Deborah Adair

Deborah Adair was born in Lynchburg, Virginia on May 23, 1952 to a father who was a Navy officer and a mother who was a Spanish teacher. She grew up with her brother Ashley and sister Ann. Her major influences were her mother and grandmother who always taught her to have confidence and self-assurance by telling her that she can have any job she wanted. She earned a degree in advertising and marketing at University of Washington, working afterward as a copywriter, commercial producer and assistant promotion manager for radio stations in Seattle, Washington. Her four-year marriage to Gary Baker, a budding politician, ended in 1978, prompting her to move to Hollywood. She waited tables and worked as a stewardess for a short time. But a flair for dramatic reading in high school led to voice-over work on commercials, then local stage productions. She found an agent who helped her land small parts in several TV series. But her big break came in 1980 when she was cast as Jill Foster Abbott on The Young and the Restless (1973). She was the third actress to play that role, but she made the character her own by playing her as a beautiful, sparkly bad girl. In 1983, she left daytime soap opera during stalled contract negotiations to accept the role of Tracy Kendall on highly rated night time soap opera Dynasty (1981), where she played yet another bad girl. Aaron Spelling, the producer on "Dynasty", was so impressed with her performance that he took her off "Dynasty" a year later and gave her the lead role of Daisy Lloyd on another prime time show Finder of Lost Loves (1984), where she finally played a good girl. But that show was canceled a year later and Adair guest-starred on other shows, including Spelling's show The Love Boat (1977) and Hotel (1983). In 1986, the "Young and the Restless" producers beckoned her back for one week to reprise her role as Jill when Brenda Dickson was out for a short time due to tension on the set. Adair maintained she had fun for that one week playing Jill, but Dickson remembered it differently when she unexpectedly came back to find Adair in the dressing room being uncomfortable. A few months later, Dickson left the role and Jess Walton was hired as a permanent replacement for Dickson. Of the four actresses who have played Jill since 1973, Adair is forever remembered as the "pretty Jill." But she was frustrated that her career had stalled just when her personal life gained momentum. She married producer Chip Hayes in 1987, and although it was a very happy marriage, she couldn't have children and it made her unhappy at the time. In 1990, Adair was performing in previews of Cynthia Heimel's play "A Girl's Guide to Chaos," when she had a freaky accident and herniated a disk. The accident caused her excruciating pain and she spent a year, on and off, in bed. She did some soul searching during that time and felt that everything happens in its own time. After she recovered, she picked up the pieces of her career and moved on to do a TV movie for Aaron Spelling titled Rich Men, Single Women (1990) (1990), where she played opposite another Spelling favorite: Heather Locklear. And her career picked up even more steam when Spelling reunited her with Locklear in the recurring role as Lucy Cabot on his prime time show Melrose Place (1992). She enjoyed being on the show because she spent a lot of time with her husband Hayes, who was one of the producers. While on "Melrose Place," she originated the role of Kate Roberts on Days of Our Lives (1965) and became one of the few actors in history who had both a daytime soap opera and a nighttime soap opera at the same time. She left "Melrose Place" after one year to concentrate on the multi-dimensional role of Kate on "Days of our Lives," and her gamble paid off as she won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Soap Opera Digest Awards in 1994. But Adair and her husband wanted children. In 1995, she left her "Days of Our Lives" role to be a full-time mom after she and her husband adopted a child. Although, Lauren Koslow took over the role and played it for more than 15 years, Adair's fans cannot seem to forget her and hopes she will return to acting. But she enjoys the role of being real life mom so much that she and her husband adopted another child in 1997. For now, Adair seems content with her home life in Virginia and has not expressed any desire to return to acting, much to the chagrin of her fans.