Valerie Perrine began her career as a Las Vegas showgirl.
She played soft-core pornography actress Montana Wildhack in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” (1972). Perrine was photographed for a pictorial layout in the May 1972 issue of Playboy, later appearing on the cover in August 1981.
She then became the first actress to purposely display herself nude on American television by completely baring her breasts during the May 4, 1973, PBS broadcast of Bruce Jay Friedman’s “Steambath” on Hollywood Television Theater.
(She was seen taking a shower from the side totally undressed.) Only a few PBS stations nationwide carried the program.
In 1975, Perrine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress (Drama) and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as comedian Lenny Bruce’s wife, stripper Honey Bruce, in Bob Fosse’s “Lenny” (1974).
She also played Carlotta Monti in the biopic “W.C. Fields and Me” (1976), and Miss Eve Teschmacher, moll of criminal mastermind Lex Luthor, in “Superman” (1978, below).
For this role, she was nominated for the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. She reprised her role as Miss Teschmacher in “Superman II” (1980).
Perrine played Charlotta Steele, ex-wife of a rodeo champion played by Robert Redford, in “The Electric Horseman” (1979). Her career grew uneven after an appearance in “Can’t Stop the Music” (1980), for which she was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actress.
This film has since become a cult classic. (Wikipedia)
Happy Birthday, Valerie Perrine