PAMELA SUE MARTIN - Why I Left HOLLYWOOD

The Dynasty and Nancy Drew alum shares what she's learned about finding happiness

- William Keck

At 19, Pamela Sue Martin joined an all-star cast fighting to stay alive in an overturned ship in the popular disaster film The Poseidon Adventure. A few years later, she starred as young sleuth Nancy Drew on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. By the 1980s, the actress found herself portraying spoiled rich girl Fallon Carrington Colby on the ratings sensation Dynasty. “It started out with a sort of satirical quality — a cut above intellectually,” Pamela, 70, recalls to Closer. “Then writers were replaced by more traditional soap writers.” Unhappy with the change in tone, she quit the show in 1984 and walked away from Hollywood a few years later. “Some of the decisions I made seemed wrong to other people at the time, but I’d had my fill and just enough money to move on down the road,” says Pamela. “And I’ve never really looked back. I wanted to be with animals, ride horses, travel a bit and have a family. I was able to do all that by leaving.”

People still associate you with Fallon or Nancy Drew. Are you anything like them?

I always said I was nothing like the characters I played, but then I realized that maybe I am because I’ve always gone against the prevailing thinking and found my own way. I got a motorcycle when I was 16 and thought nothing of jumping on a horse. I think I always had a sense of adventure as a young person, otherwise, I wouldn’t have ended up in New York pursuing modeling to make money for college.

Was modeling a good experience?

At 16 and 17, it was difficult. Modeling did a number on my head: be thinner; be prettier! I was sacrificing a part of my youth. It didn’t seem to be what life was about.