Access Hollywood
By: Adam Kelley
Soap Opera Digest Magazine
November 16, 1999

Modeling Opened The Door To Celebrity, But Passions�s Dana Sparks Found Her Own Way Down The Walk of Fame.

Even now, so many years after the fact, Dana Sparks still isn�t quite sure why her mother sent her to modeling school as a teenager. "I was definitely a tomboy, and maybe she figured I needed a little polish," guesses the actress, who grew up climbing trees and rising horses in Northern California. "But I was also very interested in photography and advertising, so I would always pore through magazines and put pictures up in my room, and maybe she thought I was into the modeling thing. I don�t know."

Whatever the reason, it changed Sparks� life. Twice a week, she rode the train to San Francisco to learn about makeup and lingerie and walking on runways � and before Sparks knew it, she was pinballing back and forth in a world of connections, coincidences and opportunities. Modeling school led to a fashion show, which led to an agent, which led to her first commercial audition, for Coca-Cola. She got it. "All these big, national [ad campaigns] just fell into my lap," says Sparks. "I was 17 and had the look they wanted � I was this clean, healthy, all-American girl who could sell toothpaste and cheese and Coke and Kodak."

Encouraged by her successes in commercials, Sparks relocated to Los Angeles to pursue acting in earnest. Shortly after her arrival, she met her future husband, Steve Sparks. "We were living two doors away from each other on the beach in Malibu," she recalls, "and he had this amazing dog, a Brazilian Fila. They�re used to hunt jaguars in the tropical forests, or something like that. Anyway, it ran me down on the beach by accident, and Steve came over to apologize. He took me out to dinner, and that was that." Steve has since claimed that he purposely sent the dog on its collision course, but Sparks doesn�t buy it. "No way. That dog was so untrained."

The duo were married in either 1980 or 1981 � Sparks isn�t sure which. Soon after the pair moved "next to Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews," she recalls. She and Edwards�s daughter took to aerobicizing together; one thing led to another, and Sparks was suddenly appearing opposite Andrews and Jack Lemmon in Edwards�s 1986 dramedy, That�s Life!, no audition required. Once the film was finished, a casting director for DALLAS and FALCON CREST caught an advance screening, and Sparks, who didn�t even have an agent at the time, was hired to play FC�s beleaguered Victoria Gioberti. "I had a great time on that show," laughs Sparks. "In one season, I was kidnapped by my mother�s obsessive boyfriend, then he put a wid on me, pretended I was her and threw me off a cliff. Then I was a kleptomaniac. Then I was sold into white slavery, and then I robbed a Swiss bank with John Callahan [ex-Eric; now ALL MY CHILDREN�s Edmund], and we got put in prison. Oh, I was an alcoholic. All in one season! It was pretty farcical. But at the same time, it was all pretty cool."

The job lasted two-and-a-half years, and then Sparks left the vineyard for the world of nighttime episodics: L.A. LAW, ThirtySomething, Star Trek: The Next Generation and a thousand others. "I was on Melrose Place too, as Matt�s lover�s wife, and I think it was probably my worst acting ever," she confesses, "because I got killed, and I don�t know if I had too much coffee or what, but I couldn�t keep my eyes from fluttering when they did the close-up of me dead on the floor. It was totally embarrassing."

She still does guest spots on occasion (this is her third season recurring as JAG�s Carolyn), but with two characters on PASSIONS, amnesiac Grace and the presumed-dead (and thus presumed-alive) Faith � there�s not a lot of time for moonlighting these days. "But that�s okay, because I�m having such a blast," the actress enthuses. "I love all the witch stuff. I knew that [Head Writer] Jim Reilly had done the demonic possession [on DAYS OF OUR LOVES], and I was hoping there would be something like that on [PASSIONS], so I was excited when I found out that I was going to be levitated." Indeed, those scenes inspired her favorite line of dialogue to date: Tabitha�s quip, "Is that a bird? Is it a plane? Oh, it�s Grace Bennett!"

When she�s not in Harmony, Sparks relaxes in her and Steve�s latest abode, an all-stone lakeside retreat built into the Santa Monica mountains. The house, which was made for Rudolph Valentino in 1931 and is named Casa della Madonna, has walls two feet thick and 30 feet high. "It�s really pretty neat," Sparks concedes. It would, in fact, be a great place for children, which she and her husband don�t have yet, but haven�t ruled out. "I keep going back and forth on it," she laughs. In the couple�s spare time, they golf, and half of Tinseltown�s A-list has become their clients (he�s a stockbroker), friends and/or golfing chums. "One of Steve�s first games was with Dean Martin, and then he played with Dean almost every day for two years. Then, there was George C. Scott. And Sean Connery and his wife; we�re good friends with them."

Which is still a kick for the actress. "I remember when I was a little kid running to my room crying because my parents wouldn�t let me stay up to watch a James Bond movie, and now I�m friends with Sean. And then I think about how I lived next to Julie Andrews ... I used to have a Mary Poppins doll. I just never envisioned that I would someday have this kind of life. I mean, who would? Maybe [PASSIONS daydreamer] Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald, but not me," the actress muses. "I kind of thought I would grow up to have a farm and some horses, you know? Nothing so grand as Hollywood can be."