Cheryl Ladd’s Journey from ‘Charlie’s Angels’ to Today: ‘My Life is Big and Bright and Beautiful Again’

Music didn’t remain the focus for long, despite the fact that Cheryl recorded the Josie and the Pussycats album (1970), a self-titled disc (1978), Dance Forever (1979), Take a Chance (1981) and You Make It Beautiful (1982), along with a number of singles. In 1971 she starred in the film Chrome and Hot Leather, followed three years later by The Treasure of Jamaica Reef. Prior to 1977 she began scoring numerous television guest starring roles on such shows as The Rookies, Harry O, Ironside, The Partridge Family, Happy Days, Police Woman and The Fantastic Journey. And then came the opportunity to replace the departing Farrah Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels after that show had become a genuine phenomenon. It was something she was extremely reluctant to do. In 1973 she married David Ladd, with whom she had their daughter, Jordan Ladd, in 1975. The marriage ended in divorce in 1980.

“I had worked for Aaron Spelling on a couple of things, so when Farrah was leaving, he called me and said, ‘Cheryl, I want you to replace Farrah. I want you to come in and be on the show,’” remembers the actress. “And I said, ‘Oh, thank you, but no thank you. I appreciate it, but, no.’ I’m sure he was quite upset with me, because he had given me work before and just didn’t understand. So he went off and looked at hundreds of girls and finally called me back and said, ‘I can’t find the girl I want. I want you, Cheryl. Just come in and talk to me?’ So I did.

“I sat across the desk from him in his office,” she continues, “and I said, ‘Aaron, what would I play? Nobody can go in there and try to be Farrah Fawcett or try to be the new Farrah Fawcett. What would I play?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know. Could I be funny?’ And he said, ‘Why couldn’t you be funny?’ That was interesting. Then I said, ‘If I was a rookie, I could make mistakes. This is America; we pull for the underdog and the person that’s trying really hard. We relate to that.’ And he said, ‘I love that.’ And this is Aaron’s absolute genius; he said, ‘What if you’re Jill’s little sister, so you’re already part of the family?’ And then I said, ‘You have an actress.’ Now I knew who Kris Munroe was going to be and how to play something that wasn’t trying to be Farrah other than the fact that Kris looked up to her big sister and thought she was wonderful and I got to love her with everyone else.”

Sounds relatively simple, but one has to remember just how big a phenomenon Charlie’s Angels — about a trio of beautiful women carrying out assignments for a mysterious benefactor that they never met, only heard on a speakerphone — was at the time. With its launch in 1976, it projected Farrah, Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson into the stratosphere, turning them into a superstars and keeping the media spotlight shining brightly on them. That was the world that Cheryl was stepping into.

“It was really interesting,” Cheryl understates. “Nobody cares much about you one day, and the next day they want to know what you eat, what you wash your hair with — just everything about you becomes so interesting overnight. But I was still the same girl I was the day before when nobody cared. It was just an interesting transition and it became a little overwhelming, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I knew that the show couldn’t last forever, so I just embraced it with two hands and did the best job I knew how to do.

“Now,” she continues, “40-something years later, I see people all the time that want their picture taken with Kris Munroe and they want to do the Charlie’s Angels pose with me — men, women and children, which is adorable. What’s amazing is when people come up to me and say things like, ‘I wouldn’t have been a police officer without Charlie’s Angels. You girls inspired all of us and women firefighters, doctors and all kinds of people.’ They were just inspired by those three ‘Angels.’ I just feel so proud that it had an impact on women that was just so virulent and it’s joyful.”

Not bad for a show that was frequently dismissed during its original run as little more than “jiggle TV.” Cheryl nods her head. “Isn’t it interesting,” she poses, “how intimidated men in the press and in general were by the show? They had to put it down in some way. I mean, okay, we were young women who wore bathing suits and that was part of the draw, but they missed the whole other part. The part of empowered and highly-intelligent women. Women who had to act on their feet and make quick decisions and look after each other.

“I always say we were three grownup Girl Scouts, but that was a good, powerful image for young women,” Cheryl elaborates. “And, as I said, I didn’t realize how powerful it was for women to kind of break out and be the person they wanted to be, and that it was inspirational to so many young women, which we didn’t know at the time. We couldn’t. I was just working hard and trying to get home to my two-year-old.”

