Texas Twister

Joan Severance, Wiseguy's bad girl, segues to big-screen stardom

Her eyes mesmerize you, even before you notice the classic love-goddess figure. They're penetrating, startlingly bright eyes, as distinctive in their way as Jack Nicholson's killer grin. Small wonder that Texas-born beauty Joan Severance first captivated audiences as the sexy, wicked, incestuous Susan Profit in the CBS-TV series sleeper Wiseguy. She moved on to major roles in two 1989 box-office hits: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, being baaad again with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, then No Holds Barred, as the main squeeze of wrestling star Hulk Hogan. In typical no-nonsense style, Joan sums up this exclusive Playboy pictorial, shot by Photographer Mark Abrahams: "I met Mark and took my clothes off." Later, she swathed herself "in some black stuff" for the portrait opposite.

Joan began modeling at 15 to earn money for college. "I got accepted at Texas A&M and had this crazy ambition to be a veterinarian in Africa and breed miniaturized wild animals that people would keep for pets." Short of tuition money, she entered a Miss Houston beauty contest at 18, didn't win but wound up in Paris, where her Photogenic genes were a wow. "Those incredible steel-blue eyes ... all the designers loved her," recalls George Newell, a longtime friend and himself a former model who did Joan's make-up for this pictorial. "But she wasn't the all-American girl, never could be. She's too exotic. In New York, I used to drag her along to acting auditions. They'd put her in front of a camera and just melt. But Joan wasn't yet ready." It took years of heady success and marriage to—and divorce from—a French male model before Severance opted to broaden her horizons in Hollywood. Meanwhile, she had graduated from haute couture to haute cuisine. After a course with the master chef at Le Moulin de Mougins in the south of France, she and her then-husband ran what Joan calls "a little nouvelle Mexican restaurant in the Catskills. He was the maître d', being very charming out front. I was the cook—chopping, sweating, getting screamed at and shoveling out a hundred and sixty meals a night. That was the end of me in the restaurant business." The marriage ended, too, but amicably. Now 31 and seriously focused on her acting career, Joan preserves a healthy sense of humor about life off screen and on. "Susan Profitt in Wiseguy was my first real part, and it was great. She was a little psychotic, obsessive ... all that good stuff." Severance giggles while savoring a rich dessert at L.A.'s fashionable Le Dôme restaurant. She doesn't have to watch her weight. But you can, in the picture below, or, opposite, "just clowning ... acting like a bird."

Speaking of pictures, Joan wanted to re-create the mood of old-time movie Photos. She sets the tone wearing GI-style dog tags. "They were a gift. And I wear them now and then, in case I get lost." No little girl lost is she, and Severance particularly likes the reflective poolside portrait done at a mansion in L.A.'s Hancock Park. "It was a beautiful sort of Italian villa. This has a Renaissance look and seems very private to me. Here, I felt I was caught doing something that I didn't want anyone to see." If she had her way, Joan would live in Italy between movie roles and maybe, someday, "operate a little country inn somewhere." But not in France. "I can't live in France. The French are too rude. My last boyfriend was French, and he ruined it for me." Eat your heart out, unlucky Pierre.

Grueling heat during three days of Photo sessions made everyone giddy, Joan recalls. "It was so hot, we were all nude by the time we finished. I'm laughing because the Photographer had his pants off, and it struck me funny the way he kept covering himself. I was just mocking his embarrassment." Photographer Abrahams responds with the naked truth about his subject: "She's a real free spirit ... soft, sensuous, pretty headstrong and the best girl I've ever shot without a doubt." Joan sees her true self in the attitude expressed below. "It's very direct. Here I am—it's me." The former Houston teenager who wanted to be a veterinarian finally gets her wish in the upcoming action comedy Bird on a Wire. Joan plays a vet vying with Goldie Hawn for the affections of Mel Gibson. "Mel gets shot in the butt and comes to me." Doc Severance pulling buckshot out of those buns should be memorable.

Radical feminists who denigrate nudity and parrot equality slogans annoy Joan. "I don't see anything wrong with a male or female body's being naked, and this business of being equal is ... well, there's no such thing. Women have the advantage. You can knock guys over just by walking into a room." When she's not knocking guys over, Joan's favorite pastimes are target practice and playing the saxophone, a gift from her French boyfriend. "I play it every day. I love slow jazz, blues ... and if my neighbors complain, I shove some socks into the sax." Joan feels she has some distance to go to get that Italian villa. "Of course, if acting doesn't work out, I can always fall back on my sewing talent." Joan's a canny seamstress who whips up such dreamy evening gowns that people ask her for the names of her designers. Somehow, we doubt she'll be pressed to take up needle and thread for a living any time soon.

Produced by George Newell Inc., L.A.