Why wasn't Kim Zimmer a bigger star?

Was she too brassy despite all her talent?

Hey, she was the Slut of Springfield. Whaddya want?

OP, She's pretty hefty these days.

Kathleen Turner is so beautiful in that pic. Never heard of the other female.

Kim looks like a naturally aged person. So unusual in Hollywood.

Kathleen does look amazing in that pic. I can't help but notice the positioning of the arm AWAY from Kim Zimmer though. Wonder if there was anything behind that seemingly innocuous pose?

I don’t know. But Reba reminds us it’s time for a Lujack retrospective.

She didn't become a bigger star because she stayed in soaps too long.

She wasn't beautiful. Her acting fit the character of Reva. She hammed it up on GL and it worked. She didn't stand out in any of her small roles outside of GL. She also looked older than her age. She wasn't even particularly exciting when she returned to GL. Cynthia Watros stole the show in their storyline.

If her character had been leaning over in the gazebo she could have had Ned's big horny 7-inches up her cooter before she could tell "At least buy me a drink first!"

I don’t understand Zimmer not being hired by the Bloodworth Thomason’s - she nailed The Rowdy Girls guest spot

Screw her! I want to know why Kim Walker never made it big! Did everyone have a collective brain tumor for breakfast or something?

Was Zimmer being tested as a potential replacement for Delta Burke on Designing Women, wasn’t that episode taped around the time Burke was feuding with the producers?

[quote]I don’t understand Zimmer not being hired by the Bloodworth Thomason’s - she nailed The Rowdy Girls guest spot

She was supposed to be the lead on Evening Shade. Depending on whose version you believe, CBS basically cockblocked her to try and keep her on The Guiding Light. She left anyway and ended up doing a bunch of guest spots, before being enticed to join Santa Barbara. (I'm assuming money started to get tight) SB ended and after another run of guest spots she was lured back to TGL.

Bottom line, she missed her shot. Instead of trying to turn Body Heat into something, she ended up back in soaps. Nothing wrong with soaps, it's a good steady gig, but you have to time it right if you want to do more than soaps.

I really liked Kim as Nola Dancy on The Doctors and enjoyed her inital run on Guiding Light. I thought Kim was a good soap actress.

Unfortunately, she didn't have "IT" for the big screen. I don't know if it was the fact that she seemed a little cornpone or slightly white trash, but I don't think she ever had it in her to be a big star.

Kathleen Turner, on the other hand, was really something special. To me (as a gay man), she oozed intelligence and sensuality. She was also very expressive with her eyes. Unfortunately, I don't think she ever had a role that matched her potential. Serial Mom was close, as well as War of the Rose. Peggie Sue Got Married was probably her best role, despite that fucking Nicholas Cage.

Come to think of it, that would be a good use of CGI, just remove Nick from the movie and replace him with someone good...

Ah. The 'Kim-estry' she had with male costars really was sorta interesting, and would have possibly been enticing enough with Burt Reynolds, but she also had soap taint which is why so few can break out. Four ot five Daytime Emmys are nothing to sneeze at either.

The GL star that shoulda been huge is Beth Ehlers btw, who shit the bed career wise once and for all by jumping ship to AMC and being a cunt to the burn victim.

What dic Beverlee McKinsey think of Kim? I imagine she found Kim annoying.

She was to busy being a mom to that fine, Jake Weary.

Mary Ann should have just hidden her face and got straight down on Ned's sweaty cock, like Jennifer Jason Leigh from "Single White Female"!

She may be hefty, but she looks happy. I'd be curious to see what an AI app could produce if it were given parameters to thin and give her cosmetic procedures. Not many entertainment industry women age without intervention.

I think it was more important to her to raise her kids herself and have dinner with them every night. Hard to do that when you're making movies.

I had enough of Reva ruining GL. I think she helped drive viewers away, one stupid storyline after another and always front burner. That being said, as another poster stated she was great as the 3rd Nola on The Doctors, a role that started with the great Kathryn Harrold, then Kathleen Turner and finally Kim. I also loved the dish in her autobiography.

My cousin met Kim Zimmer, through her girlfriend, who was a gofer for Kim at a soap opera convention, she said Kim was very sweet & down to earth.

For reasons which are well known to her.

Makes me want to ask why Cynthia watros wasn’t a bigger star

I wonder how Kathleen got so skinny for Body Heat.

Wasn't she made pregnant on—and then fired from—The Doctors because she couldn't keep her weight down?

I never heard the Evening Shade story. That’s interesting.

