Ask American Profile 11/15/2009

Priscilla Barnes, Marge Champion, Shawn Christian

Q  Whatever happened to Priscilla Barnes, who played Terri the nurse on the TV series Three's Company?
—Ken Burks, Bloomington, Ind.

Barnes, 53, works steadily, just not much in sitcoms anymore. She recently portrayed Hillary Clinton off-Broadway in the play Hillary Agonistes, appeared in the film American Cowslip and starred in the Hallmark TV movie Elevator Girl. She says her favorite role was in the 2005 horror film The Devil's Rejects. "It's a deep, dark, complex, layered role," she says. But her mother "loved Three's Company because I was personable, likeable, cute and nonthreatening—all things mothers love their daughters to be." Barnes never has met Suzanne Somers, the actress she replaced on Three's Company, but she and former co-star Joyce DeWitt remain close friends.


Q  Was a real person used as the model for Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? The character looks so lifelike.
—Lisa Andrews, Walla Walla, Wash.

Legendary dancer and choreographer Marge Champion was selected to help the animators bring the cartoon damsel to life in 1934. "I was chosen out of my father's dancing class by a talent scout for Walt Disney," recalls Champion, 90, who was 14 when Disney animators went to work on the film. "I was the ideal model—too young to have any fear and too silly not to try to be a cartoon." She went on to dance in many big-screen musicals, including Show Boat (1951), and continues to kick up her heels working on a documentary, Keep Dancing. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released on Blu-ray recently.


Q  In the movie Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, there's an actor named Shawn Christian. Please help settle a family debate. Was it really Brad Pitt using a different name?
—B. Garrison, Harrington, W.Va.

There really is a Shawn Christian, and, yes, he has the same chiseled good looks as Brad Pitt. And the similarities don't stop there. The two share the same birthday, in different years (Pitt is two years older). If you want to see more of Christian, 43, he stars these days as Dr. Daniel Jonas on Days of Our Lives. His other TV credits include Summerland, Las Vegas, Birds of Prey, One Life to Live and As the World Turns, and he's been married since 1996 to Deborah Quinn. The couple has one son.

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