Frodo and Merry are plotting new adventures to honor the 25th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings film franchise.
Dominic Monaghan is the second confirmed guest for the forthcoming CCXP26 fan event that takes place later this year in São Paulo, Brazil, following the previous announcement that Elijah Wood, aka Frodo Baggins himself, will attend. With the theme of “Fellowship Forever,” this year’s CCXP is held Dec. 3-6, and its full lineup will be announced soon.
Monaghan made his feature acting debut as Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which was released in theaters Dec. 19, 2001, and also starred Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom. Based on the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, the New Line movie was the first in director Peter Jackson‘s trilogy that collectively surpassed $2.9 billion at the global box office and scored 17 Oscars.
“CCXP has a tradition of bringing together the iconic names who have shaped pop culture history, and Fellowship Forever is the celebration that The Lord of the Rings fans truly deserved. Having Merry alongside Frodo on the CCXP26 stage is one of those moments that captures the very essence of the festival — epic, in the most literal sense of the word,” says CCXP vp of content Roberto Fabri.
Monaghan returns to CCXP after attending last year’s edition, where he participated in panels and met with fans for autographs and photos. The British actor is also known for playing Charlie on Lost, along with his roles in the Star Wars and X-Men franchises.
Other notable presentations in 2025 included a Supernatural reunion; conversations with such stars as Kathryn Newton, Selton Mello and Game of Thrones standout Tom Wlaschiha; and panels for projects like It: Welcome to Derry, The Boys, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Anaconda, The Secret Agent and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
The studio is developing a sequel feature to the hit 2003 romantic-comedy movie that starred Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
This project is still in early development and currently seeks a screenwriter, as it also has not yet attached any castmembers. Hudson is set to produce alongside Stacey Sher for Shiny Penny Productions.
The studio’s plan is to ideally attach Hudson and McConaughey to reprise their roles from the original feature that surpassed $177 million at the global box office.
Paramount released How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in theaters on Feb. 7, 2003. The film centered on Andie (Hudson), a magazine editor aiming to write an article about ways that women push men away. She sets out to pen the story based on her interactions with Ben (McConaughey), an advertising exec who is secretly confident that he can land any woman he wants as a date to his company’s ball.
The initial 2003 comedy from filmmaker Donald Petrie — who was also known for 1988’s Mystic Pizza, 1993’s Grumpy Old Men and 2000’s Miss Congeniality — was loosely based on Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long’s picture book of the same name. It became a signature film for the two leads and remains one of the more fondly remembered rom-coms of the current century.
In 2024, McConaughey reminisced to People about meeting with Hudson before the start of production. “Immediately, we were comfortable with each other, and we jacked with each other, and we busted each other’s chops, and we laughed a lot,” he recalled. “There was a bit of rock and roll exchange, like, ‘Oh, this could be some heavyweight fun.’ And I think that’s why I was cast, and that’s why, for whatever extent, it worked.”
Successful rom-coms about magazine staffers named Andy or Andie have become popular fodder for sequels as Hollywood continues to prioritize nostalgia. Earlier this year, Disney released The Devil Wears Prada 2 — starring Anne Hathaway as editorial assistant Andy in the follow-up to the 2006 hit — with the latest title grossing $692 million globally.
Variety was first to report on the sequel to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
James Lew, the veteran stunt performer and coordinator who worked with John Carpenter on Big Trouble in Little China, They Live and Escape From L.A. and in scores of other films and TV shows, has died. He was 73.
Lew died Sunday, his wife, Jordana Potter, announced. No cause of death was revealed.
In what could be his best-known role, Lew lost a fierce (but very funny) battle with Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley in Jim Abrahams’ parody of the Rambo films, Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), and he was in on plenty of action in the Rush Hour movies released in 1998, 2001 and 2007.
In 2017, he received an Emmy for outstanding stunt coordination for a drama series, limited series or movie for his work on the Netflix series Luke Cage.
