Deborah Raffin

With her classic good looks, Los Angeles native Deborah Raffin seemed destined for show biz stardom. But while she has worked steadily since the 1970s, she has never found a signature role to propel her to fame. The daughter of 1940s starlet Trudy Marshall, Raffin worked as a model and, after branching out into acting with a few early roles, landed a high-profile part opposite Kirk Douglas in the 1975 adaptation of the Jacqueline Susann best-seller, "Once Is Not Enough." She starred as an innocent woman sent to prison in the 1976 TV film "Nightmare in Badham County," which made her a star in China when the film was released there theatrically; she appeared in "God Told Me To," Larry Cohen's oddball sci-fi mystery, in the same year.

Despite nearly landing leads in "Grease" and "Superman," Raffin started finding more opportunities in television than on the big screen. In 1981, she played the Goldie Hawn role in the short-lived TV adaptation of the hit comedy "Foul Play," and in 1985, she played the romantic interest in the Charles Bronson vigilante vehicle, "Death Wish 3." She landed a recurring role in the popular Aaron Spelling drama "7th Heaven" in 1996 but had more success co-founding (with her then-husband, producer Michael Viner) the pioneering audio books company Dove Audio.