Early Life
Pamela Reed was born on April 2, 1949, in Tacoma, Washington. She attended the University of Washington, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1975. After graduation, she moved to New York.
Career
Reed won a Drama Desk Award for her performance in an off-Broadway production of the play “Getting Out,” and she was honored with an Obie Award for “sustaining excellence in performance in theater.” She made her TV debut in a 1976 episode of “Spencer’s Pilots,” and the following year, she starred as Sandi Farrell on the CBS crime drama “The Andros Targets.” Next, Pamela appeared in the TV movies “All’s Well That Ends Well” (1978), “Inmates: A Love Story” (1981), “I Want to Live” (1983), “Heart of Steel” (1983), and “Scandal Sheet” (1985) and the 1988 miniseries “Hemingway” and “Tanner ‘88,” and she guest-starred on “L.A. Law” (1989). Her first feature film was 1980’s “The Long Riders,” and she followed it with “Melvin and Howard” (1980), “Eyewitness” (1981), “Young Doctors in Love” (1982), “The Right Stuff” (1983), “The Goodbye People” (1984), “The Clan of the Cave Bear” (1986), “The Best of Times” (1986), “Rachel River” (1987), and “Chattahoochee” (1989). In 1990, Reed played Janice Pasetti on the NBC soap opera parody “Grand,” and she co-starred with Robin Williams and Tim Robbins in “Cadillac Man” and with Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop,” which grossed $202 million against a $26 million budget. Pamela then appeared in the films “Passed Away” (1992), “Bob Roberts” (1992), “Santa Fe” (1997), “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (1998), and “Standing on Fishes” (1999), and she reunited with Schwarzenegger in 1994’s “Junior.” Like “Kindergarten Cop,” “Junior” was directed by Ivan Reitman, and it did well at the box office, bringing in $108.4 million. Reed also played Alison Langley in the 1997 Rowan Atkinson comedy “Bean,” which earned $251.2 million at the box office against a budget of just $18 million. In the ’90s, she also starred in the TV movies “Woman with a Past” (1992), “Born Too Soon” (1993), “Deadly Whispers” (1995), “The Man Next Door” (1996), “Critical Choices” (1996), and “Carriers” (1998) and the miniseries “Family Album” (1993), and she played Judge Sydney J. Solomon on the NBC sitcom “The Home Court” from 1995 to 1996. In 2000, she co-starred with Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe in the action thriller “Proof of Life,” and in 2001, she portrayed Pamela Kennedy in the TV movie “The Kennedys.”
Personal Life
In 1988, Pamela married Sandy Smolan, the director of her 1987 film “Rachel River.” The couple adopted two children, Lily and Reed. In a 2013 interview with The Seattle Times, Pamela said that when her daughter was in high school, she wanted to attend school close to Seattle, so the family went “on a two-year trial to find out what [they’d] do next.” She added, “But I love Seattle — I love, love, love it. This is a great American city.”
Awards and Nominations
In 1989, Reed won a CableACE Award for Actress in a Dramatic Series for “Tanner ‘88.” In 2001, she earned a Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for Favorite Supporting Actress – Suspense for “Proof of Life.”
