Melody Anderson

Melody Anderson (born December 3, 1955) is a Canadian social worker and public speaker specializing in the impact of addiction on families. She is a retired actress, whose most high-profile role was playing Dale Arden in the 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon. While doing singing, she also trained as an actress, leading to roles in films and television during the 1970s and 1980s.

Acting

Her first national exposure was as a guest star in the 1977 series Logan's Run and as a "Sweathog" in a 1977 episode of Welcome Back, Kotter. She made numerous guest appearances on television, including Archie Bunker's Place, Battlestar Galactica, Dallas, T. J. Hooker, CHiPs, the pilot episode of The A-Team and The Fall Guy. She had recurring roles on St. Elsewhere and Jake and the Fatman. She was the female lead of the NBC 1983 series Manimal. She was a guest star in the Murder, She Wrote episode "Prediction: Murder" in 1989.

She played the female lead Dale Arden in the cult classic Flash Gordon (1980) and the female lead Janet Gillis in Dead and Buried (1981). In 1983, she played the title role in a made-for-television film called Policewoman Centerfold, in which her character, a divorced police officer, is fired after posing nude for a men's magazine (based loosely on the true story of Springfield, Ohio patrolwoman Barbara Schantz, who was subsequently fired from her job after posing nude in Playboy magazine in the early 1980s). She appeared with Nicolas Cage in The Boy in Blue (1986). She starred in the made-for-television movie Beverly Hills Madam (1896), which starred Faye Dunaway. From 1992–93, Anderson portrayed Natalie Marlowe, and briefly her twin sister Janet Dillon, on the soap opera All My Children.

She starred as Edie Adams in the television film Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter, opposite Jeff Goldblum as Ernie Kovacs and played the coveted role of Marilyn Monroe in the television movie Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair (1993). Her last television appearance was in 1995 as a guest star in the short-lived CBS revival of Burke's Law.

Anderson has made appearances at genre conventions, such as the October 2009 Big Apple Convention in Manhattan.

Social work

Anderson graduated from New York University in 1997. That same year, she began to develop and became Coordinator the "Family & Friends Program" and "Intensive Out-Patient Program (IOP)" at Hazelden New York. She is a LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) in the states of New York and California, with private practices in Manhattan and West Los Angeles. She also facilitates therapy groups at several treatment centers in the LA area. Anderson is currently working on a book for parents with kids who use drugs and alcohol while continuing to paint, sculpt and sell her work.

Anderson holds an Honors bachelor's degree in Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and Masters of Social Work from New York University's Shirley Ehrenkrantz School. Her post-graduate studies include family training at the Ackerman Family and Training Institute in New York and certification in trauma treatment as a Level II-EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) specialist.

Anderson is an international lecturer and media spokesperson on addictions and the family. She has presented about substance abuse and other mental health-related areas of study.