Lindsay Wagner Was Fired by Universal — Then ‘The Bionic Woman’ Made Her a Star

For many young girls and boys growing up in the 1970s, there were a handful of ultra-cool, beautiful TV stars to idolize and crush on. California blonde Lindsay Wagner was one of them.

The model-turned-actress skyrocketed to fame as Jaime Sommers, a character first introduced on The Six Million Dollar Man in a two-part episode. Wagner played Jaime, Steve Austin’s (Lee Majors) childhood sweetheart, who was severely injured in a skydiving accident. Jaime originally died, but the network was so inundated with complaints (even a school child psychologist wrote in on the impact of the character’s death) that they brought her back to life in another two-parter.