Victoria Tennant

Victoria Tennant is a British actress born on 30 September 1950 in London, England. Her father, Cecil Gordon Tennant, was a producer and talent agent for MCA whose family came from a junior branch of minor Yorkshire gentry based at Kilnsey. Her mother, Irina Baronova, was a Russian prima ballerina from Saint Petersburg who performed with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Tennant's maternal grandfather, Mikhail Baronov, held a senior rank in the Imperial Russian Navy, and his wife, Lydia Vishniakova, was a general's daughter. Tennant has a sister named Irina and a brother named Robert, both of whom sustained serious injuries in a 1967 car crash that killed their father. The actor Laurence Olivier served as her godfather.

Following her mother's path, Tennant trained in ballet, attending the Elmhurst Ballet School before spending two years at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Her early screen work included roles in British and European productions such as The Ragman's Daughter in 1972 and Inseminoid in 1981, after which she relocated to the United States. She subsequently appeared in Strangers Kiss in 1983 and All of Me in 1984 alongside Steve Martin, and The Holcroft Covenant in 1985. That same year she had already gained significant television recognition by starring as Pamela Tudsbury, the on-screen love interest of Robert Mitchum's character, in the ABC miniseries The Winds of War in 1983, a performance that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film. She returned to the role in the sequel miniseries War and Remembrance in 1988.

In 1987, Tennant appeared in both the neo-noir crime thriller Best Seller and the psychological drama Flowers in the Attic, taking the leading role in the latter. She followed those credits with an appearance in the dystopian drama The Handmaid's Tale in 1990 and a lead role in the horror film Whispers the same year. In 1991, she starred opposite Steve Martin in the romantic comedy L.A. Story. That same year, Tennant made her Broadway debut in Getting Married. In subsequent years she appeared in smaller-scale films and guest roles on television series including Diagnosis: Murder, JAG, Scrubs, and Monk. She wrote the screenplay for the 1996 romantic comedy Edie & Pen.

In 2014, Tennant published a memoir about her mother titled Irina Baronova and The Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo through the University of Chicago Press. The book was presented at the Bel Air Country Club in Los Angeles.

Tennant's first marriage was to nightclub owner Peppo Vanini, proprietor of the Xenon nightclub; they wed in 1969 and divorced in 1976. She was in a relationship with Matthew Chapman from 1978 to 1982. She married Steve Martin in 1986, and the couple divorced in 1994. Since 1996, Tennant has been married to Kirk Justin Stambler.