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| Birth Name(s) : Suzanne Marie Mahoney |
Date of Birth: October 16, 1946 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Alan Hamel |
| Profession:
Actor |
Official Site
Go to the Suzanne Somers Official Homepage |
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Full Suzanne Somers Biography
Suzanne is the third of 4 children born to Frank and Marion Mahoney. Her father worked loading beer onto boxcars, and her mother was a homemaker. She grew up living in constant fear of being hurt or even killed at the hands of her verbally and physically abusive alcoholic father. She was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was young, and she was a poor student. Suzanne, however, excelled in the arts and was active in her school's theatre program. She won a music scholarship to college, but became pregnant after 6 months. She married the baby's father, Bruce Somers, and her only child, Bruce Jr., was born in November 1965.
After her marriage ended, she turned to modeling in San Francisco to support herself and her son. In 1968, Suzanne won a job as a prize model on a game show hosted by her future husband, Alan Hamel, who was married at the time. The two began dating, and Suzanne became pregnant while Hamel was still married. They decided that Suzanne should have an abortion.
In 1971, son Bruce was severely injured when he was hit by a car, and the therapist counseling him only charged the struggling Suzanne $1 per week. Suzanne herself also underwent therapy to overcome the problems of her dysfunctional childhood.
In the early 1970s, she landed minor roles in film and TV, and finally won a role on the series Three's Company, where she modeled her character after Dick Clark's wife. She married Hamel in 1977. She was fired from Three's Company after she asked for a raise at the beginning of the fifth season.
She then headed to Las Vegas, where she performed extensively in the mid 1980s. In 1986, she began writing her autobiography, Keeping Secrets, which was later made into a TV movie. In 1991, Suzanne landed the role of Carol Foster, opposite Patrick Duffy, on the TV series Step by Step. Since the end of SBS, she has begun co-hosting the series Candid Camera. |
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Additional Suzanne Somers Biography
Suzanne Somers (born October 16, 1946) is an American actress, author, and businesswoman. Best known for her role as the ditzy blonde Chrissy Snow on the ABC sitcom Three's Company, she also had a noted starring role on the sitcom Step by Step as Carol Foster Lambert. She later capitalized on her acting career by also establishing herself as an author of a series of self-help books. She currently features items of her design on the Home Shopping Network.
Somers was born Suzanne Marie Mahoney, the third of four children in Frank and Marion Mahoney's Irish Catholic household in San Bruno, California. Her father was an alcoholic who could become violent on occasion, as Somers recounted, often forcing her to hide in her closet. She suffered from dyslexia and was a poor student. After being expelled from parochial school for having love notes in her locker, Suzanne went to Capuchino High School. Due to his drinking problem, her father was too inebriated to attend Suzanne's high school graduation in June 1964.
In September 1964, she was accepted at San Francisco College for Women (commonly referred to as "Lone Mountain College") on a music scholarship, a Catholic school that is now a campus of the University of San Francisco. She left during her Sophomore year, after becoming pregnant. She gave birth to her son Bruce Jr. on November 8, 1965, after marrying the boy's father, Bruce Somers. She left her husband three years later and began modeling. In 1971, her son was severely injured when he was hit by a car. Also at this time, Suzanne was arrested for writing a bad check to pay her rent. (Her mugshot would appear years later when she was on "Three's Company." But the negative publicity quickly subsided once Suzanne explained about her emotional and financial difficulties of having her son in the hospital.)
Before the feud with Three's Company producers and ABC even ended, rival network CBS knew that Somers was going to be available in the end. They eventually signed her to a contract and a development deal for her own sitcom, which was going to be called The Suzanne Somers Show in which she played an "over-the-top" airline stewardess. Once she was finally available, CBS gave Somers- and the public- a timeframe in which the show was supposed to premiere, but due to a change in administration at CBS's entertainment division in early 1982, the brass ended up passing on the project. Also, Suzanne claimed in her book After the Fall (1998) that the producers of Three's Company kept sending "cease & desist" forms to CBS stating that Suzanne couldn't use any of her Chrissy Snow characterization, and that chilled the creative process.
At the height of her exposure as official spokesperson for Thighmaster infomercials, Somers made her first return to a series, although not on network television. In 1987 she starred in the sitcom She's the Sheriff, which ran in first-run syndication. Somers portrayed a widow with two young kids who decided to fill the shoes of her late husband, a sheriff of a southern town. The show ran for two seasons. In 1990, Somers returned to network TV, appearing in numerous guest roles and made-for-TV movies, mostly for ABC. Her roles in these, including the movie Rich Men, Single Women, attracted the attention of Lorimar Television and Miller-Boyett Productions, who were developing a new sitcom. For Lorimar, this was asking Somers back, since they alone had produced She's the Sheriff.
In September 1991, Somers bounced back to series TV by starring in the successful sitcom Step By Step (with Patrick Duffy), which ran for seven seasons. Playing off her rejuvenated career, Somers also launched a daytime talk show in 1994, albeit briefly, aptly titled Suzanne Somers. During Step By Step's final season, on CBS, she began co-hosting Candid Camera with Peter Funt. A made-for-TV-movie starring Somers (based on her first autobiography, Keeping Secrets) was made about her life and growing up with an alcoholic father. She has released two autobiographies, two self-help books, four diet books, and a book about hormone replacement therapy.
As a business executive Somers has created a multi million dollar lifestyle empire. Through her companies ELO Somers and Port Carling Inc, of which Somers serves as president, Somers has created hundreds of personally branded fashion, diet, beauty and exercise products which are marketed through the Home Shopping Network, her website and through Suzanne, a direct sales organization in the vein of Avon or Tupperware.
In summer 2005 Somers made her Broadway debut in a one-woman show, The Blonde in the Thunderbird, a collection of stories about her life and career. The show was supposed to run until September, but negative publicity and disappointing ticket sales caused a late July closing. Somers blamed the harsh reviews (the New York Times: "...a swan dive into narcissism"; New York Post: "smug and remorseless") and told the Post: "These men are curmudgeons, and maybe I went too close to the bone for them. I was lying there naked, and they decided to kick me and step on me, just like these visions you see in Iraq."
Somers has recently admitted in interviews that if there was ever a movie made about the life of Johnny Cash, she'd love to play his wife, June Carter Cash. When told Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for famously playing that exact role in 2005's Walk the Line, Somers replied, "I have not seen any movie made after late 1994." |
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Suzanne Somers Quote(s)
| Fame is an uncomfortable state of being, but if I can use it and put out messages that are important, then I embrace fame. |
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