This 80s bombshell who played a crime-fighting stuntwoman and fled Hollywood after facing the dark side of fame was spotted taking a smoke break in LA… guess who?

Daily Mail​

27-07-2025

She shot to fame in the 1980s as the stunning blonde stuntwoman on a hit TV series - often leaping into danger alongside her partner and stealing scenes with her charisma and beauty.
Her breakout role became iconic, eventually inspiring a 2024 Hollywood blockbuster starring two A-list powerhouses - where she made a nostalgic cameo appearance.
But behind the glamour, the dark side of fame crept in. As her popularity soared, so did the number of stalkers, forcing her to retreat from the spotlight by the late '90s.
Even after stepping away, the obsessive attention lingered for years.
Today, she's traded the big screen for writing - reinventing herself as a political activist, screenwriter and even released a debut novel in 2009.
Can you guess who she is?
It's Heather Thomas!
The 67-year-old former actress still radiated that unmistakable bombshell energy and kept her iconic blonde locks as she stepped into the hot California sun for a cigarette break in Los Angeles.
Dressed casually in a wide-brimmed straw hat, camo tee, crisp white jean shorts and white sneakers with neon green accents, Thomas stood on a stone walkway, unfazed by the heat.
She was soon joined by a friend in a breezy blue-and-red coral-patterned dress as the pair shared a relaxed moment together as they chatted.
It marked the first time Thomas has been spotted out and about in two decades outside of her occasional podcast appearances and rare red-carpet cameos.
Born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, Thomas began her acting career at 14 years old when she was one of the teen hosts that interviewed celebrities on the NBC series, Talking with a Giant.
She then took on small roles and tried her hand at series that would end up being cancelled until she landed her biggest role as Jody Banks in the hit The Fall Guy.
Starring alongside TV legends Lee Majors and Douglas Bars, the show ran from 1981 to 1986 and followed the trio as stunt performers who also work as bounty hunters.
Throughout the series, she won over audiences - not just with her looks, but with her character's evolution from sidekick to a confident, capable force of her own.
But when the show was abruptly axed in 1986, Heather Thomas's meteoric rise brought with it an unexpected price: the loss of her privacy.
She continued to chase roles, landing parts in films like Zapped! (1982), Cyclone (1987) and Against the Law (1997).
But the darker side of fame caught up with her. A relentless wave of stalkers ultimately drove her to step away from Hollywood altogether by the late '90s.
'Really bad, at least two a week. I had tons of restraining orders. I had two little girls, and a guy's jumping our gate with a giant buck knife,' she recalled on the Still Here Hollywood podcast in March.
'In those days, I don't know if this is true now, but people would fixate. You could be in a soap commercial, and they would fixate on you, and there weren't a lot of stalker laws, and I just needed to be home anyway.'
Her situation became 'really scary,' as she was sent darkly suggestive items like 'a box of bullets' and 'funeral wreaths' that her stalkers 'stole from graveyards.'
She divulged: 'And I know I had one guy one night cut my screen in my bedroom and got in and I shot him, and yeah, with rock salt and birdshot.'
Even after she withdrew from show business, 'a couple of years' went by before the frenzied attention from stalkers finally died down.
Thomas now has three daughters - Shauna, Kristina and India - with her husband, entertainment lawyer Skip Brittenham, whom she married in 1992.
She would come back into the limelight in 2014 to appear in a small role in the musical comedy Girltrash: All Night Long.
But by this point she had shifted her attention to activism, serving on the advisory boards of the Rape Foundation and Amazon conservation Team.
Thomas also wrote her debut novel, Trophies, in 2008 and wrote a screenplay called School Slut.
It wouldn't be until 2024 that she would appear once again on the red carpet, after making a cameo appearance on The Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, which was loosely inspired from the original TV show.
While attending the move's premiere, she joked that she was 'geriatric' and was 'happy I can walk the red carpet at this point,' via The Hollywood Reporter.