Born into a
Catholic family in
Dayton, Ohio, Andrea Thompson (
1962-) grew up in
Australia, until her mother dragged her and her siblings to
Florida after her parents’ divorce. In her 20s, she began modeling, traveling, and acting, studying at the
Actors Studio.
Bit parts in movies like
Wall Street and
Delirious followed. She eventually scored a recurring role on the
prime time soap opera Falcon Crest. On
Babylon 5, she did an impressive turn as telepath
Talia Winters and married her co-star
Jerry Doyle in
1995. (They divorced in
1997.) Frustrated by
J. Michael Straczynski’s whimsical production schedule, which left her without work for months at a time and no assurance when she would or wouldn’t appear again on the show, she left two years into a five year contract. Unfortunately, this was before the possibilities of her character could be fully explored, including pretty blatant hints of a
lesbian relationship between Winters and
Susan Ivanova. She jumped back to prime time with a role as prosecutor Commander
Allison Krennick on
JAG. Her most prominent role was as Detective
Jill Kirkendall on
NYPD Blue. Originally slated to only appear three episodes, producer
David Milch was so impressed that he offered her a three year contract.
But she left a great role on a hit prime time drama to pursue a long time dream:
broadcast journalism. In
1999, she started writing pieces for
Stanford News Service. Convinced that she was sincere, she was hired by KRQE in
Albuquerque,
New Mexico. In less than a year on the job, she covered the
Los Alamos fire, the seven escaped
Texas prison inmates, and got an exclusive interview with a killer on
death row.
CNN snapped her up as a
Headline News anchor, starting in August
2001.
This caused a controversy for two reasons. One was her lack of journalistic experience or training, which had holders of journalism degrees foaming at the mouth. This was compounded by the appearance of nude photos of her on the
internet. They were stills of nude scenes from two movies -
Manhattan Gigolo (
1986) and
A Gun, A Car, A Blonde (
1997) – and
1999 nude photos from an
Australian mag,
Black & White. Critics are bemoaning the death of journalism, but hell, it died a long time ago, and they should concentrate on doing real news and complain about the real problems in the news business, instead of
scapegoating an accomplished woman who is evidently serious about what she’s doing. CNN, to their credit, are standing behind her.
Sources include: www.andreathompson.com; Ted Johnson, "News Break", TV Guide, May 19-25, 2001.