page_title: Bo Derek
section_title: Acting
hierarchical_section_title: Bo Derek / Career / Acting
caption_attribution_description: From Wash. D.C. 1998
context_page_description: Bo Derek is an American film and television actress, film producer, and model perhaps best known for her breakthrough film role in the sex comedy 10. She was directed by husband John Derek in Fantasies, Tarzan, the Ape Man, Bolero and Ghosts Can't Do It, all of which received negative reviews. A widow since 1998, she lives with actor John Corbett. Now in semi-retirement, she makes occasional film, television, and documentary appearances.
context_section_description: While attending Narbonne High School in Los Angeles at age 16 in 1973, Collins became sexually involved with John Derek, a married man 30 years her senior. Not long after the two started dating, Derek divorced his wife, actress Linda Evans. The couple moved to Germany, where John Derek would not be subject to prosecution under California statutory rape laws, because Collins was under the age of consent.
  In 1973 John Derek began production on a film titled Fantasies, a low-budget, English-language romantic drama starring Collins and several unknown German actors. The film was shot over a 10-day period in Greece. In an effort to capitalize on Collins' beauty, Derek worked into the film several risqué scenes, including brief nudity. John Derek twice re-edited the film in an effort to sell it to major studios. The film remained unreleased until 1981, at which time it received negative notices.
  Collins and John Derek married on June 10, 1976; she was 19 and he 49. By that time Derek had given his young wife a so-called Hollywood makeover: she had bleached her hair blonde and adopted the name Bo Derek. In 1977 director Michael Anderson cast Derek in a small role in his horror film Orca - The Killer Whale (1977), in which Derek has her leg bitten off by the title character.
  In 1979 Derek was allegedly selected over Melanie Griffith, Heather Thomas, and several others for the role of Jenny Hanley in the romantic comedy film 10. Directed by Blake Edwards, the film starred Dudley Moore as a middle-aged man who finds Derek's character to be the ideal woman. Derek's appearance in a dream sequence, racing towards Moore in a flimsy flesh-colored swimsuit, launched her status as a mainstream sex symbol. This sequence and Derek’s cornrow hairstyle in the film have often been parodied. 10 was a critical and financial success.
  After 10, Derek was cast in A Change of Seasons (1980), a dramatic-comedy film that featured Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins. Derek played a college student who has an affair with her older, married professor. A Change of Seasons was only a moderate box-office success, with critics reviewing it and Derek's performance unfavorably ("The only appealing performance is Miss MacLaine's").
  In 1980 Derek photographed Bo twice for Playboy magazine; she was featured again in the magazine in 1981, 1984, and 1994.
  Derek appeared in MGM's R-rated Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), her first leading role in a mainstream Hollywood film. Directed by her husband, the film dealt little with Tarzan and instead focused on Derek's character of Jane Parker, and specifically on Derek's physical attributes. Several scenes of Derek wearing revealing outfits were featured, along with nude scenes of Derek being bathed and body-painted. Prior to the film's release MGM and the film's distributor, United Artists, were sued by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate over the name of the film, as Derek's role and body overshadowed the story of Tarzan. Although the film received negative reviews from many critics, Tarzan, the Ape Man became a box-office success, making over $35 million in ticket sales and becoming the 15th highest-grossing film of 1981. For her performance, Derek shared the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress with Faye Dunaway, the latter for her starring role as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.
  Derek starred in Bolero (1984). Again directed by John Derek, the film explored the female protagonist's sexual awakening, and her journey around the world to find an ideal first lover to take her virginity. Its sexual nature, along with its substantial use of nudity, resulted in the film receiving an X rating, usually reserved for pornographic or extremely violent horror films. Critical reviews for Bolero, including Derek's performance, were negative ("[Bo Derek] would be a lot more appealing if she tried less assiduously to please"), and the film failed to recoup its production costs. For her performance in Bolero Derek won her second Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. The film received other Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Wor
caption: Derek in 1998
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