Heather Deen Locklear was born on September 25, 1961,[1] in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Diane (née Tinsley), a production executive, and Bill Locklear, an administrator at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)[2] and former colonel in the United States Marine Corps.

[5] Later, she was screen tested with then-unknown Tom Cruise for the lead roles on The Powers of Matthew Star, an 1982 NBC short-lived TV series.

The following year, Locklear joins the cop show T. J. Hooker with William Shatner as female lead to replace actress April Clough.

Locklear remembered at 90s Con in Daytona Beach: "I’d be in my police uniform, padded bra, all that s***, and then I’d have to be all glammed up, and they’d drive me to the Dynasty set, and so it kind of went back and forth…I just had two jobs!"[7].

Locklear had a leading role in the 1989 film The Return of Swamp Thing, for which she won the satirical Razzie Award for Worst Actress).

It was her "first time filming in front of a live audience", she said in an interview with Barry Roskin Blake on Inside Entertainment in 1990.

[9] In 1993, Heather Locklear began playing another of her best-known roles, Amanda Woodward, on Aaron Spelling's drama series Melrose Place created by Darren Star, years before Sex and the City.

Spelling originally signed Locklear for a limited four-episode run to boost interest, the first of which aired on January 27, 1993.

[12] Years earlier, he talked to The Hollywood Reporter: "[I] meet with Heather and at the time, Amanda was a fairly innocuous part with a four-episode arc.

Once we started writing for her and saw how she was able to take an innocuous line and give it devious subtext, that inspired so much in terms of where the show could go".

Two of her best-known skits included her as an elderly Jewish woman on Coffee Talk with Mike Myers and her acting as Amanda Woodward in a Wayne's World skit with Myers, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and Phil Hartman, wherein Wayne has a dream that he is a character on Melrose Place.

[20] After Melrose Place ended in 1999, Locklear was cast in the fourth season of ABC sitcom Spin City, initially opposite Michael J.

Fox and show staff approached her to play a woman who would manage the mayor's (Barry Bostwick) senatorial campaign.

[23] DreamWorks boss Jeffrey Katzenberg credits "Sheen’s instant chemistry with costar Heather Locklear for keeping the series spinning forward".

In 2002, Locklear had a brief recurring role in the sitcom Scrubs, another hit show created by Bill Lawrence years after Spin City.

In 2004, Locklear made a guest appearance on the sitcom Two and a Half Men, which starred her former Spin City co-star Charlie Sheen.

The same year, she had a brief recurring role on the drama series Boston Legal, which starred her former T. J. Hooker co-star William Shatner.

In 2007, Locklear made another pilot for ABC, See Jayne Run, about a business woman who juggles a career with single motherhood, but this was also unsuccessful.

[26] Also in 2007, Locklear starred in her first Lifetime movie, Angels Fall, about a beautiful chef who moves to a small town in Wyoming after her Boston restaurant is shut down because of a fatal shooting.

Ten years after the end of the original Melrose Place, Amanda Woodward is now a partner in a public relations firm, and is both mentor and tormentor to a young underling, Ella, played by Katie Cassidy.

[31] In 2012, Locklear began appearing in a recurring role on the TV Land comedy series Hot in Cleveland.

[33][34] Later in 2016, it was revealed that Locklear would be guest-starring in a recurring role in Tyler Perry's drama Too Close to Home on TLC.

[44] In 2006, Heather Locklear appeared in the music video for country singer Toby Keith's single "Crash Here Tonight" that same year.

[48] In 2025, Locklear appeared with her former costars Daphne Zuniga, Laura Leighton, and Courtney Thorne-Smith on an episode of their Still the Place podcast.

[67] A blood test detected no alcohol nor illegal narcotics, but Santa Barbara County Deputy District Attorney Lee Carter stated authorities believe the prescription medications Locklear consumed for her anxiety and depression "could have impaired her ability to safely drive a motor vehicle".

[68] On January 2, 2009, Locklear pleaded no contest to reckless driving, and in return the district attorney dismissed the DUI charges.

Emergency personnel responded, and Locklear was taken to Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California, but was reported to be out of danger the following day.

[74] In August 2019, she pleaded no contest to charges stemming from that arrest and was sentenced to 30 days in a residential mental health facility.