its debut season, when it averaged at #3 in the Nielsen ratings for the year.
Dawber sang in a 1980s Los Angeles Civic Light Opera production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, based on the Joseph Papp/New York Shakespeare Festival production. Her role, as Mabel, had been played by Linda Ronstadt in the New York run of the show.
From 1986 to 1988, Dawber again had the title role in a TV series, playing Samantha Russell in the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam, co-starring Rebecca Schaeffer. The series was a success in its first season, but suffered a massive ratings drop in its second after moving to Saturday night. My Sister Sam left the air in April 1988, with half of the second season's episodes never airing on CBS, but eventually airing (along with all previous episodes) on USA Network. In July 1989, over a year after the show's demise, Schaeffer was shot and killed by an obsessed fan in front of her apartment, which devastated Dawber. Dawber, and her My Sister Sam co-stars Joel Brooks, David Naughton and Jenny O'Hara reunited to film a public service announcement about violence prevention.
Dawber parodied her Mork & Mindy character in the 1992 movie Stay Tuned, in which she co-starred with John Ritter, who parodied his Three's Company role.
Dawber is a national spokeswoman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
Read more about this topic: Pam Dawber
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back—it is already so far.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)