‘Dallas’ Actress Gayle Hunnicutt Dies at 80

Gayle Hunnicutt, best known for playing Vanessa Beaumont in the final three seasons of Dallas, has died. She was 80.

According to The Times (U.K.), Hunnicutt passed away on Thursday, August 31, at a hospital in London.

Born on February 6, 1943, in Fort Worth, Texas, Hunnicutt made her television debut in 1966 on the NBC sitcom Mister Roberts and went on to appear in several more TV series throughout the 1960s and 70s, including The Beverly Hillbillies, Get Smart, and Hey Landlord.

She married British actor David Hemmings in 1968 and moved to the U.K, where she had roles in many British TV series, including The Golden Browl, Fall of Eagles, Thriller, and Return of the Saint.

Hunnicutt also starred in numerous films, perhaps most memorably playing a glamorous Hollywood actress alongside James Garner in the 1969 neo-noir detective drama Marlowe. Her other film work includes The Wild Angels, Eye of the Cat, Fragment of Fear, and many more.

She returned to U.S. television in the 1980s, appearing in the likes of Taxi, Matt Houston, and Fantasy Island before landing her most memorable role in Dallas, where she portrayed Vanessa Beaumont, a British aristocrat who shared an illegitimate son with Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing. She joined the hit soap opera in 1989 and starred in the show’s final three seasons, which wrapped up in 1991.

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Her career slowed down after Dallas, with her final on-screen role coming in the 1999 British crime series CI5: The New Professionals. She wed her second husband, British journalist Simon Jenkins in 1978, but they divorced in 2009.

Hunnicutt also wrote two books, Health and Beauty in Motherhood, which was published in 1984, and Dearest Virginia: Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific, in 2004, which contains the letters exchanged by her parents during World War II.

Survivors include a son from her first marriage, actor Nolan Hemmings (Band of Brothers); a son from her second marriage, Edward Jenkins; and five grandchildren.