English actress, 1962 - date
"I'm an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."
— Donohoe, on her role in Lair of the White Worm
Born in Golders Green in London on 29th June, 1962, she was seemingly destined to be an iconoclast, courting controversy and unafraid to act on her desires and speak her mind (though she's mostly remembered for showing her naughty bits).
An example of this was her falling in love with Adam Ant at the age of fifteen. A year later she'd move in with him, and the tabloid media went apeshit. This trend was to continue as she persisted in behaviour the media would pick up on and criticize, doing very "unteenage" things. On reflection, none of them are terrible; in 1980 she stepped in to intervene in a bustup at a Top of the Pops recording. Some members of the band 4Be2 had taken umbrage at Adam Ant's "poofy" makeup and she intervened to defend him in the altercation. The following year she took some tabloid flak for appearing in music videos (Adam and the Ants' Antmusic and Stand and Deliver). At least she kept her clothes on for those (for this was the same year that Annabella Lwin posed nude for an album cover at the age of fourteen).
Having been present for the launch of the band, she was offered a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and left Ant shortly afterward. After her graduation, she accepted a role in Nicolas Roeg's film Castaway, playing opposite Oliver Reed. The film received decent reviews, and of course critics were quick to point out that "Amanda Donohoe spends most of the pic displaying the absence of bikini marks on her body" and described it as "a film that was beloved by generations of naughty schoolboys".
She followed this up with two Ken Russell films, Lair of the White Worm and The Rainbow, in each of which she made nude appearances. Seemingly keen to shed her image of an actress who exists to get her kit off, she moved to the US in 1990, where she came to the attention of a North American audience as the character Cara Jean in L.A. Law. It was in this role that she gained some notoriety for her part on the first lesbian kiss on US television. She later said in an interview for The Independent¹ that "I don't take my clothes off anymore, but now I kiss women. You can't win. Now I'm going to go and do serious work to shut them up".
She made some further appearances on American TV in Murder City and (appropriately enough) Bad Girls . After that and a few more film roles, she decided to take her talents to the stage, appearing in Uncle Vanya on Broadway and heading back to the UK to play Mrs. Robinson in a stage production of The Graduate. Curiously enough the next place I saw her was the British soap opera Emmerdale, followed by The Madness of King George, after which she dropped out of my sight, despite her taking a few more film and TV roles.
As she tells it, her most despised habit is smoking, so I will point her toward TheDeadGuy's advice to nude smokers.
¹ Interview with The Independent
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