Lew also did stunts for Black Rain (1989), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), Undercover Blues (1993), Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), The Last Samurai (2003), Tropic Thunder (2008), Star Trek (2009), Inception (2010), Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Lew was born on Sept. 6, 1952, and raised in South Central Los Angeles.
“My lifelong adventure into the martial arts began when I was 14 years old,” he said in an undated interview. “It was part of a natural discovery and curiosity that I decided to ‘try’ training in the martial arts. The school was a combination of taekwondo and Tang Soo Do.”
He played a monk and performed stunts on a 1974 episode of ABC’s Kung Fu, then appeared in John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and in the Hong Kong movie The Young Dragon (1979).
For Carpenter, he served as stunt coordinator in Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and handled stunts on They Live (1988) and Escape From L.A. (1996).
Lew portrayed a martial arts instructor in the Carl Weathers-starring Action Jackson (1988) and a deadly killer in Red Sun Rising (1994) and showed up on the big screen in Timecop (1994), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) and Traffic (2000), among many other films.
Meanwhile, he also could be spotted on television in everything from T.J. Hooker, The Fall Guy, The A-Team, Falcon Crest and Murder, She Wrote to Roseanne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Walker, Texas Ranger, Alias and Westworld.
Lew wrote and directed the mockumentary 18 Fingers of Death! (2006), which was inspired by his life in Hollywood, and co-directed the parody Made in Chinatown (2021), featuring Vincent Pastore.
He was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 2024.
As the Walt Disney Co. enjoys another banner summer — its Toy Story franchise returned to bring in $1.1 billion globally — staff across the brand and its subsidiaries received unprecedented news last week announcing changes to their spouses’ health benefits eligibility, in a move that may signal a wider corporate trend as costs rise.
Employees at Disney and its portfolio of brands — including Marvel, ABC News, ESPN and Searchlight Pictures — learned this week that the company will no longer allow spouses or domestic partners to join Disney-sponsored health plans if they have access to coverage through their own employer. The change was announced last week and takes effect in 2027.
“Like a growing number of large employers, we’re making measured adjustments to our employee benefits in response to rising healthcare costs nationwide,” a Disney representative said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “We will be communicating these changes in more detail with our employees over the next few months. As always, we remain committed to providing our employees with a comprehensive package of high-quality coverage and other benefits that support their total health and well-being.”
Disney noted that other elements of its Total Rewards package are unchanged: Employees’ children will remain eligible for coverage, and no changes are planned to spousal access to vision and dental plans. Still, the shift creates a new decision point for tens of thousands of the company’s roughly 160,000 employees, known internally as Cast Members.
Because coverage quality and specifics vary from plan to plan, spouses with ongoing treatment extending into 2027 — including those on maintenance medications — will need to make quick decisions about how to proceed, on top of weighing the cost of whatever plan they move to.
Disney isn’t alone in looking for ways to offset the rising cost of health coverage, which remains tied to employment for millions of Americans. U.S. employers expect healthcare costs to rise 11.1 percent in 2027, according to a recent WTW survey — the sharpest projected increase in two decades. In 2025, WTW found employers paid an average of $16,818 per employee for coverage, with employees contributing an average of $3,554 — about $296 a month out of pocket.
The increases are being driven largely by the rising cost of care and medication, particularly cancer treatment and obesity drugs. A survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that 86 percent of employers reported an increase in oncology spending in 2025 compared with the prior year, a median rise of 11 percent from 2024 to 2025. Meanwhile, employer-plan spending and utilization of GLP-1 drugs — diabetes medications widely used for weight loss — have risen roughly 50 percent–65 percent since 2023.
Disney is not the only company responding to these cost increases by shifting around the benefits offered to staff. Starbucks is ending GLP-1 coverage for weight loss, and Zoom is cutting down the amount of time it offers for paid family leave. At Deloitte, paid family leave will also be reduced, as will paid time off, and cuts have been made to pension accruals and adoption/surrogacy/IVF reimbursement for certain U.S. employees.
All of these benefit reductions may create a moment of decision-making for corporate staffers, and for some, it’s deeply personal. As costs shift, some employees may ditch health care benefits altogether or potentially jump ship.
