Like many, many people before her, Melody Anderson, the blonde police detective in "Manimal", had to leave home to be discovered.
       A native of Edmunton, Alberta, Canada, Melody found the going rough in her own country when she tried for a job as a television news correspondent — so she took off for Australia.
       Acting on a whim, and a large dose of woman's intuition, Melody landed a job as a travel writer for a Sydney newspaper and then became one of Australia's first female network radio correspondents.
       She became a national star "down under" and was the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles about the "new women" in the broadcast media.
       Hush with her Australian success Melody decided to try her luck in Hollywood and shortly after landing she became one of tinsel town's hottest models and busiest actresses. She was in the memorable "Zephyr" ad that reprised Farrah Fawcett's role as the "cougar" girl. She also starred as Dale Arden in the motion picture "Flash Gordon".
       Her love of acting began as a youngster in Edmunton where she recalls rounding up kids in the neighbourhood to perform skits in front of an audience.
       This fascination with acting and performing only took a momentary back seat to her other love — journalism. Throughout high school and college she split her spare time between modelling, to help make ends meet, and working as a journalist, for the experience.
       While attending Carleton University in Ottawa she was a free- lance radio reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and a TV correspondent for CTV covering the Canadian Parliament. Unfortunately, she was unable to land a full-time job as a reporter at the conclusion of her four years of college. That's when she took off for Sydney.
       Back in Hollywood, Melody spent 1977-79 working on various TV projects with the help of her mentor, casting executive Joyce Selznick. Among the programmes she starred in were "Welcome BackKotter", "Logan's Run ", the ABC Special Presentation "Elvis", "Battlestar Galactica" and "B.J. and The Bear".
       In l979, DinoDe Laurentis decided that Melody was the perfect actress for the role of Dale Arden in "Flash Gordon".
       One day after she agreed to the part, Melody was on her way to Europe where she spent four months in front of the cameras working on the film. Melody describes the experience as "The greatest education imaginable for learning what goes into making a motion picture'.
       Along with "Flash Gordon " Melody also starred in two other theatrical features, "Elvis, The Movie" and "Dead and Buried".
       On television she has appeared in "Battlestar Galactica", "Pleasure Cove", "Dallas", "T.J. Hooker", "Archie's Place" and for Glen Larson and 20th Century-Fox, was a guest star in "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors.
       Between completing the pilot and the start of production Melody starred with Ed Marino in Moonlight Productions' "Lady In Blue", an NBC movie for television, the true story of a policewoman who lost her job after posing for a Playboy layout.
       In the free time that Melody does have she is an amateur photographer and loves to go antiquing. She is single and lives in Los Angeles where she studies Musicology and singing.