Lynda Carter: Pretty Wonderful
At 56, Lynda Carter talks to us about overcoming her life’s biggest hurdles, her cabaret show and how she finally discovered her own inner Wonder Woman.
Written by Chris Mann
As the ever-earnest Diana Prince, all it took for Lynda Carter to release her inner Wonder Woman was a simple pirouette. One or two spins (her arms extended, of course), and Carter’s hidden goddess literally exploded onto the scene in a blaze of white-hot glory—star-covered ’70s-satin tights, magic lasso, boomerang headband and all.
And although she proudly embodied the epitome of superheroine strength, Carter hid her own secret from the world for more than two decades. Her battles with alcohol addiction overpowered her as she raised a family and put a thriving singing career on hold. Now 10 years sober, the woman behind the wonder—at age 56, a voice of recovery and self-discovery—realizes that she has much to sing about during her life’s second act.
“I’ve lived enough life to get it,” says the star of “An Intimate Evening with Lynda Carter,” her song- and anecdote-filled cabaret show that opened in 2007 to rave reviews, including a thumbs-up from The New York Times (“That’s amazing!” the songbird chirps). “My goal in every show is to connect. And the more honest I am about where I am, the more meaningful the connection. I share about my kids, my marriage, Wonder Woman … from mostly a point of view of joy, gratitude, fantastic memories and the things we’ve been through together.”
Her cabaret act sheds fresh light on passing moments along memory lane, while giving voice to the vulnerable, humorous and uncensored parts of Carter’s own personality and story. “I can only show
those raw parts of me—or the funny parts or the unfiltered parts—in song,” she says.
Following several West Coast cabaret engagements this spring, Carter plans to redo vocals for an album she recorded last year. And while rethinking her music, she may reveal that a song she wrote titled “Toto” for her 1978 album “Portrait” is really about balancing fame with feeling like “the odd man out”—an experience she believes her secret-harboring TV alter ego also struggled to overcome. “I approach my music the same way I approach my acting roles,” she says. “Storytelling in song is a point of view.”
Wonder Woman, Motherhood and Mama Morton
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.’”
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 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 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 his London West End production of “Chicago.” Out of that grew her one-woman show.
“This is an exciting chapter in my life,” she says. “It feels like discovery, it makes me curious, it opens up a new outlook. I think I sing better—not necessarily perfectly, but I get it. Unless you’re giving a part of yourself away [in song], it doesn’t mean anything.”
Giving and Receiving Help and Health
A vision of great health, the mature but still vibrant Carter says she has learned “only one sweeping statement in life: When you learn to give and extend your hand to others, it’s the secret to happiness.”
An Arizona native, Carter grew up knowing the power of giving, but it wasn’t until her 40s and 50s that she fully grasped the healing power of reaching out and receiving help for her alcoholism. She began drinking during her first marriage to escape unhappiness, stopped during her pregnancies, then resumed intermittently a few years later. “I had a genetic predisposition,” Carter says, “as many, many, many people do. And I drank against my will. I can honestly say you are staring into an abyss while sitting on the precipice. And you think you’re the only one, and that you have some fatal flaw.”
In recent years, she has confirmed tabloid rumors that she checked into rehab and relapsed six months later in 1998. But as she enters a second decade of sobriety, she seems more comfortable about discussing her disease. “I didn’t want to be the poster girl when I first went into recovery,” Carter says. “I didn’t want to be defined by it. It was such an agonizing time anyway, and you need to heal, and you need to heal your family.”
Carter checked into Father Martin’s Ashley treatment center in Maryland—and now sits on its board of directors. “It was like going back to school,” she says of her time living at the nonprofit rehab. “I was learning about my disease and looking around and realized that everyone else there —from the counselors to the handyman—was in recovery. I realized I was just like all of them. I’ve learned so much about relying on the wisdom of others and asking for help.”
Among the many life-affirming lessons she’s learned: to embrace her inner goddess, no matter what. “I think it’s more about me feeling good about myself rather than having to depend on what other people think,” Carter concedes. “What other people think is still important to me; I want people to like me. But my habit is to worry about everybody and forget myself. It’s
a problem because you always feel if they knew the real you they wouldn’t like you very much. But you’re so busy looking at others that you’re not looking at yourself. Recovery and years of therapy have taught me this!”
As she reaches 57 this July, Carter can look in the mirror and connect with a powerful Wonder Woman she never fully appreciated, even when donning those butt-kicking, knee-high red boots, bullet-reflecting bracelets and eagle-breasted bustier. “I’m more comfortable in my own skin now,” she says. “Because, you know what? It’s my life.”
Wonderful Health and Fitness Tips
Lynda Carter still looks trim, slim and sexy at 56. Here she shares some of her—and her octogenarian parents’—fitness and diet tips.
+ “I’m always looking for new things to do in my workout, because I get bored. Lately, I’ve been doing crew, rowing down the Potomac River in front of the Kennedy Center. I love this sport.
+ “I also ski and play tennis, and I recently got a very cool bike. When traveling, I take my jump-rope and elastic straps that help me do push-ups and curls. It’s like the Jack Lalanne Glamour Stretcher my mom worked out with!
+ “My dad is 86, and he still works part-time and works out every day. He walks six miles a day, and he stretches and does push-ups. He’s in great health.
+ “My mom was always a big salad eater. We’ve always eaten nutritiously, and love home cooking. Eat foods that fuel your body, and skip those with empty calories. Also, eat more slowly; think of the flavors. Put your fork down. Taste the food.
+ “It’s all about portion control, portion control, portion control. I have a better relationship with food now, but I struggle with my weight. I’ve been up 20 lb and down. But I don’t think you should deprive yourself. If you want to have a brownie, have one—just don’t have one every day.”
