Misspent Youth: Randi Brooks

Looking back at the pop culture mainstays of this Gen-Xer's gloriously misspent youth.

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A note on the series and this site: This might be the final post in the "Misspent Youth" series - at least here. Maybe it'll eventually move with me. Oh, right, I buried the lede: I've moved, and would love for you to come visit me at my new site, The Starfire Lounge! Moving forward, this site will likely cease to be updated, but will remain around for posterity and your continued reading pleasure. I have a few more things to post here over the coming days or weeks as a sort of "everything must go" send-off to the old girl. I also plan to write a final farewell post to my main online home for the last five years. Stay tuned and, as always, thanks for reading.

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It's no surprise that the talented but now mostly forgotten Randi Brooks would make an appearance in the Misspent Youth series. She may not be a household name, but her resume is packed with 1980s touchstones, making her face instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up watching television and film during that decade. In fact, all of her thirty-seven credits on IMDb are from the 1980s. She was in films and TV movies like The Man With Two Brains, The Cartier Affair, Hamburger: The Motion Picture, and with another statuesque beauty, Mary Woronov, in TerrorVision.

She guested on too many TV series to mention, including Magnum P. I., Murder She Wrote, Designing Women, Knight Rider, Simon & Simon, and The Dukes of Hazzard. She even starred in the short-lived series The Last Precinct as sexy Office Mel Brubaker and the even-shorter-lived Wizards and Warriors, as evil witch babe Bethel. She was seemingly everywhere in the 1980s! And we were grateful for her omnipresence.

Her face was instantly recognizable for other, more aesthetic reasons as well. A long, angular shape, with cheekbones you could cut glass on, lips set seductively in a permanent pout, and deep-set, glacial-blue eyes combine to make Brooks an unforgettable presence onscreen. Then there's also the matter of her statuesque, model's body. Clocking in at just under six feet tall, Brooks cut a stunning figure anytime she graced the screen.

Thanks largely to her topless appearance in Steve Martin's The Man with Two Brains, Brooks made a lasting impression on many Gen Xers' misspent youths. The scene in question is most definitely NSFW, so for your job security I'll link to it instead of embedding.

She was also a funny and underrated character actor. She was a skilled performer who knew how to get a laugh and wasn't afraid to play off her looks to do so. She's from an old school of performance where an exaggerated accent, an arched eyebrow, or a comically sexy pose can yield genuine laughs from an audience. If you needed a sexy blonde with a flare for comedy, she was your woman. She could also turn in effective dramatic performances, like in the gritty 1988 neo-noir Cop, where she plays a washed up actress who's turned to selling drugs and prostitution just to get by.

Books's IMDb page says she's been semi-retired from acting for what seems like thirty years now, based on her credits. She's raised three children and works as a real estate agent in Seattle. She's probably been quite successful in her second career. If she fixed that smoldering gaze in your direction, there's little doubt she could convince you to purchase some property you definitely couldn't afford.

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