I've always had this enormous imagination," says Melissa Prophet, 29, whose resumé reads like imaginative fiction and whose voice was made for exclamation points. "Balls, brains, sense of humor--that's me, the whole package! So when I did Playboy, I didn't want to just take my clothes off. I wanted to have some fun!" Melissa's life and fun times began--where else?--in Southern California, where the five-year-old seen below celebrated her sister's first-Communion party by "rolling in the mud!" Her formative years formed her fantastically; she went on to win 14 beauty titles, from Miss Hollywood to Miss California World. On sheer beauty? "No way! I was a professional beauty queen--I knew what each one of those contest judges wanted to see, and I played to all their fantasies. Well, not really--but I could have."
Melissa had a bang-up time in Chuck Norris' action-packed Invasion U.S.A. (below). "Chuck's the sweetest guy, but he loved scaring me. I spent a lot of time yelling. He'd drive 80 miles an hour, hitting walls, banging other cars, and he'd look at me and his eyes would just dance. I had bruises everywhere after that!" Before her movie career took off, Melissa played Mr. Savalas' real-life gal Friday. "I'd sign Who Loves Ya, Baby? to a thousand pictures a week, and he'd say, 'This kid signs my name better than I do--I'm hiding my checkbook!' " At right, Melissa's tribute to Telly-vision. "Who loves ya, Telly? I do!"
next, as associate producer of The Cotton Club, Melissa raised "seed money" for producer Robert Evans ("a master salesman") and Francis Coppola ("a genius"), then sat back and watched the film's star, Richard Gere ("Aiee! He walks down the street and he's sexy; he can't help it"). She has a few production deals in the works now, but her enduring passion is "acting! I want to keep working as an actress!" Basinger, Streep and Goldberg should not be losing sleep, she says with a wall-to-wall smile. "These are three women in the industry who do not need to worry about the competition. Kim, you're too beautiful. MeryI, don't fret; I can't do accents. Whoopi, baby, relax. I just can't get my hair to stay that way!" All others, watch out. Melissa can make fantasies come true.
