 Fame & Fortune: Peggy 'Mod Squad' Lipton
Lifetime of wealth didn't dislodge her values
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Back in the 1960s, when hair was long, love was free and anyone over 30 was considered suspect, Peggy Lipton was the epitome of flower girl cool.
As Julie Barnes on TV's "The Mod Squad"
("one white, one black, one blonde"), the New-York-teen-model-turned-actress
captivated couch hippies across the fast-changing nation with her
long blond hair, mini dresses and sloe-eyed, seductive smile. Together
with fellow delinquents-turned-hip-cops Pete (played by Michael
Cole) and Linc (Clarence Williams III), and Julie fought crime and
The Man from 1968 to 1973. Her first-season kiss with Linc was a
groundbreaking TV moment that helped give producer Aaron Spelling
his first hit series.
Behind the scenes, Lipton was anything but cool. The well-born daughter of a New York lawyer, she suffered from a stutter that, combined with other teenage insecurities, prompted her to pursue adventurous romances with equally mercurial men, including Paul McCartney, Sammy Davis Jr. and Keith Moon.
But, it was her marriage at 26 to music maestro Quincy
Jones that afforded Lipton the home and family she longed for. She
dropped out of show business to raise their two daughters, fashion
stylist Kidada Jones and actress Rashida Jones, perfectly happy
to relinquish the spotlight to her husband and pursue her own spiritual
journey.
When the couple divorced amicably in 1990, Lipton returned to the small screen in David Lynch's "Twin Peaks." Numerous film and TV roles followed.
Bankrate caught up with Lipton upon the publication
of her autobiography, "Breathing Out," to get her take
on the creation of a "Mod" icon.
Bankrate: You grew up
in a financially privileged family on Long Island, N.Y. What did
your father do, and how did it shape your money values?
Peggy Lipton: My father
was a lawyer and he partnered in a firm in New York City while we
lived on Long Island. We were definitely well-off and didn't want
for anything, but my parents never spoiled us the way I saw so many
of the kids in my neighborhood grow up. There was tremendous wealth,
but just four blocks from my house and across the train tracks was
a very poor community where black and Italian families lived. We
all went to school together. I was never isolated from that and
didn't want to be. It helped shape who I was. So values were built
in to my growing up by watching my parents never flaunt what they
had and me never really fitting in with all the rich girls I knew.
I couldn't spend like them and knew and understood there was more
to life waiting for me.
Bankrate: You established your own career in your mid-teens with the Ford Modeling Agency just as the '60s were getting underway. What were the best and worst aspects of that experience?
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