Angelyne

"She's the original influencer. There would be no Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton if Angelyne hadn't done the brick-and-mortar version that captured an entire ...

Directing is so personal like acting and I really believe that in order for something to be great, it has to be very personal and visceral. All of the chirping that I had done in the grocery aisle and all of the different modalities that I had practiced, suddenly I felt so free to do them unencumbered and to be able to channel that kind of power in your body, which is probably only an ounce of what she has. That was before I had any real hair and makeup artists that were helping me with the real transformation. I love her singing and all of her super high tones were something that even for me, a classically trained singer, took a lot of work to achieve. In New York, I'd walk the aisles of the grocery store at night like trying out different tones hoping people didn't hear me as I bought frozen fruits and vegetables in bizarre makeup that I would wear to empower myself to juggle the character. I think I was most fascinated by the combination of conflicting narratives that exist about an icon, some of which tell a very grounded poignant story of triumph over sorrow, and others which is so escapist fantasy for a sense of levity and inspiration to an entire city. And I think that there's magic and power in that. I think what's so interesting about her is that she really is like a mirror. The other aspect of this role is that it requires you to sing, which, considering your musical background, is very exciting. And I think she knows that she has brilliant business savvy. I think ownership of your own body and womanhood, in whatever way feels authentic to you, is a big part of feminism. Then she sat down and said, "So why do you have such a hard-on to play me?"

"I remember shaking because I was scared not to see or hear myself at all. And then I just felt an immense wave of possibility; I could do anything."

I feel like only Angelyne can ever be Angelyne. In the end, I look up and say, “What more do you want?” And then all of the images with me go black and are replaced with images of her. Even when we were interviewing Kate to do the job, she asked me if I was aware of what the process would be for me and how many hours it would take. We’re much more interested in the power struggle to control the image and the narrative of Angelyne the icon. Her insistence on preserving the mystery and enigma and not giving it all away is kind of her driving the car, preserving that fantasy for us, so she can be whatever we need her to be. There are so many people who worked on this that are simply A-plus. I also hope we have told a story about identity, reinvention, and control over your life that is empowering and universally emotional. I hope it will elevate the work of the many artists who worked on it, from our incredible production designers to costume designers to the directors. The reason I think she gave us her blessing to do this is we were interested in returning that mystique to her and using her own words. When they spun me around to look into the mirror after it all, nothing of me was there. I remember Kate told me she would dream every single night about Angelyne’s eyeliner; she would dream of doing it and perfecting it. For me, my responsibility was to do my 10,000 hours to perfect Angelyne’s voice and try to bring humanity to every moment, while also wildly coloring outside the lines depending on who is in control of the narrative in the scene. It was important for me to handle it tenderly. The first time with all the makeup and prosthetics, it took 11 and a half hours.

'How can you be so famous and yet so unknown?' the 'Shameless' alum says of the buffonted blonde starlet she plays in the Peacock series.

Telling what amounts to an origin story, the five-part bio-drama tracks her rise from nobody to recognizable B-movie actress/singer/self-promoter/brand, all built on what Rossum calls a “fantastical, kaleidoscopic narrative” that isn’t always reliable. A Southern California staple during most of the ’80s, the buxom, buffonted blonde starlet stared down at Los Angelenos from massive billboards and turned heads on the street with her hot pink wheels, leaving everyone to wonder who the hell she really was. “How can you be so famous and yet so unknown?”

An urban legend, an eccentric curiosity ... just who is Angelyne? Better yet, how?

“Ultimately, it’s an examination of all the different stories about her, about the mythology of her.” Today Angelyne has an Instagram account, where she can be seen whispering inspirational mantras to her fans with that breathy voice, a few trademark “oohs” thrown in for good measure. The billboard star, who according to Baum’s story is 71 (but according to Angelyne’s history of filling out forms, is markedly younger), was initially supposed to make a cameo in the series. In one scene, Angelyne has a face-off with Hugh Hefner. She rejects the Playboy founder’s offer to pose for the magazine and indicts him for profiting off of Marilyn Monroe’s image to launch his publication in 1953 while never giving her a cent. The show hints at an unraveling of the mystery, placing the death of Goldberg’s mother when she was a teen and her parents’ postwar trauma within a series of boxes to be discovered in a compelling final act. Fair Lawn actor Philip Ettinger (“Evening Hour,” “I Know This Much is True”) plays Cory Hunt, an early Angelyne collaborator and romantic interest in the Los Angeles music scene of the 1970s. She studied flirty, new wave and pop-tinged Angelyne songs from the early ’80s, like “ Kiss Me L.A.” and “ My List,” along with decades of public appearances. In pitching the show, Rossum, the executive producer, drew connections between Angelyne and the celebutante set — “Kylie and Kim and Paris and everyone with their pink car,” she says. “I think that there’s a little bit of her still in me,” says Rossum, 35. At various points in the show, the character works through anger and frustration by taking a momentary aside to power down or meditate (she has recorded meditation tapes). When she returns, she is back in her usual form, floating above any negative thoughts. In the show, she maintains a personal shrine to the blond bombshell. Inked in big, boldface or cursive letters would be the name, Angelyne. At the bottom, a telephone number, for “management.”

