Melinda Culea – Biography Of The American TV Actress and Former Model

Quick Facts

Melinda Culea has become famous as a TV and film actress, but she actually began her career as a model before delving into acting. Although she does not have a hundred films to her name; she has got some major roles in productions such as the 1984/85 ABC TV series, Glitter, the 1996 film Buried Secrets, and The A-Team. After ending her acting in 1999, she has now ventured into writing and arts.

Melinda Culea – Biography

Melinda Culea was born in Western Springs, Illinois on May 5, 1955. It was also here that she was brought up in a house that had five kids. Since she was a little girl, she has always loved adventures. It is this and her love for modeling that pushed her to New York in her early 20s to find modeling opportunities that were not available where she grew up.

Four years later after learning all involved and having recorded considerable success, she moved to California, believing it would afford her a bigger stage to pursue her career.

As a model, she has been involved in a number of commercials in the past. In 1978, she was in Woolite Cold Water wash commercial as well as Burger King Commercial in which she appeared with.

Acting and Writing Career

In 1981, the former model got her first role as an actress with a role in Dear Teacher. This was soon followed only a year later by another TV production, The Rules of Marriage. From then on, Culea kept getting more roles in other productions such as Fantasy Island (1983), Family Ties (1986), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1991), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1992).

Before ending her acting career in 1999 with her appearance in The X-Files, Culea also appeared in Target Earth (1998), a couple of episodes of C-16: FBI (1997), Brotherly Love (1995), and Through the Eyes of a Killer (1992).

Her most notable role as an actress was in the hit NBC TV series, The A-Team in which she was given the role of Amy Allen who was an L.A Courier paper reporter. She appeared in 24 episodes in the series in 1983. Years after the show ended, it would still remain as one of her most significant performances even though she was not a part of the complete series which ran from 1983 to 1987.

As she grew up, Melinda Culea described herself as a loner even though she came from a house that had many kids. She would wander alone into the woods and she started coming up with ideas of stories. However, she would later drop it all to pursue her other dreams including acting.

She recorded decent financial success as an actress and model but the satisfaction was not there because she believed she was more of an artist and writer than she was an actress. This is one of the main things that had kept her away from acting and brought her to writing.

Melinda Culea published her first work Wondago: An Illustrated Mystery Novel in 2016. In the novel, Culea tells the story of a girl who suffered an accident that has caused her to lose most of her memory and so she has to keep drawing any image that comes to her head. From her drawings and some writings she makes, the girl hopes it can help in solving the mystery surrounding the disappearance of a woman who also lives in Wondago. Apart from just writing stories, she also draws for her stories and otherwise, and she shares her arts on social media.

Personal Life

The A-Team actress is married to Peter Markle. The couple first met in 1994 when they were working on Wagons East; the adventure comedy film in which Melinda Culea took the role of Constance Taylor while Markle was its director.

Not too long afterward, the two began dating and in 1996, they finally walked down the aisle as man and wife. More than two decades later, the couple is still going strong. At the same time, they have remained rather very secretive about their family life.

Peter Markle has become famous as a film and TV director as well as a screenwriter. Among his very popular works are The Personals (1982) and Flight 93 (2006). Apart from Wagons East, Culea and her husband have not worked on any major project together again. However, she appeared in the 1999 Alpha episode of The X-Files which was also directed by Markle. In the production, she appeared as Karin Berquist.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.