Victoria Principal spent decades as one of the most recognized faces on American television, but the chapters of her life she guarded most closely have only recently begun to surface. At 75, the woman known to millions as Pamela Barnes Ewing on Dallas has started opening up about the man she loved most—a young pop star whose career exploded overnight and whose life ended tragically at 30. Born on January 3, 1950, in Fukuoka, Japan, to a U. S.
Air Force sergeant, Principal grew up moving constantly—London, Puerto Rico, and across the American South. She appeared in her first commercial at age five, but by the time she graduated from high school in Florida in 1968, she had enrolled in college with plans to study medicine. A drunk driver changed that path when she was 18. The crash left her in recovery for months, facing the prospect of restarting her first year of college from scratch.
During that quiet period, she made a life-altering decision: she would not return to the classroom. She went to New York instead. Arriving with almost nothing, she worked as a model before studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In 1971, she moved to Los Angeles at 21, starting over for the second time.
Her first significant film role came a year later in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, opposite Paul Newman, earning her a Golden Globe nomination for most promising newcomer. The momentum stalled. Films that followed were minor, and by 1975 she was so disillusioned she quit acting and became a talent agent. She spent three years on the other side of the business, then prepared to leave Hollywood for law school on a full scholarship.
A friend dropped off a script on her way out the door. It was for Dallas, a primetime soap opera about an oil-rich Texas family. She read it in one sitting and knew the role of Pamela Barnes Ewing was hers before she finished the last page. When casting told her to send someone in, she simply said, “Just put down my name.
It will be a surprise. ”
Dallas premiered in 1978. Within two years it had become a global phenomenon, reaching its peak with the 1980 “Who Shot J. R.?
” cliffhanger, which drew the second-highest ratings in American primetime history. Principal was at the center of it all, anchoring the show as its moral compass for nine seasons. She negotiated her own contracts, retained rights to her image, and was the only cast member to secure freedom to pursue outside projects while still on the show. The love story fans most wanted to know about began in January 1981 on a television talk show, when she met Andy Gibb.
He was 22, she was 31. The youngest brother of the Bee Gees, Andy had already made history as the first solo artist to have his first three American singles reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was 19, then 20, when those records hit. They were a spectacular couple on paper and in person.
He told People magazine he watched Dallas solely because of her; she called him her perfect match. They attended premieres together and recorded a duet, a cover of “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” which charted modestly at number 51 in September 1981. It was the only single she ever recorded and the last he ever released. Behind the cameras, something darker was unfolding.
Andy’s cocaine use was escalating at precisely the moment his career demanded discipline. He was co-hosting Solid Gold and had landed the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. Then he began missing shows. He was fired from both.
Principal watched it happen. By her own account, she tried everything she could think of to help him. In March 1982, she gave him an ultimatum: choose between her and his problem. She meant it.
Andy said he had to leave. “Our breakup was preceded and precipitated by Andy’s use of drugs,” she told People after his death. “I did everything I could to help him, but then I told him he would have to choose between me and his problem. ”
The breakup sent him into freefall.
He skipped the American Music Awards because he could not get out of his depression, telling journalists he had stayed in bed for two weeks after she ended things. His career collapsed. He went through rehabilitation programs, spent time at the Betty Ford Center in 1985, and told those closest to him in early 1987 that he had finally beaten it. He had, temporarily.
By 1987, he filed for personal bankruptcy, reporting an annual income of less than $8,000. His brother Barry, the last surviving Bee Gee, stepped in and arranged for Island Records to sign Andy, taking him to London to work on a new album. He arrived in January 1988 seemingly healthier, enthusiastic about a comeback. But his brother Robin would later say Andy “went downhill so fast.
He was in a terrible state of depression. ” He began missing label meetings, suffered panic attacks, and slipped back into drinking. Even in those final weeks, the loss of Victoria was something he had never resolved. On March 5, 1988, Andy Gibb turned 30 in London.
Two days later, he entered John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford with chest pains. On the morning of March 10, his doctor told him more tests were needed. Shortly afterward, he lost consciousness and died. The cause was myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle from a viral infection.
There were no illegal drugs in his system; he was clinically clean when he died. But as his mother, Barbara Gibb, said in later years, the damage had been done through drugs in the first place. His heart had been weakened by years of cocaine and alcohol. When the news reached Principal, the grief was complicated by everything left unfinished.
“Andy was more than his addiction,” she said years later. “He was kind, funny, and full of life, but addiction is relentless, and it took him from all of us far too soon. ”
She had left Dallas in 1987, a year before his death—a decision she said she had been building toward for years. Days before filming her final scenes, she was offered a per-episode salary that would have made her the highest-paid woman on television.
She turned it down. “There are moments in life when you discover your true character,” she said. “That night, I slept like a baby because I wasn’t for sale. ”
Principal had met Dr.
Harry Glassman, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, in 1983, two years after her relationship with Andy ended. They married on June 22, 1985, in Dallas, while she was still on the show. The marriage lasted more than two decades; she filed for divorce in 2006, citing irreconcilable differences, and said publicly without bitterness that they had shared a loving relationship for over 20 years. Her earlier life included a brief marriage to writer Christopher Skinner, whom she met in 1978, and relationships with Anthony Perkins and Steven Spielberg.
She has never remarried and has never had children. After Dallas, she built a second act. In 1989, she launched Principal Secret, a skin care line she joked she wanted to call Victoria’s Secret—but that name was already taken. She opened her own production company, wrote four books, and even purchased a ticket on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceflight program in 2007, withdrawing in 2012 when the timeline stretched too far.
Today she develops a ranch outside Los Angeles, rescuing and rehabilitating animals. For a woman who spent her career in the most public profession imaginable, and who loved a man she could not save, she has found her deepest peace taking in broken things and helping them heal. The question that lingers is what might have happened if Andy Gibb had chosen differently in 1982, when Victoria Principal gave him the ultimatum and he walked away.