R14

“she seemed a little cornpone or slightly white trash”

I love these two terms. Please, if someone will only say “poontang” today, it will be a hat trick.

[quote]I never heard the Evening Shade story. That’s interesting.

Linda Bloodworth was a big fan, but (love her or not) she was a big draw for Guiding Light. Fans loved Reva. And these were the days when daytime was still a cash cow for the networks. CBS wanted to, understandably, keep her in daytime.

Many in the know at the time said that Zimmer wanted the Turner role in Body Heat and told Kasdan she would be more than happy to flash beav on-camera if she were cast, something Turner was refusing to do.

She doesn't have that kind of confidence any more.

i find it hard to believe that was actually something an actress would have offered up at that time period. Tell me how many movies you can point to in 1981 where we saw gratuitous shots of beaver? i realize it's been awhile and yes, i'm in my mid 50s, but i just don't recall a lot of beaver flashing in movies back then.

Kim Zimmer was cast in Body Heat because she was the actress who replaced Kathleen Turner as Nola Dancy Aldrich on The Doctors. They clearly looked enough alike, but it was also a nod to the fact they had both played the same role.

Body Heat was filled with actors who got their start on the soap. Kathleen Turner and Kim Zimmer were on The Doctors. Ted Danson was on both The Doctors and Somerset. Lanna Saunders was on Days of Our Lives. Michael Ryan was on Another World.

Clearly Lawrence Kasden watched NBC soaps in the 1970s. Or maybe his wife did.

R3- She was LITERALLY beautiful in that photo.

R32, apparantly Kasdan never had any intention of having his female lead flash beav, Zimmer just offered...

The Evening Shade bit mentioned above is partly true. Linda Bloodworth-Thomasen was a fan and wrote Kim into that episode of Designing Women, and then planned to have her be the lead in Evening Shade. I'd heard it was CBS that was more nervous about having a no name as a lead and somehow Marilu Henner was pushed on the Thomasons and/or Burt Reynolds.

But I don't think CBS was trying to keep KZ on GL. She was already leaving or planning to leave and her exit from GL would have been in plenty of time to take a role at Evening Shade.

She tried LA for a few years but was 35 when she got there - old enough to play a mom and wife to Burt, or a mom, period, but not much else. I think she was shocked that her Emmys did not provide her the hoped for golden ticket.

[quote] What dic Beverlee McKinsey think of Kim? I imagine she found Kim annoying.

Based on Kim's book and a few interviews they got on just fine.

Kim told a hilarious story about a scene where she was fucking up her lines - which she never did, but it happened shortly after an awards ceremony - and after the third or fourth take Bev bellowed "Well, give the girl another Emmy!" and everyone laughed.

Kim said there was a point when she and Bev were both on the show that Bev was sad and said something along the lines of....you are all so young, and talented, and beautiful, and my day has come and gone. Kim thought nothing about it at the time but when she was having this particular interview it was the late 90s or early 00s and she was working with a number of younger actresses and was like, oh, wait, I know just how she felt now.

She and Mary Kay Adams were brilliant in this

The writing was great

In the photo at OP, is that Kathleen Turner's own (left) hand on her (Turner's) right arm? If so, that is indeed a weird pose.

Yes, KT does look beautiful there, but so does Kim Zimmer. Kim looks more like the sexy woman next door.

She eats the scenery for breakfast.

I read that Need was meant to sneak up behind her in that scene and grab her boobs while saying "Wanna fuck"? Then Kim turns round and says "Mm it'll cost ya!"

Kim is pushing 70 and is indeed heavier, as is KT. Age is a bitch and she catches up eventually. KZ also became a bit of a fan of the grape toward the end of her time on GL and that probably hasn't helped.

I can't imagine Zimmer not hamming it up had she been cast in Serial Mom. Oh, that would have been badddddd....

Kim is a proficient actress. But she had one type she was good at playing, the whore with the heart of gold.

Just because she hammed it up as Reva, it doesn't mean that was her default setting. Soap acting is more broad and over the top. The audience practically requires it to be that way. I've seen Zimmer in some of her episodic work, she knows how to bring it down. And even in her soap work, she wasn't Reva when she played Nola or Echo (the first time). Now that I've finally seen Katherine Harrold's performance as Nola, she is my favorite version of the character, but Zimmer is fine in that role.

r38 “you’re nothing but Tulsa trash”

The soap writers really knew how to serve it in the 1980s….they were clearly raised on women’s pictures of the 1940s and 50s…it’s fabulous.

She was great in the 80s but she got heavy and stayed on GL til she was too old to move to tv or film.