Charlie’s Angels finished its run in 1981 and Cheryl was able to parlay that success into a couple of dozen TV movies and mini-series, numerous guest star appearances, several movies, starring roles on the TV shows One West Waikiki and Las Vegas, and Broadway appearances. All in all, a pretty amazing career, though it seemed to be becoming more problematic as time went on in that Cheryl was losing focus. Literally.

“As you age,” she says, while simultaneously emphasizing how much she hates that word, “our eyes are not what they used to be. At first I needed readers to really see what I was reading, but from there my eyes were deteriorating. So then I needed prescription lenses and as I got older — another word I hate — I was really not seeing very well at night. The lights and the headlights coming at me were blurry; I couldn’t really gauge how far away the cars were from me and I started to get really insecure about driving at night. Well, as it turns out, I had cataracts and they were progressing and were only going to get worse. The doctor suggested that I have cataract surgery, and I was actually grateful that I did so when I did.”

The reason for that is that she was introduced to a product known as the PanOptix Lens that she credits with quite literally changing her life, the surgery proving a wonder to her and even resulting in her becoming a spokesperson for the product. “It’s a trifocal lens,” Cheryl explains, “so you can thread a needle, read, look at your computer, look halfway across the room and see miles down the road. This PanOptix Lens really gives you the eyes you had as a child, and it’s unbelievable. Not only that, when I had the cataracts, because they happen so gradually, I had no idea that my world was becoming sepia tone. Everything was kind of muddy and the reason I’m saying that I didn’t know is that when I got my first lens in, I opened my eye and it was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was like stepping into Oz. All of a sudden the colors were bright, the lights were bright, the blues were blue. I had been living in this sepia world. It was just remarkable. I was so excited that I jumped up and hugged the doctor and couldn’t wait for my second eye to be done. And the surgery is really simple.”

The impact on her has been fairly amazing. “I feel optimistic about the future now,” says the 68-year-old. “All my life, I’ve been one of those people to just go after it. I was just fearless. But when I became insecure about driving, it really had me depressed. I was, like, ‘Oh, man, I’m getting old now. My life is becoming smaller.’ But as soon as I had the operation, my view of the future became optimistic. I got my life back again and it’s big, bright and beautiful.”

In some ways, as far as being a working actress is concerned, the timing for this comeback in life and battle against ageism couldn’t have been better. In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, there seems to be more opportunities for women than ever before. “So many more women writers are writing for women,” says Cheryl. “So many more men writing good things for women. It’s really interesting how that has kind of exploded with the availability of all of the streaming services out there that need product and have proven that there is an audience for very strong women. I like being this age. I’m enjoying my craft far more now than when I was on Charlie’s Angels.

“That show was wonderful and it was a rocket ship for me and I’m grateful for it,” she emphasizes. “But I must say that I’ve grown and have learned my craft over the course of these many years and I’m enjoying my work even more, because the depth of the characters is challenging. I’ve being given the challenge to do, and am doing, so much more.”

And beyond acting there is her growing business, Cheryl Ladd Signature Homes, which she runs with her husband of nearly 40 years, Brian Russell. “When we were dating,” she explains, “we were just meant for each other, because he loved houses and architecture and things like that — and so did I. So many of our dates were on Sunday afternoons and we’d go all throughout Beverly Hills and Bel Air to open houses. We would just look at them, because we loved houses and both of us wanted to build one someday. We read together all the time; he was an avid reader, I was an avid reader. So we had these two weird things in common that we both understood totally. We were kind of pals right away and enjoyed doing a lot of weird things that some people would look at and say, “You’re going to spend the afternoon reading?’”

They remodeled the first house they owned twice and then moved out of Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, where they bought a 22-acre lot where the coastal mountains were all around. “It was the perfect place,” she smiles, “and my husband had drawn a ‘maybe someday’ house floor plan. We knew the kind of Italian Villa house that we wanted to build some day, so we got to build that beautiful house on that lot and that was it. The die was cast. We like starting from scratch, so we thought maybe we should build some houses for other people. We built a spec house in a beautiful community and that sold, so we’ve been tiptoeing into kind of a new adventure.”

“Adventure” would seem to be the appropriate term for most of her life. “It’s a joyful journey,” Cheryl enthuses. “I still love my craft. I take it seriously. I try to do the very best I can and try to find some interesting people to play. And right now in my life, I’m finding some really interesting women to play, which is fabulous. On top of that, my marriage, our Signature Homes … and everything else.”

As it turns out, asking her parents for luggage all those years ago worked out pretty well. “Yep,” she laughs. “Love that luggage.”