Icons come and icons go, but few of them linger as long as L.A. glam-oddity Angelyne.
A Southern California staple during most of the ’80s, the buxom, buffonted blonde starlet stared down at Los Angelenos from massive billboards and turned heads on the street with her hot pink wheels, leaving everyone to wonder who the hell she really was. Unlike the modern TMI influencers she’s, well, influenced, Angelyne was rigidly secretive and socially elusive, a unicorn by way of camp filmmaker Russ Meyers. Everyone knew about her, but nobody seemed to actually to know her. Hell, we still don’t know much about her!
“That, I found so fascinating,” agreed Shameless alum Emmy Rossum during our recent chat. Legitimately unrecognizable as the pop-culture creation at the center of Peacock‘s terrifically engaging mini-series, Rossum found her role as the bombshell just as intriguing. “How can you be so famous and yet so unknown?”
Isabella Vosmikova/Peacock
Telling what amounts to an origin story, the five-part bio-drama tracks her rise from nobody to recognizable B-movie actress/singer/self-promoter/brand, all built on what Rossum calls a “fantastical, kaleidoscopic narrative” that isn’t always reliable. Still, it’s a colorful, crazy ride. Rossum is a revelation as this devilishly smart yet deeply damaged fame-seeker who was as adept at using ill-intentioned men as stepping stones as she was wandering Hollywood in her platform heels.
So, is she sympathetic? Or sociopathic? Like the woman herself, Angelyne never really says, but in Rossum’s hands, she’s definitely someone you want to know either way.
Angelyne, Limited Series Premiere, May 19, Peacock