“Benefit cost increases are the steepest we’ve seen in years, but the price tag is only one way to measure the cost of care,” said Alison Myers, president of Corporate Benefits & Specialty Health at Venbrook Insurance Services. “Losing a winning team of employees is far more expensive.”
The Venice Film Festival has added Naza, a politically-charged documentary from No Other Land filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor to its competition line-up for this year.
The documentary claims to reveal in detail “the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
The film builds on revelations first published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, Hebrew-language outlet Local Call and The Guardian between 2023 and 2025. Naza was produced by The Guardian and James Wilson at JW Films in association with Placeholder Films and Unseen Hand. Wilson produced Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest. Glazer is an executive producer on Naza. According to the producers, the film’s title “comes from a military acronym euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that it expects will be killed in an airstrike.”
The doc will have its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 10. It is the only feature documentary picked for competition this year.
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary that chronicled violent evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict took center stage at the Venice Film festival last year, with the world premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, a ticking-clock docudrama from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania about about efforts to save a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli forces in Gaza. [The Israeli military investigation last week announced an official investigation into Hind Rajab’s death, a move Ben Hania has dismissed as “a smokescreen.”].
The Venice audience embraced the film, giving it a festival-best 22-minute standing ovation. The Voice of Hind Rajab won the Silver Lion Grand Jury award, the runner-up prize, losing out to best film Golden Lion winnerFather Mother Sister Brother from Jim Jarmusch.
Ahead of the 2025 festival, thousands had marched on the Lido to protest Israeli military action in Gaza, and a group of international filmmakers and artists had pressed Barbera to take a “clear and unambiguous stand” by condemning the war as a “genocide.” He didn’t, though he expressed his “huge sadness and suffering vis-à-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine.”
While Naza will be the only documentary on the conflict in competition, there are several other Venice-bound docs on the crisis in the region. Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama profiles a photojournalist navigating survival and fatherhood in besieged Gaza. Muayad Alayan’s Conversation with the Sea follows a Palestinian man caught up in Israeli bureaucracy. And Road to Jericho, a documentary from Israeli director Amos Gitai, tracks the fate of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin hamlet outside Jerusalem on the verge of being erased by the Israeli state.
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival runs Sept. 2-12.
From Paramount Pictures, the movie will screen out of competition at the Spanish festival. Both Pitt and Ayer are expected to attend the event, as the Oscar-winning star plays a former Special Forces officer who, accompanied by his retired combat dog, must survive in the Alaskan wilderness following a harrowing plane crash.
It marks Pitt’s first visit to the festival since his 2009 presentation of Inglourious Basterds, alongside filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
Ayer’s credits include Training Day, Suicide Squad, End of Watch, The Tax Collector and Sabotage. His latest feature is written by Cameron Alexander and reunites him with Pitt (who starred in Ayer’s Fury). The film’s cast also includes J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe. Pitt produces the film alongside Olivia Hamilton, Marty Bowen and David Ayer, with Damien Chazelle among its executive producers.
With the addition of Heart of the Beast, the list of titles in San Sebastian’s official selection is now complete. The 74th edition includes 17 films in competition, three out of competition and five special screenings.
This year’s batch boasts opening filmGhost Song from Faith Akin, closer Le Faux Soir from Michaël R. Roskam, as well as a slew of other projects from Mike Leigh (Tender Loving Care), Pablo Larrain (My Sad Dead) and Jaime Lorente (The Bad Son). Other competition highlights include Milo from director Nicole Garcia (Oran), a French drama featuring Marion Cotillard and Lurker star Théodore Pellerin; and In My Father’s Room, the directorial debut of Japanese novelist Maha Harada.
Are you ready to take an air taxi to watch the Los Angeles Lakers or Kings play at Crypto.com Arena? It could happen sooner than you think.
This morning, AEG and Archer Aviation unveiled a multiyear partnership and collaboration to develop downtown L.A.’s first “vertiport” — a vertical takeoff and landing site for electric air taxis — at the sports and entertainment district L.A. Live.
