Melinda Culea

Melinda Culea was born in Western Springs, Illinois, on May 5, 1955. She married her husband, television and film director Peter Markle, in 1996 and has been working lately as an artist and writer.

Melinda Culea moved to New York from her native Illinois in her early twenties to join a popular modeling agency and did her training there. After almost four years of learning her trade in modeling, she moved to California for better opportunities on television. She successfully found a few opportunities and appeared in several commercials including a popular Burger King campaign.

Her first break on television came in 1981 in the television movie ‘Dear Teacher’ where she played ‘Annie Cooper’. But unfortunately the movie didn’t see much success and later she appeared in several television shows including ‘The Rules of Marriage’ in 1982, ‘The Devlin Connection’ in 1982, and ‘Fantasy Island’ in 1983. In 1983, she landed her biggest work so far when she signed for the role of ‘Amy Amanda Allen’ in the American action-adventure television series ‘The A-Team’.

Melinda Culea was introduced in the show as a lead character who is much spirited and spunky, but as the show went on, she became less important and was mostly designated as a side-kick. She wanted to be shown as a strong female character on the show and became disappointed with the ‘new’ development of her character and tried to influence the scriptwriters to provide her character a bigger impact on the show. However, things went south for her very soon and she was dropped from the show in the subsequent season. She was eventually replaced by Marla Heasley.

She then appeared on television shows like ‘Glitter’ in 1984 and ‘Family Ties’ in 1986. Following these, Melinda took a sabbatical from her career and returned in 1988. Post her comeback, she did several important roles in shows like ‘Knots Landing’, ‘The Fisher King’, and ‘Civil Wars.’ In 1992, she appeared as ‘Soren’ in the popular American science fiction television series in the Star Trek franchise, ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, created by Gene Roddenberry. She mostly made guest appearances in the later part of the 1990s and her last work as an actress was in 2001.