And what a potent story of fame and fantasies-fulfilled she has to tell, starting with her breakthrough role as the Amazon princess whose comic strip image graced the premier cover of Ms. magazine in 1972 under the banner “Wonder
Woman for President.” Carter, just
24 when cast as TV’s first superheroine in
1975, soon became pop culture’s lasting portrait of Wonder Woman—an image that, surprisingly, both liberated sexes have found endearing and enduring. The actress especially captured the imaginations of young viewers, turning the legendary goddess into a fully fleshed-out, relatable young woman who symbolized the ultimate in feminine power.
“Wonder Woman and the audience shared the secret of her hidden identity,” Carter says.
“I was able to show more of the woman, who she was as a person, through Diana Prince. I wanted women to like her as much as—or more—than guys did. I never played her sexy or perfect. She didn’t think she was ‘all that.’”
offending someone or to make your husband feel OK.”
After the series wrapped its three-season run in 1979, Carter sank her teeth into several TV-movies and a series of song-and-dance specials. She divorced
Carter appreciates that girls felt emboldened by Wonder Woman’s superhuman feats, but she believes the connection with the character ran deeper for many, giving expression to the true selves women often keep hidden. “What the character represented was the secret self that we all have. It’s the one you feel is not appreciated, that is undiscovered. It’s the fat person still living in the skinny body, or the reverse. It’s something you have to make smaller for fear of
husband-agent Ron Samuels in 1982 and married Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Altman in 1984, sticking by him through his high-profile trial and exoneration in a banking and securities fraud scandal in the early 1990s. (Her union with Altman is a true partnership, according to Carter.) But by then, son Jamie, now 20, and daughter Jessica, now 17, had joined the family and shifted the couple’s focus, so Carter found her joys in motherhood.
“I never really intended to quit singing,” Carter says. “I got pregnant with my son, then along came my daughter. It was never the right time to return. I didn’t want a nightlife— it takes you out of so many wonderful things with your children. At a certain point, you think maybe you’ve closed that chapter.” Then, in 2005, New York musical theater producer Barry Weissler called and convinced her to play Mama Morton in
PHOTO: SGRANI TZ/ WIREIMAGE. PREVIOUS PAGE: KEITH MUN YAN. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY TAMARA OGDEN
Super mom: Lynda Carter with
husband Robert Altman, son
Jamie and daughterJessica.
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