The goal is to enable folks to take one of Archer’s Midnight air taxis for a 10- to 20-minute point-to-point trip that, with traffic, could take two hours. The taxis carry four passengers, reach speeds of up to 150 mph and produce far less noise and zero operating emissions compared with traditional helicopters.
Archer already has plans for its air taxi network to include SoFi Stadium, USC, LAX, Hollywood Burbank Airport and spots in Santa Monica and Orange County, with the recently acquired Hawthorne Airport serving as its central operational hub.
According to the companies, AEG and Archer have completed the initial feasibility study for the site, including land-use and airspace reviews, power availability and community impact. The next phase, reviewing operational approach and guest experience, is underway. (Exactly where the taxis will land and take off has yet to be determined.)
The agreement, brokered by AEG Global Partnerships, names publicly traded Archer as the exclusive air taxi partner of L.A. Live.
“We are thrilled to pursue this endeavor with Archer to enhance the fan experience around the major sports and live-entertainment events we host,” AEG Global Partnerships president and COO Nick Baker said in a statement.
“This is an ambitious project and exactly the kind of forward-thinking collaboration that blends infrastructure and technology in service of our fans, visitors and the broader community around major sports and live-entertainment events hosted at L.A. Live.”
In addition to Crypto.com Arena, L.A. Live is home to the Peacock Theater, The Novo, a Regal multiplex, the Grammy Museum, restaurants and bars, and the L.A. Convention Center, which is around the corner.
Archer is also the official air taxi provider for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Team USA, and downtown L.A. will serve as a central hub for 18 Olympic and Paralympic sports a couple of summers from now.
“We see this as a one-of-a-kind opportunity to add a flagship downtown location to our planned Los Angeles air taxi network ahead of the LA28 Games,” Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said. “Working with AEG on an iconic project like this vertiport at L.A. Live gives us the opportunity to continue building the infrastructure needed for Southern California to lead in the next era of all-electric flight.”
A Midnight air taxi will be on display at L.A. Live through Tuesday.
John Oliver took a close look at what he called a “less-covered story from this week” on Sunday’sLast Week Tonight: a reality show from U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy called The Great American Road Trip.
Duffy debuted a trailer for the show in May. At the time, a press release stated that the series “asks: Who are we? Following U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his family, this five-part journey encourages Americans to step away from their screens for a vital civic experience. From small towns to iconic landmarks, the series captures the unscripted moments and shared values that prove to love America, you have to see America. The series will be released for free on YouTube, allowing every American family to follow along.” The show was timed to debut during this year, the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“So the motto is to love America is to see America,” Duffy explains to President Donald Trump in the trailer. He continues in voice-over: “It’s more than a road trip. It’s a civic experience. It’s one of the most powerful ways to understand the vast, beautiful, complicated place we call home.” (Watch it below.)
Said Oliver of the trailer: “OK, lots not to like there — from the generic ‘hey ho’ folk rock to Trump giving insane grandma’s new boyfriend vibes to the very conspicuous close up of the Toyota logo to the seemingly AI-generated images of cars, which makes sense. No one’s ever thought to film a real car before.”
At the time the show was announced, Duffy’s wife, Fox News Channel host Rachel Campos Duffy, “even claimed it was a solution to what ails us as a nation,” Oliver said.
“I’m going to be really honest, we live in a Pornhub world,” Rachel said in a Fox News clip shown by Oliver. “This is really wholesome, good family stuff. This is what families need to do is just get together. That’s what our kids want from us.”
Replied Oliver: “Is it? Because I think what every kid really wants is for their mum not to say the word ‘Pornhub’ on national TV. Also, she clearly hasn’t spent a lot of time on that site, or she’d know, families getting together is very much its own category.”
However, the road-trip series drew controversy for a few reasons: the high cost of gas, the fact that Sean was out filming a reality series when he had an important government job to do, and who was paying for the show. Regarding the latter, Sean said that it wasn’t funded by taxpayer money; instead the series was funded through a nonprofit production company called Great American Road Trip Inc. However, that organization’s website lists 17 sponsors, many of which are companies that the Department of Transportation oversees and regulates.
