Sharon Gless: Beating Alcoholism & Finding Calm

BEING ON TV CAN BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH –

Jan. 25, 2022 – From her apartment on Fisher Island, off the coast of Miami, Sharon Gless is happily recounting tales of Cagney & Lacey – the hit Eighties cop show which used to attract 30 million viewers a week, and paved the way for so many female police series which followed.

Writer Lynda La Plante, creator of Prime Suspect, approached Gless at an event long after Cagney & Lacey ended, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress recalls, smiling behind her fashionable black-rimmed specs, her white-blonde hair swept back to reveal a seemingly flawless complexion.

“Lynda and I had lunch one day in Los Angeles and she told me that she wrote Prime Suspect as a homage to Cagney & Lacey. When Helen Mirren won her first Emmy [in 1996], the first people she thanked on camera were Cagney & Lacey.” I was in a New York theatre once and heard Helen was in the theatre and I waited in the lobby for her,” she continues, warming to the theme. “When I went over to introduce myself, she kneeled down on the floor, raising her arms like worshipping, and I said, ‘Helen! Please stop! Thank you!’ And she said, ‘If it wasn’t for you, my show wouldn’t exist’.”