Biography for
Linda Harrison (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

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Mini Biography

A native of Berlin, Maryland, Linda Harrison was Miss Berlin at 16, then a model in New York's Garment Center. Homesickness brought her back to Maryland, where she entered and won the state beauty pageant. During the finals in the Miss International contest (held in Long Beach, California), she was "spotted" by talent scout Mike Medavoy and presented at 20th Century-Fox. Throughout her acting years at Fox, and amidst movie roles in Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and others, she dated studio boss Richard D. Zanuck and married him in 1968. They were divorced in 1978, but she's appeared in three of his movies since then.

Spouse

Trivia

Interviewed in "It Came from Horrorwood: Interviews with Moviemakers in the SF and Horror Tradition" by Tom Weaver (McFarland, 1996).

She was to be the sheriff's (Roy Scheider's wife in Jaws (1975), which her husband Richard D. Zanuck was producing. However, Universal chief Sid Sheinberg wanted his own wife, Lorraine Gary, to have the part. Since Sheinberg was Zanuck's boss, Gary got it.

Personal Quotes

I felt very intuitive that my particular personality and nature were like Nova. Automatically, I'd say that's about 80% of the part. The director, the producer and the writer talked with me about her, and they described her as "sub-human." We hadn't really had an actress play "sub-human" before. Nova's not like Raquel Welch's character in One Million Years B.C. (1966). She was more primitive because of the apes' suppression. We played it by ear and experimented. It was really a moment-to-moment thing.

Where Are They Now

(August 2009) Since the late 1970s, her primary residence has been on the Eastern Shore of her home state of Maryland.

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