Delta Style
by Delta Burke (with Alexis Lipsitz)
St. Martin's Press, US $24.95 Hardcover


Cost/page:

11.1 cents.

In a word:

Inspired.

Big break:

Miss Florida, 1974; first starring role in 1985 HBO series First and Ten.

Overcoming adversity:

• While co-starring in the hit show Designing Women, a network ultimatum regarding her weight becomes tabloid fodder; she later suffers panic attacks and is hospitalized with nervous exhaustion.
• In 1995 she launches a full-figured apparel company, The Delta Burke Collection, for "real sizes" 14-26.

Tainted love (bad marriages, etc.):

• Molested by a "neighbor's brother" at the age of 16.
• Is currently married to Gerald "Major Dad" McRaney.
• Of her early years in Hollywood: "I could easily have been taken advantages of because I was always reacting to people's expectations of me."

Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll (incidents pertaining to):

• Pops weight-loss pills and went on starvation diets starting at age 17. Once during this period, passes out and falls down a staircase.
• Tabloid headlines: "Delta Battled Mental Illness and Won"; "Star Was a Bedridden, Pill-popping Blob."

Divine inspiration:

"If you're all sizzle and no steak you end up a pretty hollow vessel that always tries, but never seems able, to fill up from the outside in."

Oddities:

• Named for the family cat.
• First gig is portraying Tinker Bell for Tupperware conventioneers.
• Among her various beauty queen titles are Miss VFW Post 8207, Miss Optimist, and Miss Flame (representing a Florida fire department). Loves the attention so much she occasionally sleeps wearing crown.
• Refutes one tabloid's claim that she devoured entire boxes of candy and "chased people around the set [of Designing Women] to get at their food."
• Her clothing company receives input from 2,000 full-figured women who volunteer as members of the Delta Burke Design Advisory Council.

Cameo appearances (by other famous persons):

• Elizabeth Taylor writes a letter of encouragement to Burke during the height of Burke's tabloid tribulations.

Manifesto for living/advice to fans:

"[The women of America]... don't have to be a certain size to be feminine or pretty."

Intro | Suzanne Somers | Peter Fonda | Delta Burke
Christopher Reeve | Walter Koenig | Marilyn Manson