Heather Deen Locklear (born September 25, 1961) is an American actress best known for her television roles as Sammy Jo Carrington on Dynasty, Officer Stacy Sheridan on T.J. Hooker, Amanda Woodward on Melrose Place, and Caitlin Moore on Spin City.
Locklear was born in Westwood, California, the daughter of Diane (née Tinsley), a production executive for Disney, and William Robert Locklear, an administrator at UCLA. She was raised in Thousand Oaks, California and graduated from Newbury Park High School. Locklear is the youngest of four children. Her surname, "Locklear", is Lumbee, a Native American tribe in North Carolina.
Locklear attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and pledged Chi Omega and Delta Delta Delta, but was never initiated into either sorority. While at UCLA, she began modeling and working in commercials for the school store. She made her earliest screen appearances in the early 1980s with small roles in episodes of CHiPs, 240-Robert, and Eight Is Enough, before beginning a long-term collaboration with Aaron Spelling. Spelling cast her in the role of Sammy Jo Dean during the second season of his TV series Dynasty, and the following year he cast her in the