Lynda Carter

Lynda Carter came to acting through pageants, crowned Miss World USA in 1972 and placing in the top fifteen at Miss World that year, and three years later she was cast in the role that would follow her for the rest of her life. Wonder Woman ran from 1975 to 1979, and her Diana Prince became the default mental image of the character for several generations, which is a strange kind of achievement for a show with limited money and worse writing.

The reason it stuck is that she played it entirely straight. Everything around her invited camp, from the spinning transformation to the villains, and she performed sincerity instead: warm, unbothered, faintly amused, never winking at the audience. Take the sincerity away and the show would be unwatchable now. Leave it in and it still works on children.

The later career leaned into what that iconography gave her, usually with a knowing edge. She is Principal Powers in Sky High, running a school for young superheroes; Governor Jessman in both Super Troopers films; Pauline in The Dukes of Hazzard. Earlier she took the lead in the drive-in picture Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw and headlined the television projects Partners in Crime, Daddy and Posing, plus Hawkeye in the 1990s. She has also sung throughout, including her own 1981 special, and now appears as an elder statesman of the genre in documentaries like Superpowered: The DC Story and Secret Origin, plus a recent turn in The Cleaner.