TV Zone #38 - Barbara Bain Article

Alone in an alien environment...

��Barbara Bain is well-known to fans of
Fantasy television for her starring roles in
Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999;
two series in which she played opposite
husband Martin Landau. Earlier this year
TV Zone caught up with her in Holly-
wood.

��Barbara began her career as a
model, in a move she describes
as "Plain luck. Somebody saw
me, took me by the hand to an
agency, and they thought I could be a
model. It wasn't a career I sought, but I
started working and even then it was an
incredible amount of money for just
standing there."
��The progression into acting came as the
result of a similar incidence of seren-
dipity. "I started dancing, and that was the
first thing I ever did as a performer and I
adored it. A friend of mine invited me to
an acting clase, but I didn't think it was my
kind of thing. I went in there and wasn't
very good at it immediately, but I liked the
fact that it wasn't easy; there's something
in me that's quite perverse in that manner.
I was good at school, I could do every-
thing easily and this was kind of
ephemeral. I stayed at that class and

Opposite page: The husband and wife
team, Barbara Bain and Martin Landau

worked and worked and didn't audition
for over a year, and when I did I got my
first job and never stopped working."

Mission: Impossible

��So how did Barbara come to play Cin-
namon Carter in the spy series Mission:
Impossible? "I knew writer Bruce Geller
through one of the workshops that I took

part in, and he was developing the project
and actually wrote the part of Rollin Hand
for Martin out of watching him in class.
Martin could do sleight of hand tricks and
as a tribute to him as an actor Bruce made
him a man of a thousand faces.
��"Bruce later told me he wrote me as Cin-
namon Carter but didn't realize it. When
they came to cast it, they saw a lot of
people in town, but Bruce kept having me

Caring for Koenig in Space: 1999
Dr. Russell tends to Commander Koenig