AUDREY LANDERS FAMILY Means Everything

The former Dallas star talks motherhood, the pandemic and reflects on her long career

- Amanda Champagne-Meadows

As a young woman, Audrey Landers led a double life. During the school year, she studied psychology as a premed student at Columbia University’s Barnard College. But on school breaks, she guest-starred on many of the ’70s biggest TV shows, including Happy Days, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and The Dukes of Hazzard. It wasn’t long before Audrey found a home of her own on the nighttime drama Dallas, where she played the part of Afton Cooper for eight years. In 2013, she reprised Afton for TNT’s Dallas reboot. “It was just a wonderful warm reunion, like slipping into an old pair of shoes,” Audrey, 65, tells Closer. “Afton has had such a great arc and basically grew up on the show. They had an idea of her daughter marrying J.R.’s son, which was just so clever.”

Audrey recently appeared in Viral Vignettes, a collection of comedy shorts with an all-star cast. Born out of the pandemic, the series raised money for the Actors Fund of America, which supports performing arts professionals in need.

How did you first get interested in acting?

When I was about 3, my mother did a commercial. She brought me along, and I remember that I loved being on the set with her. It was just very exciting. It was something I always gravitated to after that.

You were just 9 when you were cast in the daytime drama The Secret Storm.

Yes, I am truly an antique! But it was very exciting. They wrote her eventually as a young girl who sang and played guitar.

Is that how you began performing music?