Why Dallas Star Charlene Tilton Never Thought She was Beautiful: 'I Couldn't Wait to Get Older'
John Shearer; CBS Photo Archive/Getty Right: Charlene Tilton in Nashville photographed for PEOPLE in February; Left: Tilton on Dallas in 1978.
In the early '80s there wasn't a hotter TV show than Dallas, with more than 20 million American households tuning in to watch the drama unfold on Southfork Ranch with J.R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman) and family. And few actresses were as popular as the women of Dallas — Linda Gray, Victoria Principal and Charlene Tilton, who was still a teen when she took on the role of J.R.'s scheming niece, Lucy Ewing.
But, despite Tilton's popularity as a pin-up and cover girl (she appeared on some 500 magazine covers at the height of her fame) "I had no idea how beautiful I was," Tilton says in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "I look back at pictures now and go, 'I really was all that and a bag of chips!' I really was pretty. But back then, I didn't get it."
Tilton, now 64. says at the time, she couldn't help but to compare herself with other stars of the day. "There were all kinds of beautiful women in Hollywood. I didn't think I was anything special," she says. "You had Farrah Fawcett, there was Loni Anderson, there's Suzanne Somers." And the actress who stands a petite 5' 1 ? inches tall, remembers being most in awe of a woman who looked nothing like her: "I just remember wishing I looked like Iman, the model and David Bowie's wife. She just has the most gorgeous bone structure and skin color and is tall and gorgeous. To me she was the epitome of beauty. I was short and when I gained five pounds, you could see it and believe me it was mentioned in the press."
Never entirely comfortable as a sex symbol — "the word elegant has never been used to describe me. I'm curvy. I'm not tall and thin. I'm not elegant, I'm spunky"— Tilton says she often felt miscast when she was younger. "When I was on Dallas and doing bathing suit magazine covers, I couldn't wait to get older," she says. "I always saw myself as a character actress. I really did. I just always said, "Someday I'm going to be a great character actress and I was chomping at the bit to do that."
And now, that's exactly what she does. Tilton, who lives in Nashville near her daughter Cherish Lee and her two grandsons, splits her time between being a grandma and acting in films for cable networks like the Hallmark Channel and faith-based streaming services (her latest film, Heaven Sent is streaming now on Pure Flix). "What I love about the age I am now is it brings different characters," she says.
Her life today is "really comfortable and content," she says. "The older I get, I've learned to be more present in the day-to-day. When I was on Dallas, it was such a whirlwind. At my age now, I'm more present. I don't feel the need to take every job, but I do make myself say yes to most things because I believe in saying yes, and trying new things and having opportunities."
