Bo Derek

Ahead of Tarzan, the Ape Man's release, MGM and the film's distributor, United Artists, were sued for an injunction by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, which alleged that the film exceeded the scope of a 1931 license agreement ("1931 Agreement") that permitted MGM to use Tarzan and other Burroughs characters in the 1932 film Tarzan the Ape Man.

The agreement stipulated that MGM could only produce remakes if the story of the 1932 film was maintained.

Bo Derek (born Mary Cathleen Collins, November 20, 1956) is an American actress and model.

While attending Narbonne High School at age 16 in 1973, Collins auditioned for the female lead in John Derek's Once Upon a Love, a low-budget romantic drama film set in Greece.

Although Derek had been considering Collins for the part, he felt that her naturally blonde hair was ill-suited to the character, whom he saw as a brunette.

He nevertheless offered Collins the role

on condition that she dye her hair darker.

Collins agreed and was added to the cast.

During post-production in Munich, the film ran out of funding and was seized by a German film lab.

It remained in a vault for several years until being sold to producer Kevin Casselman.

Casselman's attempts to distribute the film globally prompted Derek and Collins to seek a restraining order against its release.

They eventually dropped any legal action, deciding it was not worth their time and effort.

In 1976, at the age of 19, Collins married John Derek.

From then on, she was known professionally as Bo Derek: an amalgam of her former stage name Bo Shane and married name Derek.

In 1977, director Michael Anderson cast Derek in a small role in his horror film Orca - The Killer Whale, in which Derek's character has her leg bitten off by the title character.

She is best known for her breakout role in the romantic comedy film 10 (1979).

In 1979, Derek was selected over Melanie Griffith, Heather Thomas, Tanya Roberts, 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, i.e., a perfect 10.

Derek's appearance in a dream sequence, running towards Moore in a tight-fitting, nude-colored one-piece swimsuit, launched her status as a mainstream sex symbol.

Distinguished by Derek's cornrow hairstyle, the sequence has often been parodied.

10 was a critical and financial success.

For her performance in the film, Derek received a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year but ended up losing to Bette Midler for her performance in The Rose.

Her other credits include Richard Lang's A Change of Seasons (1980) and the ill-fated films Fantasies, Tarzan, the Ape Man (both 1981), Bolero (1984), and Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), all four of which were directed by her first husband, John Derek.

After 10, Derek was cast in Richard Lang's A Change of Seasons (1980), a dramatic-comedy film that also 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").

The film was finally released in 1981 under the new title Fantasies, at which point it received negative reviews.

During the course of these events, Collins became sexually involved with John Derek, who was 30 years her senior and still married to actress Linda Evans.

Upon his divorce from Evans, Derek moved to Germany with Collins, where he would not face prosecution under California's statutory rape laws because Collins was under the age of consent.

In 1981, Derek starred in MGM's R-rated Tarzan, the Ape Man, her first leading role in a mainstream Hollywood film.

Directed by John Derek, the film dealt little with Tarzan and instead focused on Derek's character, Jane Parker, and specifically on Derek's physical attributes.

Derek appears nude in two scenes, one of which involved her being bathed and body-painted.

She remarked in a 1985 interview on Late Night with David Letterman:

"Well, I didn't really mean to quit. Well, what happened—I'll tell you what happened ... I went for like a month without going to school; I went to the beach, and I got caught ... So, then I started going back to school, and I was really enjoying it ... and then I went to go do this film with John in Greece ..."

Widowed in 1998, she married actor John Corbett in 2020.

Derek was born Mary Cathleen Collins in Long Beach, California.

Her father, Paul Collins, was a Hobie Cat executive, and her mother, Norma (née White), was a make-up artist and hairdresser to Ann-Margret.

Collins's parents divorced, and her mother remarried stunt performer Bobby Bass.

She grew up with three siblings: two sisters and a brother.

Collins attended Narbonne High School and George S. Patton Continuation School, both in Harbor City, California.