'Angel' Press Kit
The New York Times
Kittenpants.org
Soap Opera Magazine
A small biography taken from the
What's a nice girl like Donna Wilkes doing portraying a teenage hooker? Or a teenage alcoholic? Or an unmarried, pregnant teenager?
It is in "Angel," a New World Picture release of a streetwise Production, that Donna plays the part of a 16-year-old honor student by day and a Hollywood Boulevard hooker by night. For some reason, Donna has found herself playing troubled adolescents in many of the films and television shows she has been involved with, a fact she minds not at all.
"Why should I mind?" she states. "How many actresses get the chance to play these roles? They're not cutsie parts, but meaty roles that require hard work and present a challenge. That's what this business is all about for me."
Born in Manhattan, Donna is used to challenges. She began acting at age four, when her mother enrolled her in the Meglin Kiddies School in New York City. The little girl who lived next door to Donna's family was attending the school, so initially Donna's enrollment was a simple matter of "keeping up with the Jones'".
It wasn't long, however, until her natural talent began to surface. While at the Meglin School, she starred in several productions including "Peter Pan" and the school's version of "Singin' In The Rain," and did her first and only television commercial for Keds tennis shoes, at age six. Acting lessons continued, along with lessons in jazz dance, ballet and gymnastics, until age eleven when she stopped everything associated with entertainment to become a "normal student."
At age 12, Donna went to live with her aunt and uncle in the Dominican Republic, where she graduated high school at the Collegio Santo Domingo, at age 14. By the time she turned 15, Donna set off on her own. Shortly after leaving home, she came to Los Angeles and discovered that there were very few employment opportunities for a girl in her mid-teens.
Determined to make it on her own, Donna convinced not one, but two employers that she was 18 years old and married. For the next year she worked as a computer operator for an ambulance service, and as a secretary for a large corporation in Culver City adding up to 16 hours a day, five days a week.
At age 17, Donna's interest in acting was rekindled. Her first role was a small part in the Universal Pictures release "Almost Summer," important in that it earned her a SAG card and later led to her role in Universal's Jaws 2. Other feature films followed, including "Schizoid" with Klaus Kinski, "Premonitions" with Richard Jaekel and Frankie Avalon, and "Hollywood Nights" with Keenan Wynn.
In 1979, Donna was put under contract to Norman Lear's company, resulting in a co-starring role on the NBC series "Hello Larry" with McLean Stevenson. Other television credits include roles on "Father Murphy," "House Calls," "T.J. Hooker" and "The Incredible Hulk."
Donna also has a recurring role in the NBC daytime series "Days of Our Lives," in which she plays "Pamela," a drug addict. She has had featured roles in "The Courage and the Passion" and "Born To Be Sold," both movies of the week, the latter starring Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman).
A 1984 article taken from
Lookout - A Guide to the Up and Coming
She's only 25 years old, but Donna Wilkes has already survived alcoholism, drug addiction and shark attacks. On celluloid, that is. Specializing in problem adolescents ("I don't know many adolescents who don't have problems"), Wilkes is now staring in Angel as a high school honor student who moonlights as a hooker.
Made for less than $3 million, Angel has already grossed three times that amount, but in spite of this success, Wilkes admits the low-life is getting her down. "I'm not a fan of exploitation films," she says, at the same time pointing out the film's redeeming value as a realistic portrayal of the hooker's lot. She should know, having done some on-the-street research for the part. No, Donna didn't turn tricks, but she did talk to girls in the trade.
In Donna's last acting job, on Days of Our Lives, she played Pamela Prentiss, a drug addict who "OD'd two or three times, was a runaway and kidnapped a baby for $125,000." Viewer response was strong: Her fan mail including Bibles and recommendations that she "get baptized."
Born in New York City to a doctor and a nightclub singer (Donna's parents were divorced when she was 3 months old), Wilkes has been acting since she was 4. She kept at it after moving to L.A. with her mother but admits now that she "never took acting seriously as a kid. It was too much fun."
A good student who "skipped two or three grades," Wilkes finished high school at 15. After graduation, she worked as a computer operator and a secretary before deciding to try acting professionally. At 17, she won a small part in a teen film called Almost Summer, which led to a slightly larger role in Jaws 2, and ultimately to two TV movies before Angel.
Now Wilkes would like to clean up her image and sees hope in the career of another big-screen hooker, Jamie Lee Curtis. "She did all those Halloween movies," says Wilkes, "and now she's in Trading Places with a top-notch cast. I hope that's where I end up in the long run. Or even in the short run. Who knows?"
Check out the article and image
here.
An interview with Keith Gordon, who mentioned a very brief "relationship" with Donna Wilkes, at
KP = Kittenpants
KP: JAWS II made me want to be a teenager. What did it make you want to do?
KP: Did you make out with Donna Wilkes?
KP: Sometimes the most beautiful girls are the loneliest.
You can read the full Keith Gordon interview
here.
Taken from July 1984's issue of
(Ex-Pamela, Days of Our Lives) Donna Wilkes
Avid Days of Our Lives viewers may have asked the question, what ever happened to Pamela?
You remember - that girl who kidnapped Liz Chandler's baby and held her for $25,000 ransom. You know, the one Marlena was so upset about because she had tried so hard to reform her, and not even those kind and forgiving eyes could change that delinquent nature in this lost teenager.
