| Antoinette Bower | |
| Birth Place: | Baden-Baden, Republic of Baden, Germany |
| Years Active: | 1954–1992 |
| Spouse: | James Francis Gill |
Antoinette Bower (born 1932)[1] is a British-American retired film, television and stage actress, whose career lasted nearly four decades.
Bower was born in Baden-Baden to a German mother and an English father. She lived in England, Vienna and Monte Carlo and was educated in England. She moved to Canada in 1953.[2]
Bower worked as a disc jockey at a radio station in Owen Sound, Ontario. She moved to Toronto to pursue acting, appearing in stage productions at the newly opened Crest Theatre, the first in that city to consistently mount Canadian productions rather than touring productions from the US or Britain.[3]
Bower started her television career in Canada in 1958, appearing in the CBC Television made-for-TV movie The Telltale Heart, and in an episode of The Unforeseen. She had a recurring role in Hudson's Bay (1959), and appeared in episodes of Heritage in 1960. That same year, she wrote, produced and narrated an hour-long profile of actor Barry Morse and his family for CBC Radio.[4]
While visiting friends in Los Angeles, Bower landed her first role on an American series, appearing in the January 1961 episode "Night Cry", of the series Hong Kong. She continued with steady work on American television, amassing appearances on such programs as Ben Casey, The Fugitive, Combat!, Twelve O'Clock High, The Invaders, Mannix, Mission: Impossible (in 4 episodes), Perry Mason, The Big Valley, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kojak, Star Trek, Hogan's Heroes (in 3 different roles), Cannon, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, The Twilight Zone and Murder, She Wrote. She appeared in the miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).
In the 1970s and 1980s she appeared in the movies A Death of Innocence (1971); Die Sister, Die! (1972, released in 1978); Prom Night (1980); The Cowboy and the Ballerina (1984); The Evil That Men Do (1984) and Club Paradise (1986).
In 1979, Bower co-starred in four episodes of Mutual Radio Theater.[5]
Bower completed her nearly 40-year acting career where she first started, returning to Canada to join the main cast for the first three seasons (1990–1993) of the series Neon Rider, this time on the CTV Television Network.[6] [7]
Reserved when discussing her private life in the press, Bower did state, in a 1968 interview with the Canadian magazine Weekend, that she was married to Texas-born artist James Francis Gill,[8] whom she met when he moved to Los Angeles in 1962.[9]