She was a teenager on the set of the biggest TV show. The people around her shaped her for life. ❤️
Charlene Tilton was just 17 when she was cast as Lucy Ewing, the troubled, headstrong granddaughter on Dallas. The show turned her into a household name. At the peak of her fame, she reportedly earned $50,000 per episode, appeared on more than 500 magazine covers, and drew around 65 million viewers to Lucy’s TV wedding in 1981.
But Tilton has never pretended she knew what she was doing when it started.
“I had no idea what I was doing when I was cast in Dallas because I was 17 years old,” she has said.
She says what saved her was who surrounded her. Barbara Bel Geddes, Jim Davis and Larry Hagman, the stars who played her grandmother, grandfather and uncle, showed her what professionalism looked like.
“You come to work prepared; you know your lines, it’s an all-for-one environment, no one is a diva, no one is demanding, and you always be professional,” Tilton has said. “That’s how I got educated.”
She stayed close to Hagman until his death in 2012, the same year she returned as Lucy in the Dallas revival on TNT. Since then, she has acted in guest roles, worked as a producer and become an ambassador for Actors for Autism, a group that runs acting workshops for children and adults on the spectrum. She has volunteered with them since 2010.
These days, Tilton lives a quieter life in Nashville, close to her daughter, Cherish, and her two grandsons, who call her “Glamma.” This summer, she made a rare public appearance alongside her friend Lisa Whelchel, and two months ago she joined Bewitched star Erin Murphy for the Great American Road Rally. She says the years haven’t left her bitter.
“I don’t carry a chip on my shoulder,” she has said.
She arrived on set at 17 with no idea what she was doing. Decades later, the education she got there still shapes the woman she is, a grandmother in Nashville who carries no chip on her shoulder. ❤️