Donna Wilkes, ex-Pamela now New World Pictures' Angel admits that Pamela was really a "bad girl."
"When I first saw rhe part I thought, 'Oh my God they want me off this soap right away.' I thought she was headed for the electric chair. But then they rewrote it and she would do things that were a lot less serious and for which she would be changed with a lesser offense and could get on probation and stuff.
"I pleaded with the producer to please let me become a good girl." Donna goes on to explain how serious people took her performance.
"I used to get mail from kids who identified with me, and I used to get Bibles in the mail. People really thought I was a drug addict - alone, scared and a runnaway...
"Perhaps I'm alone..." she continues, "but I'm not a drug addict or anything like that."
But Donna knows that they really do like bad girls in soaps. And it is challenging to do a part like that. It was the kind of part she would continue doing in a major motion picture.
"I was working on Days when I got a phone call from my agent. He had set me up for this interview for the film, Angel. They handed me about ten pages and gave me about five or ten minutes with it. I went in and read for the director and writer, and it went well.
"I went back to work and my agent called me again and told me that they wanted me to read for the head honcho - Sandy Howard. But then I forgot all about it because I was so involved with my lines and work on Days.
"About four or five days later, my agent called again and told me we got an offer for the Angel part.
"On Days they were going to extend the Pamela/Liz story a little longer, but when I got Angel, they just caught Pamela real quick and put her in jail."
It didn't take Donna too much time to get used to her new character. Like Pamela, Angel was trouble.
15-year-old Molly Stewart (Donna) is an honor student at an expensive and prestigious private school. At night she becomes Angel, a streetwise prostitute who makes a living amid the slime and sleaze of Hollywood Boulevard.
Angel never participates in extracurricular school acitivies and her only real friends are other "street people" who understand the danger and excitement of life on the Boulevard.
The police have mounted a search for a vicious killer who preys on Hollywood Boulevard prostitutes. Lieutenant Hugh Andrews (Cliff Gorman), an undercover cop, good at his job, waits for the killer to make a mistake.
The terror strikes closer to home when Angel discovers Lana (a hooker with dreams of retiring to Tahiti) murdered at a shabby motel. The last one to have seen Lana alive, only Angel can identify the man last seen with her.
Angel is now afraid that she's next on the killer's list. In trying to protect her the Lieutenant learns a great deal about Angel and why she lives the way she does. The killer is identified but he escapes the police - placing Angel in immediate danger. The frightening chase is on.
In order to understand that character better, Donna researched for Angel in Halfway Houses and rehabilitation centers.
"I actually walked on the streets with these girls and talked with them... and I also talked to the people with the group called Children of the Night, and to the Hollywood police department, too."
I asked Donna to explain what this group she mentioned was all about.
"There is a foundation called Children of the Night, and it is basically for runnaways. It is privately funded and they have a 24 hour hotline or an outreach program where adults go out on the streets and meet with runnaways... for street prostitutes who are under 18. They basically tell them where they could crash... and where to get help - medical attention and counseling.
"I think they are a terrific foundation. They are really dealing with the situation in L.A. It is a 24 hour hotline from anywhere in the U.S.A. and the calls are kept annonymous."
Donna says that although she, too, left home at a very early age she was just plain lucky.
"I left my parent's home with their blessing at the age of 15. That's why I can feel for what all these girls are going through. At that age I experienced all what these girls experience. I didn't go into prostitution, but I know what it's like being a 15 year old trying to get a job - nobody will hore you. it gets so frustrating that finally these girls have to resort to the streets."
Today Donna lives alone. She jokingly admits, "I think I'm the most celibate person I know."
Doesn't she date or have a special boyfriend? I was curious to know.
"I mostly just work. So because I have so little time to date I don't have a boyfriend or anything like that."
Is she, however, looking for that special someone? What kind of man could be the right one?
"I'm very busy so I really don't look for that. I will know in my heart if I find someone like that, hopefully!"
Donna took a chance by facing the world alone. But she seems to have found the right track to success. Perhaps the Days of Our Lives writers could create such a "yellow brick road" for Pamela, too.
"They have mentioned that they want me back, but nothing definite... hopefully I will be reformed and become a "good girl."
Always eager to see good acting on our daytime screen we, too, hope that Donna Wilkes returns to Days for that "second chance" she wishes all runnaways could have.
Check out the article and images:
'Angel' Press Kit
The New York Times
She's no angel in her new movie, but for Donna Wilkes, being the star is heavenly
Written by Tony Costa
Kittenpants.org
KG = Keith Gordon
KG: It made me want to STOP being a teenager! I was the youngest of all the actors playing "the kids". The rest were all over 20. I was 16. So they were all having affairs, partying, living the wild life on location. And I was everyone's "kid brother". Then one of the actresses would come to me at 2 am to cry because one of the guys had dumped them, but then laugh when I suggested myself as a possible replacement. I spent that whole film trying, unsucessfully, to lose my virginity. Ick.
KG: Yeah, for about 2 minutes one night. We'd sit around and she'd ask me about acting (I had done theater in New York, so I guess it seemed like I knew what I was talking about). One night I kissed her. She kissed back. It was nice.
KG: I thought it was the start of something. It wasn't. She quickly moved on to one of the 'grown-up' guys. Sigh...
Soap Opera Magazine
Can a "Bad Girl" Become an Angel?
Written by Ronnie Blum
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