Actress Emmy Rossum plays Los Angeles' '80s billboard queen Angelyne in a limited series of the same name on Peacock. Here's how to watch on May 19.

She's a trailblazer, a hustler, a visionary, the original influencer, a living-breathing piece of art." It’s a story about Los Angeles and everything the city means to people who move here and to people who dream about moving here," Miller said. She's known for cruising around LA in some iteration of a pink Corvette, selling merch out of the trunk of her car (she now has her own online store) and posing for photos ($20 each).

Emmy Rossum, who stars as pink Corvette-driving L.A. icon in the new Peacock series, remembers her meeting with the real-life Angelyne.

“She understood the power of her image and the fierce control and preservation that that living, breathing performance art needs to survive. She continued, “The more that I learned about her, the more mystery there was with her and I just thought, wow, what a conundrum — how can you be so known and yet so unknown at the same time? I hope more people fall in love with her and appreciate her for what a trailblazer she is as the precursor to social media.”

Emmy Rossum stars in the long-awaited limited series about the LA influencer who started it all and here's how you can watch.

Shameless - If you’re interested in watching Emmy Rossum in her most acclaimed work, Shameless is a great place to start. Similar to Angelyne, this show provides an insight into a moment in time, when audiences only had access to one side of the narrative, whatever was being published by the media. It was star and executive producer, Emmy Rossum’s (Shameless) vision, to explore the power and strength of Angelyne and her image, that was originally fascinating to her as a child. Based on the trailer, audiences are made well aware, that Angelyne was known for existing in people’s minds, no matter what they thought of her, simply because she placed herself there. Throughout the height of her fame in the 80s and 90s, Angelyne remained a complete mystery to audiences, with no one knowing her real name or life story beyond what she wanted them to know. Though set in the 1980s, at the rise of Angelyne’s celebrity, this miniseries explores the fascinating role of influencer culture in our lives, before social media had anything to do with it.

Long before the Kardashian-Jenner clan became social media influencers and moguls, Angelyne — born Ronia Tamar Goldberg — was the “it” girl.

Not to mention, Angelyne is reportedly dabbling in the humanitarian sector. Per Hollywood Life, the series is based on Gary Baum's 2017 Hollywood Reporter article that revealed Angelyne's identity. Unfortunately, the 2021 production was said to be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is no word on if production has resumed. Folks who are ready to see Angelyn’s story hit the small screen won’t have to wait too long. In fact, Peacock has just released a limited series that chronicles the life of the LA legend. Fast-forward to 2022, and Angelyne’s name still gets the people going.

Emmy Rossum stars as the enigmatic icon of Los Angeles. Here is the real story behind the new series Angelyne.

While the memoir has yet to be written, Variety reports that Angelyne is working in collaboration with the show. As Baum reports, a genealogist had taken a special interest in the story and worked to uncover just exactly who she was. She attended high school in the San Fernando Valley. Baum reports that she got married and then divorced in 1969. And that is where the “paper trail ends.” Baum writes: My slogans are “Good Luck California” and “I have the Key to California.” I’m going to be sitting on the key. The blonde-haired Angelyne wears pink and is often pictured alongside her Corvette of the same color. In 2003 I set the pace and the pathway for people to run who were not just the gray-suited people. Before her fame in the early 1980s, Angelyne worked as a musician, trying, like so many do, to make it in Hollywood. In 1982, Baum reported, Angelyne was attempting to enlarge a pin-up poster of herself. In doing so, Angelyne met Hugo Maisnik, a wealthy, young entrepreneur who agreed to bankroll the billboards. Here is a look at the true story behind the show. Angelyne herself was behind the billboard campaign. Real Stories is an ongoing column about the true stories behind movies and TV shows.

Roughly 50 years after Angelyne became a Los Angeles icon, a new Peacock television show is dramatizing the transformation with her blessing.

