Tina Louise (nee Blacker; born February 11, 1934) is an American actress widely known for her role as movie star Ginger Grant in the television situation comedy Gilligan's Island.

She began her career on stage in the mid-1950s before landing her breakthrough role in 1958 drama film God's Little Acre for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

She began studying acting, singing, and dancing at age 17 under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan.

She was offered modeling jobs, including the 1958 Frederick's of Hollywood catalog, and she appeared on the cover of several pinup magazines such as Adam, Sir!, and Modern Man.

Louise returned to the United States, began studying with Lee Strasberg, and became a member of the Actors Studio.

[10][11] In 1962, she guest-starred on the situation comedy The Real McCoys, portraying a country girl from West Virginia in the episode "Grandpa Pygmalion".

Although she continued to work in film and made guest appearances on television, she claimed repeatedly that playing Ginger had ruined her movie career.

She maintained a steady acting career after the series ended, going on to appear in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin and in The Stepford Wives (1975).

Louise attempted to shed her comedic image by playing darker roles, such as a heroin addict in a 1974 episode of Kojak and as a cruel corrections officer in the 1976 television movie Nightmare in Badham County.

Other credits from this era include the made-for-TV films Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976) and SST: Death Flight (1977), and the soap opera Dallas during the 1978–1979 seasons.

[14] Her relations with series star Denver were rumored to be strained, but in 2005, she wrote a brief, affectionate memorial to him in the year-end "farewell" issue of Entertainment Weekly after his death.

[17] With arrangements by Jim Timmens and Buddy Weed's Orchestra, 12 tracks include "Tonight Is the Night" and "I'm in the Mood for Love."

[21] From 1966 to 1971, Louise was married to radio and TV announcer/interviewer Les Crane, with whom she had one daughter, Caprice (born 1970),[22][23] who became an MTV producer and a novelist.

[25] From 1965 to 1968, Les Crane had simultaneous careers as an actor and an interviewer who covered a wide variety of controversial topics.

She donated a portion of the proceeds of her 2007 book, When I Grow Up, to literacy programs and said in a 2013 interview that she had been volunteering at local public schools since 1996.