Melody Anderson has retired from acting now, but she enjoyed a hugely successful 18-year-long career on the screen, beginning with her co-starring role as Dale Arden in the cult classic movie Flash Gordon and taking in many more film and television appearances before ending with a year-long stint playing Natalie Marlowe (and sometimes her twin sister, Janet Dillon) in ABC’s long-running soap opera, All My Children. She left acting in the mid-1990s and retrained as a clinician and social worker. Today, she runs two practices at both ends of the United States and is also a noted public speaker on the traumatic effects of addiction of families.

Anderson was born in Canada and travelled to Australia to work as a journalist before returning to North America to become an actress. She made her screen debut in a 1977 episode of Logan’s Run, but her casting as the co-lead in the 1980 film Flash Gordon made her name. The “space opera”, with its soundtrack by rock legends Queen, has long been hailed as a camp cult classic. For the rest of the decade, Anderson remained a regular presence on both the small and big screens. On the former, she appeared in era-defining shows such as The A-Team, Murder She Wrote, CHiPS, and St Elsewhere, and also starred in the cult classic series Manimal. At the cinema, she continued her cult reputation with a role in the horror movie Dead and Buried, which was banned in some countries.

After a final TV role in 1995, Anderson left acting has been an accomplished and respected social worker and publc speaker ever since.