Strauss and Goldberg lost contact after the divorce, but he says they met they again in the mid-’70s. By then, she was Angelyne. “I wasn’t there when she made the transition. I hope that the show is ultimately a love letter to that fun.” Strauss said she was “unique, beautiful, [and] smart,” and that she’d fled her home because her father was “controlling and cruel,” having been traumatized by World War II. In December she posted, “Anyone that follows me becomes Hollywood royalty immediately.” In the 1980s, she became known all over town thanks to a series of billboards featuring her big, platinum blonde hair and bright pink Corvette. But her true identity was shrouded in mystery. Like many dreamers in Hollywood, Baum wrote, her entertainment career “never panned out quite as intended.” Goldberg’s mother died of cancer when she was 14, and her father remarried another Holocaust survivor. But Poland was still unwelcoming to Jews after the war, so they moved first to Israel, and then to New York. Who was Angelyne, and why was she on all those billboards? After liberation, they were sent to a displaced persons camp in Germany, and then repatriated to their home country. Or a porn star,” says the titular character, played by Emmy Rossum. “People see what they see.” Peacock’s new five-episode limited series, Angelyne, dramatizes her real life through a mix of fact and fiction.

The real Angelyne told Newsweek's H. Alan Scott on the Parting Shot that the new Peacock limited series about her life is "painful to watch" and says Emmy ...

It's not me. But it's not the real me. It's not me. I like that you see that it does come from a place of love. The magic that I send out to people when they meet me or when they see me is transformational. If you go to any country in the entire world, I've [done shows in] every country in the world. And I just feel like that was not true. I mean, obviously, you know, she doesn't sound like me—I don't have a Boston accent. Really. I know that it's going to come my way, so that the world can see who the real Angelyne is. I was just trying to inspire the world with pink. It's not me. I don't sound like a man.

From the big, blonde wig to the extensive prosthetic work, the “Shameless” star completely inhabits the title character in Peacock's latest. But for Rossum, it ...

When you want your body to move in a way in which it doesn’t usually, and you want your voice to do that for 12 hours a day you have to work really hard and pattern all of those things, and do that for 1000s of hours to get it to feel natural on the day [so] that those mannerisms don’t feel like flourishes. Although it’s nice to just be an actor for hire and [not worry about producer problems] I also love getting to work on a show with women, and I love getting to tell stories. I was also able to meet with her on a couple of occasions, and speak with her at length. Over the course of four years, working on the walk, how the walk changes, how the body changes, as her body changes as it develops and she turns into more and more of a Barbie doll. So, it was a combination of using all of these pieces of the puzzle to formulate a tapestry of different colors which I could access for different moments in the story depending upon who was telling the story at that moment [and] who’s in control of the narrative. It was very profound, the idea came to me on a side street in Chicago during a rainstorm on hold from shooting “Shameless.” I had the idea and it was pretty much all I could think about for four and a half years. Emmy Rossum: I first saw a billboard when I was about thirteen, and kind of like the law of attraction I started to see it everywhere as a young actress in L.A., auditioning for pilot season and invariably for, I’m sure, some terrible pilot I didn’t get. Being reductive and defining her by one story is antithetical to that goal. She was glamorous and famous, and loved, and celebrated for being who she was. But for Rossum, it was important to give 100 percent to both the performance and the series itself, where she not only stars but acts as an executive producer. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. From the big, blonde wig to the extensive prosthetic work, the “Shameless” star completely inhabits the title character in Peacock’s latest.

In an interview with “Inside Edition” released Thursday, the self-promoting billboard pinup renounced “Angelyne” after catching “a little glimpse” of actor Emmy ...

“She’s like a unicorn in Los Angeles,” Rossum said. In Peacock’s “Angelyne,” Emmy Rossum gives the billboard-famous local celebrity her all. “And I was like, ‘That’s why.’ ‘Cause she’s a real badass.

Emmy Rossum stars as the titular Angelyne, an 80s billboard personality of Los Angeles, whose mysterious life has become the subject of eponymous new show on ...

“It was so important to me that she be involved in this and that we were able to faithfully re-create her iconic billboards,” the New York native said. I hope more people fall in love with her and appreciate her for what a trailblazer she is as the precursor to social media.” “The one thing [she] told me was that she’s a mirror, so whatever I saw in her, that’s the story I should tell and therefore it would be my story and not her story.

“I truly believe that the character of Angelyne represents something that people needed in Los Angeles which was a a bright pink light, a beacon of hope, a ...

As we continue to define our relationship with identity, Rossum was drawn to Angelyne’s ability to create and control her own image in a world that tells you not to. Angelyne’s cult-like following serves as the prototype for what we now call an influencer. When I broke down her name I got, ‘At a fork in the road, I’m reborn a messenger of God,'” she said.