MELROSE PLACE STAR AMY LOCANE Life After Prison: 'I Have a Lot of Remorse

The former actress opens up to Us about coming back from a tragic error in judgment — drinking and driving — and what she learned

- ANDREA SIMPSON & LEANNE ACIZ STANTON

Five days before Christmas 2024, Amy Locane emerged from her second stint in prison forever changed. The Melrose Place alum, 53, had served roughly six and a half years behind bars for a DWI crash in 2010 that killed a 60-year-old woman. First incarcerated from 2013 to 2015, Locane was plucked from her life and again locked up from 2020 to 2024 after her first sentence was deemed too lenient. (She had been convicted of second-degree vehicular homicide and assault by automobile.) “It feels very raw to be back into society,” Locane tells Us. “I'm looking at the world with fresh eyes.”

Locane vividly remembers the day she was released. “My mom picked me up, and we went to Dunkin Donuts. When you're inside [prison], you are so deprived. To have coffee with a real creamer is a huge treat,” she says. She also marveled at the simplicity of getting her order within moments. In fact, she was both excited and terrified by how much had changed in the time she'd been away — even something as simple as grocery shopping: “I was like, ‘How do I do this self-scanning stuff?’”

Time Served

During her darkest days at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township, N.J., Locane looked for peace anywhere she could find it. “This bright fluorescent light gets you up at 6 or 7 a.m.,” she recalls, “so I'd get up at 5 a.m. to have my alone time.” Seven days a week, from noon to 6 p.m., she worked in the kitchen. Her responsibilities: cooking, feeding the masses and cleaning hundreds of pots. Her salary: $5 a day. “That’s considered a high-paying job,” she explains. But Locane didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. “It was intense manual labor,” she reports, “[but] I liked having some outlet, some form of exercise.”