Sheree J. Wilson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sheree J. Wilson (born in Rochester, Minnesota on December 12, 1958) is an American actress.
She currently resides in Marina Del Rey, California with her son Luke.
The daughter of two IBM executives, she moved to Colorado at the age of nine, where she learned to ride horses. Her superb equestrian skills won her first place riding cutting horses in the 1995 National Multiple Sclerosis Rodeo.
Her start in show business, a career she secretly always wanted, happened by a lucky mistake. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and received a degree in fashion merchandising and business in 1981. Shortly after graduation, while working in Denver on a fashion shoot, one of the photographers thought Sheree was the model. He introduced her to Wilhelmina, the modeling agent from New York, who signed her on the spot. She promptly moved to Manhattan and within eighteen months, had appeared in over thirty commercial campaigns for Clairol, Sea Breeze, Keri-Lotion and Maybelline. Her print work ran in such popular magazines as Mademoiselle, Glamour and Redbook.
After three years of modeling, Wilson's agent, Vicki Light, called her with an audition in a feature film, urging her to move to Los Angeles. She won the starring role, opposite Louise Lasser, Brian James and Reed Burney, in Crimewave, a 1984 black comedy directed by Sam Raimi. Three days after that film wrapped, she was cast in Velvet, an ABC/Aaron Spelling MOW/series pilot, in which she played Ellen Stockwell, a undercover agent for the government and an accomplished helicopter pilot opposite Shari Belafonte, Leah Ayers and Mary-Margaret Humes. Within the next year, she had a lead with Tim Robbins in Fraternity Vacation, a summer comedy in which she played an intellectual beauty who was the object of Spring Break-ing frat animals' desire.
Producers began to take notice of this dynamic newcomer to Hollywood, and soon she starred in the 1985 CBS television miniseries Kane & Abel, with Peter Strauss. This immediately led to Our Family Honor, a CBS drama about Irish cops versus the Mafia, in which she starred with Ray Liotta, Michael Madsen and Eli Wallach. Her career continued to grow including News at Eleven and Power Play.
She may be best known for her role as April Stevens on the CBS mega-hit series Dallas. In 1986, television producer Leonard Katzman called Sheree to talk about a part he thought was tailor-made for someone with her classic beauty and sassy, fun-loving, energetic nature. For five seasons (1986-1991), she played a brainy, wealthy femme fatale who, in her words, was “a bitch on wheels.” Her character went from being one of the most powerful women in Dallas and J.R. Ewing’s nemesis, to being one of the warmest characters in town, eventually marrying Bobby Ewing, the show’s ultimate good guy. Ultimately, April Stevens was gunned down during her honeymoon in Paris. Bowing out with a bang, Wilson’s performance earned her the “Soap Opera Digest Award” for Best Death Scene.
At the end of that year, in 1992, she signed to do the lead female role as Alex Cahill in Walker, Texas Ranger, opposite Chuck Norris. Also in that year, she starred in the Showtime movie Past Tense.