“Yeah, that’s not great,” said Oliver. “The only worse answer to who pay for this than ‘the American taxpayer’ is ‘a bunch of companies I oversee and regulate.’ Actually, I suppose an even worse answer would be a bunch of companies I oversee and regulate, and also my close personal friend Jeffrey Epstein.”
The show was supposed to be released in June, but “all the scrutiny seemed to delay it,” Oliver noted, and all six episodes were “quietly dumped on YouTube” last week.
Oliver said that it’s no surprise that Sean, a former star of MTV’sThe Real World: Boston, wanted to return to reality TV. (He also met his wife on Road Rules: All Stars.) But Oliver pointed out some discrepancies in how Duffy recalled his time on those shows over the years. For example, in Road Trip, he visits the house that the Real World: Boston cast stayed in while filming and “tries to rewrite some history,” the Last Week Tonight host said.
During the segment, Sean reflects on the tension between him and housemate Kameelah Phillips, denying he called her a “bitch.” But Oliver showed a clip from The Real World in which Duffy says, “I walked up ahead of the group and I called her a bitch.”
“You did call her that,” Oliver said. “Call me CVS, Sean, because I will always bring the receipts.”
As for Sean’s claim that the show is “a nationwide storytelling movement that invites Americans to explore the open road, connect with their communities,” Oliver said, “That’s not really what it is at all, because it turns out it’s basically just an expensively produced test run of a Duffy family reality show with each episode featuring a bare minimum about travel or America, but a ton of manufactured reality TV drama around the Duffys doing stuff like planning a family party or over the course of several episodes watching their daughter decide which college she’ll attend.” As for that lattter point, Sean and Rachel are seen talking to their daughter about her desire to go to Harvard, which they evidently don’t support because they believe Harvard has “professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls like you and I think corrupt their minds,” Sean tells his daughter in the show while the two are chatting in their kitchen.
Replied Oliver: “What the fuck are you talking about? First, this was supposed to be a road trip. Why are we still in your kitchen? Second, is there anything less relatable than a family whose conflict is, how do I tell my daughter she can’t go to Harvard because we did too good a job raising her?”
He continued: “And finally, please don’t be worried that Harvard’s going to corrupt your daughter’s mind. Be worried that if she goes there, like every other Harvard grad, she’s never gonna shut the fuck up about it. One of this show’s writers went to Harvard and guess how I know that? Exactly. I don’t know where any of the others went.”
Oliver then said that it’s no surprise that “hardly anyone” seems to have watched the show, based on the number of viewers available on YouTube. It also received very little promotion.
“I don’t really give a shit if Sean Duffy and his wife want to become the next Duggars or Jon and Kate [Gosselin] or Alec and Hilaria Baldwin,” Oliver said, citing other families who’ve starred in reality TV shows. “What’s concerning is them doing it on the back of the Department of Transportation because it feels ethically dubious on so many levels, which may be why at this point everyone involved in The Great American Road Trip seems like they’d rather just sweep it under the rug.”
He continued: “[H]aving watched all three hours of this god-awful show, from gender reveals to the Duffys renewing their vows for no clear reason, it feels less like the country’s been taken on a road trip by Sean Duffy and a lot more like we’ve all been taken for a fucking ride.”
“I was very, very hurt and deeply disappointed in the lack of professionalism, the lack of compassion in slamming someone who’s lost two children, without even a modicum of consideration,” Vogel said during a recent interview with the Daily Mail regarding the CBS Mornings host and podcaster’s separate comments.
“No one reached out to me before,” she added. “It’s shameful. It’s unconscionable to me.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to CBS Mornings for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.
Panettiere, an actress known for her roles in Heroes, Nashville and the Scream franchise, died last Sunday at age 36. Following her death, Vogel spoke to NBC News on Tuesday, where she criticized her daughter’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson and felt her daughter “lost her way.”
