She may have had a wonderful figure, but Kate Jackson didn't show off her body quite so much as her co-stars in Charlie's Angels. That's because she played the more straight-laced one from the team - some might say the thinking man's Angel of choice... Kate Jackson was the only qualified actress of the trio and actually part of Charlie's Angels was her idea.

Angel: Sabrina Duncan Kate Jackson played Sabrina Duncan, the "smart one," the Angel who favored sensible turtlenecks over bombshell bikinis. Naturally, she was just as stunning as her fellow detectives - she was just more comfortable wearing casual clothes and working behind the scenes. While Angels like Jill Munroe and Kelly Garrett just loved going undercover and playing tricks on their targets, Sabrina was the one who kept out of the way and oversaw things from a distance, reporting regularly back to Charlie. The only Angel to have been married, Sabrina's beauty and brains meant she had been both a cheerleader and a brilliant student at school, and she joined Charlie's agency after a stint as a cop. She eventually left the Angels behind to marry for a second time.

Alabama Girl

Kate Jackson was born on October 29, 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of Hogan and Ruth Jackson and sister of Jenny Jackson. Her father was a wholesaler of building material and her mother a housewife. Ever since she was a little girl, Kate Jackson wanted to be an actress – going so far as to practice signing autographs to her friends on the playground. Every chance she got, she appeared in school productions and put on skits with her sister at the Brookhill School for Girls. While attending the University of Mississippi, Jackson left halfway through her sophomore year, to enroll at Southern College where she took her first theatre class. After a summer apprenticeship at the Stowe Playhouse in Stowe, VT, she moved to New York in 1968 and enrolled in the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She worked hard, appearing in such productions as “Night Must Fall,” “Royal Gambit,” “The Constant Wife” and “Little Moon of Alban.”

For three years she was Charlie’s smartest Angel, but she began to feel the constriction of her one-note character. To Jackson’s credit, she refused to prance around in bikinis and further solidify the show as “jiggle TV.” Sabrina Duncan was most often the first to solve the crime and to do it wearing a nice polyester pantsuit, while Ladd’s Kris Munroe and Smith’s Kelly Garrett donned the skimpy clothing and usually ended up the damsels-in-distress by episode’s end.

The Price of Publicity

While her co-stars Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith took their sudden fame in their stride, Kate found it more difficult to deal with the constant press attention – and all the tabloid speculation that comes if you happen to be a beautiful TV star. She herself admitted that she was a bit short and impatient with the press, which gave her a reputation among journalists as the "difficult Angel". She was also bemused by how the tabloids would often invent stories about the supposedly intense and bitchy rivalry between the three Angels behind the scenes. As Kate said, they only ever competed over the doughnuts served up in between takes.

While Charlie's Angels made Kate a star, she eventually realized it was time to move on with her career. The trigger for this was the fact that her busy Angels schedule meant she had to turn down the lead role in the blockbusting 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer (Meryl Streep took it instead, and bagged an Oscar). Jackson vowed never to lose an important role because of her light-weight TV commitment. She had also just married actor Andrew Stevens and had grown tired of the constant interest in her off-screen romantic life. After the finale of season three in the spring of 1979, Jackson took off her halo permanently – leaving “Charlie’s Angels” with no apparent leader. The break-up was quite acrimonious amongst the powers-that-be and the cast, but Jackson was determined to get out from under the weight of being one of “Charlie’s Angels.”

Perfume model Shelley Hack, who had little-to-no acting experience, stepped in as a brainy replacement for Bri – but Jackson was a hard component to replace. The show teetered on for another two seasons, before being cancelled in 1981. After leaving the show, Jackson concentrated on a quiet family life and creating a production company with her husband Andrew Stevens. They produced and starred in the TV remake of the classic Cary Grant film “Topper” (1979). There was a pilot for another series, but it never came to be. Sadly, Jackson’s plans came too late to save her marriage. After the couple divorced in 1980, she focused on her acting career again, starring in various TV films – “Thin Ice” (1981) and “Listen To Your Heart” (1983) – as well as two big screen films, the poorly reviewed “Dirty Tricks” (1981) and the controversial but ahead-of-its-time “Making Love” (1982) co-starring Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean, a film that received excellent reviews, but was a hard sell with its homosexual content.

Amanda King

In 1983, she returned to TV with the CBS spy-comedy series “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” (1983-1987), with her new production company, Shoot The Moon (with new husband David Greenwald), producing the show. She fell in love with the character of Mrs. King (a mother of two boys who worked as a Secret Agent).  Scarecrow became a huge hit - she earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role opposite Bruce Boxleitner. She divorced David Greenwald in 1984. Unfortunately, that same year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and again in 1989 – news that brought TV’s original Angels, Smith and Fawcett, back together again in support of their sick friend. After a partial mastectomy and radiation, Jackson won her fight with the deadly disease and shared her experience with the public in order to highlight the importance of yearly mammograms. She even appeared on the cover of People magazine to detail her struggle. Inside, she recounted the life-changing experience: “I had to decide whether I wanted to live or to die. Once you choose life, as I did, it’s never the same.”

After that scare, Jackson reprised Diane Keaton’s role in the NBC show “Baby Boom” (1988), based upon the hit feature film, but the show did not have the same pull as the film and lasted only a few months. Jackson’s impressive assertiveness landed her a role in the big screen comedy “Loverboy” (1989), playing Patrick Dempsey’s mother. In 1994, after a few more TV films, she had open-heart surgery after she discovered she was born with an ASD – Atrial Spetal Defect or a “hole in her heart.” She made a complete recovery, but was inspired to inform women of the stunning statistics – that one out of every two women die of heart disease.

A Prolific Life

In 1995, with the help of friend Rosie O’Donnell, she adopted a son, Charles Taylor – just two hours after his birth. She continued her prolific acting career as well as her philanthropic work as well. In 1999, the Israel Cancer Research Fund’s annual “Women of Action” luncheon honored Jackson for her work on behalf of preventing breast cancer and was recognized with the research fund’s Humanitarian Award. She also received recognition on behalf of her work with children and animals. In recent years, she became the spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Power of Love fundraising campaign.