Her scenes with Tom Pelphrey were amazing. I knew then that he’d break out of soaps.

Years ago, ‘99 or 2000 when I had just turned 21, I was sitting at the bar of a nice restaurant in my town waiting for my dinner date and I heard a woman sitting next to me say to her companions, “A young man walked up to me in the airport today and said that he’d been watching me with his mother since he was a little boy!”

I thought it was such a strange thing to say I turned and examined the woman. I didn’t recognize her until she spoke again and realized it was Reva Shayne from The Guiding Light.

I had also watched her since I was child at my grandmother’s knee and waited until they finished that conversation to break in and introduce myself.

Kim was in town for a charity celebrity golf tournament that weekend and we talked a bit about my town, my background, and the upcoming golf tournament.

“Do you play?”, she asked. I said yes but that I didn’t play well or often.

“Well, there is still a slot open in my foursome and if you join us (for a sizable charitable donation), I promise I’ll play with you by the same rules I play with my husband… kisses for birdies and player’s choice for eagles!”

I turned a bright shade of pink and almost choked on my drink as she giggled. We didn’t speak much more after that but she came and played at that tournament several years so obviously she got someone to take her up on her offer.

R47 Reva and Jonathan was a rare bright spot in those final years of GL.

Can someone explain to me why being on a soap "taints" an actor's career? It seems to me soap actors have to do more in less time than primetime or movie actors. Doesn't the pace at which soaps work speak to the actor's ability to deliver?

R50 Soaps really do have their own approach, rhythms, etc. and actors from soaps can often learn a style of acting that doesn't always translate well to other mediums like nighttime TV or film.

I think the assumption is that a daytime actor would be too hammy/over the top or too formulaic, not being in the moment etc. since they are machines that grind out a lot of story.

I agree with you, R50. Nonetheless, there's snobbery against soap actors and soaps in general. I think it's because the typical assumption is that soaps are all badly done melodramas for bored housewives.

Prime time actors have fled Soap stages in tears unable to keep up

I think there isn’t a concern or stigma to spending time on a soap-there’s a ton of actors who have done a few years in daytime and moved on to bigger things.

It becomes challenging to leave, however, when you stay for years and become the face of the show, Kim did.

R53, when one is a true artiste the demands of a soap are effortless.

Because of the quick-turn around on Soaps, actor's develop bad habits. The longer you have a bad habit the harder it is to break. It's not pure elitism that keeps casting directors from putting soap actors in primetime and film projects. This is the same reason that very few child actors can become adult actors. Child actors are usually nothing but bad habits and no one has the time or the energy to break them from them in a work setting where money is at stake. Kim Zimmer had exactly the career she should have had. There's a reason most soap actors who did make the transition to primetime and film were only in soaps for a very brief period of time.

What are some of these bad habits, R56?

Probably not getting to the emotional core of their character, being a little too broad in their acting.

The good thing about soaps is that it teaches actors discipline. Show up on time, know your marks, and know your lines. Soap actors are some of the hardest working actors in the business, but if you're playing over the top emotions 250 episodes a year it becomes a tough habit to break. Look at Susan Lucci. She got a million chances at primetime, but with every character she just played Erica. But then again, Lucci wasn't exactly a great actress. And, in all fairness to soap opera actors, theatre actors can have a tough time turning off the theatre acting when they try film and primetime.

Clearly someone did, cuntzilla at R60

R57, since they probably don't have the time, they wouldn't be able to break down the beats of a scene and make strong, at times surprising or interesting choices. They tend to make cliched, easy (anger is an easy choice for most) choices and run through a lot of beats. Also, as R58 since, not much time to do interior work to make authentic (meaning realistic) emotional/psychological choices and thus coming across as phony/over the top. Lucci (and Zimmer to an extent) are perfect examples of this. At some point, Erica Kane became sort of a "meta" character, wherein she became in on the joke and Lucci has a flair for comedy. However few (or any besides Lucci) are given the time and exposure that Erica had to evolve into such a self-reflexive entity. Sorry I know I think about this too much...

The picture with her and Turner is really stunning.

R46: That's why I'll always love the soaps.

Did she show the director her beaver, to show him what he'd be missing?

Do actors/actresses have to undress first if their role requires nudity, to ensure no nasty surprises?

For a number of years I served as a judge on various Daytime Emmy panels. One year I was judging Outstanding Game Show. I fondly remember us watching Jeopardy! and shouting out the answers in the form of a question. Kim Zimmer sat right behind me and was really totally sweet and delightful. I sort of developed a platonic crush on her that afternoon.

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