“This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death and that was Brian Hickerson,” she said at the time. “I think Hayden was an amazingly talented person in so many departments and I think young people who grow up in the entertainment industry — it is a struggle and it’s a very challenging industry and it’s not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path.”
Vogel added, “I think Hayden sadly lost her way and I wish it were different. I wish she had stayed true to herself because she had many incredible attributes.”
The following day, during Wednesday’s CBS Mornings broadcast, King criticized Vogel for focusing too much on her daughter’s struggles amid her death. “You know, guys, you read this and all I can think is, ‘Thanks, mom, for nothing,’” the host said.
“It makes me so sad of the opportunity that you have after your daughter’s death that that’s what you choose to leave us with,” King added.
As for Kelly, the former Fox News reporter went on The Megyn Kelly Show and declared, “You failed at your job… You got an F as a parent,” referring to Vogel.
“You made a bunch of money off of your daughter,” Kelly added. “You probably have a super nice car and a big house. You failed. You raised someone to the age of majority who doesn’t feel safe, loved, or cherished. You’re a loser.”
Panettiere had been open about her estranged relationship with her mother, who also served as her manager when she was growing up in the industry. In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the actress detailed the pressure she felt from Vogel.
During an interview with THR in May, Panettiere also opened up about the challenges of delving into her childhood and relationship with her mom when writing This Is Me. “Having to touch on everything about my relationship with my mother, that was one of the harder things to talk about,” Panettiere said. “While writing it, I realized even more so how much of a toll it took on me.”
Page Six reported in May that Vogel had chosen the “no-contact route” with Panettiere after “20 years of trauma” and on the advice of professionals.
Her son and Panettiere’s younger brother also died in February 2023 at the age of 28.
Shelley Fabares, the wholesome daughter on The Donna Reed Show who went on to star opposite Elvis Presley in three movies and as Craig T. Nelson’s independent wife on Coach, has died. She was 82.
Fabares died Saturday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her family announced. Survivors include her husband, M*A*S*H actor Mike Farrell, whom she married in 1984.
“To her family and friends, Shelley was a source of love, strength, laughter and comfort,” they said in a statement. “She was a devoted wife, cherished stepmother, daughter, sister, niece, aunt, family member and loyal friend whose warmth, generosity, humor and grace made an enduring difference in the lives of everyone who knew her. She had a remarkable ability to make people feel welcomed, valued and cared for.”
On the original One Day at a Time, Fabares played against her prim, good-girl persona as Francine Webster, a nasty business rival of Bonnie Franklin‘s Ann Romano. (Her late aunt, Caesar’s Hour and The Band Wagon star Nannette Fabray, also appeared on the CBS sitcom, playing the mother of Franklin’s character.)
Fabares also portrayed the wife of doomed Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo (James Caan) on the landmark 1971 ABC telefilm Brian’s Song.
On The Donna Reed Show, which aired on ABC for eight seasons, from September 1958 through March 1966, Fabares played high schooler Mary Stone opposite Reed as her mom, homemaker Donna Stone; Carl Betz as her pediatrician dad, Dr. Alex Stone; and Paul Petersen as her younger brother, Jeff.
When Mary left for college at the start of the sixth season, the Stones adopted a daughter, Trisha (Patty Petersen, real-life sister of Paul).
Capitalizing on her national fame, Fabares — backed by Darlene Love and the Blossoms and Glen Campbell on guitar — recorded a version of “Johnny Angel,” which went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1962. She had debuted the song on a Donna Reed episode a couple months earlier.
“I literally cannot sing. So there’s a lot of overdubbing,” she admitted in a 1983 interview. “The girls in the back — ‘Could you sing a little louder please?’ It was unusual. But [The Donna Reed Show] was very successful at that time, so [the song] had a built-in audience.”
During “live” performances — in “the days when they would play the record and you would lip sync” — she recalled, “my worst experience was [when] I did a live local television show and, needless to say, the record stuck. I think I went into a coma.”
