Valerie Perrine, the Las Vegas showgirl who fell into acting and gave memorable award-winning performances in Lenny playing his stripper girlfriend and Superman as Lex Luthor’s moll has died. The 1970s were her peak and while she continued to act afterwards never gained the same heights.
Her life featured a few high risk moments: In 1969 she was due to attend a party in the Hollywood Hills with her then-boyfriend, the celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, but after one of her fellow dancers fell ill, she was called upon to work instead. The party was crashed by the so-called Manson Family, and Sebring numbered among their victims. Five years later a flight carrying her to promote Lenny crashed shortly after take-off. She emerged unscathed and returned to the wreck to collect her make up.
She never married but had been engaged early on to a gun collector who died when the pistol he habitually carried fell from his waistband and discharged in a freak accident one month before the couple’s planned wedding.
Her approach to acting was casual and she regarded it as an enjoyable social activity. Renowned for her wild parties which ran, she said, on cocaine, she also dropped a reputed 400 doses of LSD.
Born September 3 1943 9.20pm Galveston, Texas, with a military father and former dancer mother she spent most of her childhood in Japan. In her final years, she battled severe health issues from wear-and-tear incurred during her dancing days and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
She had a Virgo Sun conjunct Venus on the cusp of her hard-working 6th house which was in a volatile, explosive square to Mars Uranus in Gemini. It would be that which attracted her, consciously or unconsciously, to adrenaline-packed moments on the edge. She had Jupiter North Node in Leo in her performing 5th house giving her confidence and exuberance as well as luck; with her Jupiter in a doubly self-assured conjunction with Pluto. A 7th house Libra Moon looked in need of support though she never married. It was in a cool trine to Saturn. Neptune in her 6th does hint at delicate health which would not appreciate rampant drug use.
When she missed the Manson killing in 1969 by a stroke of destiny, transiting and Solar Arc Jupiter were hard at work sparking off various elements of her chart. Although it would undoubtedly shake her with her Solar Arc Mars square her Neptune.
Her chart is all lower hemisphere apart from her Moon suggesting that she was not exactly career-driven and would be more concerned with her personal life.