If you don’t know Pam Dawber then you likely never watched reruns or the actual showing of Mork and Mindy, one of the best shows to hit the TV during its time and one of the best ever since it was canceled. In fact the only way you might know about the show if you never watched it is that it’s been in the news after discovering that Robin Williams did a number of things that would likely be called sexual harassment today. Yet for all that Dawber was still his friend and didn’t mind his light-hearted antics.
It was a different time, that’s all that can be said about it really.
5. She was originally a fashion model.
She didn’t come to the small screen right away as she had no acting experience and no contacts that could help her out. She was definitely pretty enough and in good shape in her youth to be a model, which back then was still a highly competitive industry. She did this for a while before deciding to go and audition for a part in a TV show.
4. She got the part in Mork and Mindy with very little acting experience.
She was auditioning for a spinoff of Bewitched titled Tabitha, but while her acting was sound enough the casting director didn’t think it was the right part for her. Thankfully since she’d impressed them they managed to keep her on file and when the right part did come along they got back to her and she was given another shot. That’s pretty much how she got to be Mindy.
3. She’s a gun control advocate.
After one of her costars from another show was gunned down by an obsessed fan she became a very firm advocate for gun control and she’s been that way since. She and the rest of the cast even got together to create a public service announcement advocating violence prevention. There’s no real way to know if it worked at all but by the sight of things today it’s not entirely likely.
2. She left acting for a brief period after the birth of her second child.
She decided to step away from the industry for a while after her child was born and only acted sporadically after that. It would seem that she was ready to settle down and lead a life with her family. She did come back to guest star as a love interest in Robin Williams’ show The Crazy Ones but even her appearance didn’t do much for the ratings. Only four months after the final show Williams was gone.
1. She’s married to actor Mark Harmon.
If you don’t know who this is then you might need a Gibbs slap upside the back of your head to jog your memory. Harmon of course plays Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, and he and Pam have been married since 1987. They lead a very private life and don’t go out much with their two children and don’t talk about each other in interviews.
She had no experience coming in and yet she became one of the iconic actresses ever. That’s impressive.
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