Career
In 1968 O'Neill landed a small role in For Love of Ivy. In 1970 she played one of the lead female roles in Rio Lobo starring opposite John Wayne.
She is most remembered for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42, where she played Dorothy Walker, the young widow of a pilot shot down and killed in World War II. Her agent allegedly had to fight to even get a reading for the part, since the role had been cast for an "older woman" to a "coming of age" 15 year old boy, and the director was only considering actresses over the age of thirty, Barbra Streisand being at the top of the list.
O'Neill continued acting for the next two decades. She appeared in The Carey Treatment (1972), Lady Ice (1973), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Caravans (1978), A Force of One (1979), Scanners (1981), and The Cover Girl Murders (1993 made-for-television film). She went to Europe in 1976 and worked with Italian director Luchino Visconti, appearing in his last film L'innocente (1976), where she played the part of the mistress, Teresa Raffo.
In 1982, O'Neill starred in the short-lived NBC prime time soap opera Bare Essence. She portrayed a role previously envisioned by actress Linda Evans in the miniseries that the soap was based on. She was initially reluctant to star in a TV series, because in those days actors usually only starred in either movies or on television. Her attitude changed when TV miniseries such as Rich Man, Poor Man and Roots started featuring film stars. When the movie business went into doldrum, she agreed to star in two TV movies, which she enjoyed, and then took on the starring role in Bare Essence. Her other credits include singing in the Chrysler Corporation commercial "Change in Charger" that represented the end of the Dodge Charger in 1975. In 1984, she played the lead female role on the CBS television series Cover Up; the lead male actor, Jon-Erik Hexum, was accidentally killed on the studio set after placing a blank-loaded prop gun to his temple and pulling the trigger—the wadding from the blank cartridge drove a bone fragment from Hexum's skull into his brain.
O'Neill is also listed in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History's Center for Advertising History for her long standing contract with Cover Girl cosmetics as its model and spokesperson in ads and television commercials.
Read more about this topic: Jennifer O'Neill
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)