Category Archives: Sondra Currie

Aging Fantastically

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I had a wonderful time last Sunday re-connecting with my long-time friend, Sondra Currie (star of The Hangover, The Hangover II, and The Hangover III) at the Aging Fantastically Festival in Los Angeles.

Aging Fantastically Festival-Sept 2015We are re-inventing what it is to be “of a certain age,” alive, vibrant and looking forward to the next 30 years of living full out and doing all the things we forgot to do in our 30s and 40s. Youth no longer has to be wasted on the young! EVERYthing gets better when you stay healthy and maintain a positive mental attitude!

Sondra and I started our careers together in a TV show entitled Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Yikes!! What fun. Erik Estrada had a small role…wearing a 3-piece pink suit. Egad.

Here is a screen snapshot of that episode (“Legacy of Terror,” 1975) from Kolchak: The Night Stalker with Yours Truly seated in a fancy uniform.

12107131_10206786548638110_7565987658984225913_nHere, you can see Erik Estrada making his TV debut in a hot pink 3-piece suit (I’ll bet you thought I was kidding). The beautiful Sondra Currie is on the right. She looks the same today. Darren McGavin is on the far right.

12079467_10206786531117672_4683850165345246108_nFor the record, I had a nice little scene here, flirted a lot and then got killed off in the next scene. Ahhh…such is the life of an Ingenue.

Udana Talks About Her TV and Movie Career, Pt. 5

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NOTE: This interview with Udana was conducted January, 2015. In this installment, publicist Bill Murphy (BM) and multi-talented Udana Power (UP), discuss Udana’s career from 1981 up through 1989, stopping just short of her appearance on Knot’s Landing.

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BM: Let’s pick up where we left off last time. In our last interview we covered your stage work with Katharine Hepburn and your work with soaps, General Hospital and all of your commercial work.

UP: Yes, okay.

HighRiskBM: And that takes us up to – I know some of this stuff was going on at the same time, but as far as your movies and TV work go, 1981 was something called High Risk. Do you remember what that is? You are actually uncredited as Gail. How did you get uncredited for that?

UP: Oh, yes, that was a movie. What do you mean? How did I get uncredited?

BM: According to IMDB your name is Gail in it, but then in parenthesis it says uncredited right beside it.

UP: Hmmm…I have no idea.

BM: What is High Risk? I can see it’s four –

UP: High Risk is a movie. It’s on DVD. Bruce Davison was in it and James Brolin.

BM: James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, Lindsay Wagner, James Coburn. It’s a huge cast.

UP: Yes. They flew us down to Mexico. I was playing Bruce Davison’s wife. We shot in Mexico City. I had a day off and went to the pyramids of Teotihuacan and ran up to the top. I still have a little, marble frog I bought at a concession stand there. I am blown away that the production company flew me down there because all I had was one or two scenes. Bruce Davison was my husband and I was giving him a birthday party in our back yard. I didn’t go into the jungle and do all the adventure stuff with them.

It was a small role and, as you know, in the film business the slogan is “Hurry up and wait.” At one point I was stir crazy. Bruce is an amazing guy with a wonderful sense of humor. I knew him in Los Angeles. I think he’s Continue reading →

Udana Talks About Her TV and Movie Career, Pt. 1

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NOTE: So many people have asked me about my career that I decided to spend time with my publicist, Bill Murphy, who interviewed me about my first few appearances on TV. Our conversation took place in September of 2012. This is Part 1 of what’s likely to be a 3-4 part series. I hope you enjoy it!

Bill: Let’s talk about your first TV appearance, which was Ironside in 1971. The episode was called “In the Line of Duty.” How did you get the gig on Ironside? What had you been doing? You were in your mid-twenties. So this must have been one of your first jobs.

Udana: That was literally my first job. I was going on auditions, and I had a manager who was helping me go on auditions, and I went to Universal Studios, and somehow I got chosen. I think [producer] Cy Chermak had something to do with that.

B: Let me check IMDB. Yep, Cy Chermak.

U: Got it. That’s so long ago. I had no idea who I was. I had no idea that I was pretty, all I knew was that I just wanted to act. Cy Chermak hired me for this, and I got my SAG card. That’s how I got my Screen Actors Guild card, and it cost me $280 to get my SAG card then. Now it’s $1000, $2000 or something like that. But at that point it was a whopping $280. [laughs]

B: [laughs]

U: And I got my Screen Actors Guild card. I kind of knew who Gary Mason was and Raymond Burr was, and I had, I remember I had a scene that I had to be very emotional in. I had to be crying. And there were four people in the scene. I think we were Continue reading →