Fabares starred on the ABC comedy Coach for eight seasons while earning a pair of Emmy nominations for playing Christine Armstrong, a TV newscaster and the girlfriend and then wife of Nelson’s college football coach, Hayden Fox.
“Clearly, Christine is a very successful woman and firmly entrenched in her career and loves her work. And she loves this man,” she said. “It’s a difficult problem in life to find your balance. We’re all going through the same things. I have a wonderful relationship with my husband, but I’m still a career woman.”
In 2015, NBC developed a Coach revival in which Nelson’s character returns to coaching and Fabares’ character is killed off, but the reboot did not emerge beyond the pilot stage.
Michele Ann Marie Fabares was born in Santa Monica on Jan. 19, 1944. Her mother, Elsa, got her into modeling at age 3, and that led to TV appearances.
By the time she was 9, Frank Sinatra was singing “Young at Heart” to her on an NBC special. She also appeared on a 1955 NBC adaptation of Our Town that starred Sinatra, Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint and with Rock Hudson in Never Say Goodbye (1956).
In 1958, she was on the ABC series Annette, which starred lifelong friend Annette Funicello.
Fabares said Reed “was not given credit for being the head of her own series, the guiding force behind the series,” she said in 1994. “She produced the series, had an enormous part in writing it and also had four children at home. Having been there, I knew the amazing strength of that woman.”
During a 2011 reunion of the show’s surviving castmembers, Fabares remembered when she was feeling nervous about having to dance during a scene. Reed tried to calm her down. “Shelley, there are three things I can’t do: I can’t swim, I can’t dance, and I can’t act.” But she had to do all three for a film scene. “Oh yeah, that movie I was talking about was It’s a Wonderful Life.”
After several years as Mary Stone, Fabares concentrated on the big screen and appeared in the fun-in-the-sun movies Ride the Wild Surf (1964) with Fabian and Hold On! (1966) with Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits.
She then co-starred with Presley in Girl Happy (1965), Spinout (1966) — Betz played her dad in that one too — and Clambake (1967).
“The first day of shooting [Girl Happy], I’m on the set. Something was happening, and I didn’t know what it was,” she said. “And I looked over, and it was Elvis. He was walking in. He wasn’t doing anything. He was just walking in. The presence that this man had … you couldn’t talk. Nobody did anything. You just sort of stopped. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God. It’s Elvis Presley. I’m never going to be able to open my mouth around him.’ ”
In the late 1960s, during a time of protest and rebellion, her good-girl appeal fell out of sync with the cultural zeitgeist. It wasn’t until Brian’s Song that she regained her career momentum.
Buoyed by that role, Fabares rebounded to work on such popular series as The Brian Keith Show, The Practice with Danny Thomas and Highcliffe Manor. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, she starred on One Day at a Time, then showed a saucier dimension as the tart-tongued Eleanor Major on the syndicated soap opera spoof Forever Fernwood.
Fabares also had guest-starring roles on Mannix; Love, American Style; Daniel Boone; McCloud; Mork & Mindy; and Hello, Larry (as McLean Stevenson’s ex-wife).
She had a liver transplant in October 2000 after spending nearly two years on the waiting list to receive one.
In 1984, she married Farrell at Aunt Nanette’s Pacific Palisades home. The two had first met in 1970 when she was a guest star on Farrell’s series The Interns, but it was not until they reunited 12 years later during a CBS press tour that they started to date. (Earlier, Fabares had been married to record producer Lou Adler, while Farrell’s first wife was actress Judy Farrell, who played Nurse Abel on M*A*S*H.)
Farrell, known to be a serious human rights activist, said his wife made him a bit more light-hearted. “People talk about how much more fun I am,” he said in 1991. “Shelley has allowed people to understand I’m not this unapproachable doomsayer.”
Added Fabares: “Nothing in Mike’s life is casual. He’s very serious. Mike grounds me, and I think I pull him out sometimes. It’s a nice mix.”
Shelley Fabares and Mike Farrell.
Courtesy Fabares/Farrell family
Survivors also include her stepchildren, Erin and Michael.
