BIOGRAPHY

When I first constructed this fan site, I didn’t have much information for Paula Sheppard’s biography. It seemed that people knew very little about this talented actress. However, I was fortunate to come into contact with someone who knew Paula during the 1980s. This kind individual was able to fill in some of the gaps for us. I’m extremely grateful to this person. Combined with Alfred Sole’s Alice, Sweet Alice DVD commentary, this new information has given me the opportunity to piece together a small biography.

Paula was described to me as an extremely nice girl, who was actually from suburban New Jersey, not New York. (I originally thought she was from New York) It appears that she was 19 years old during the filming of the 1976 murder-mystery Alice, Sweet Alice. Based on the DVD commentary, we are informed that Sole discovered Paula and that she was a dancer. Although the location was described as a college in the commentary, my source recalls that Paula was actually in high school when she was cast in Alice, Sweet Alice. Apparently the film’s director saw her in a class at her dancing school, and kept "staring and staring" at her.

In 1981 Paula began working on Slava Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky. It was released the following year and became a cult classic. Paula went on to do a low budget, medieval musical fantasy called Tam Lin. (This is not the 1972 Roddy McDowell version) Tam Lin was shot on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Filming on this project began in the autumn of 1981 and was completed in 1982. Tam Lin was never released commercially, so it is not available to the public. This is what my source had to say in regards to the film and Paula’s acting career:

"Paula did not have a speaking role, she played a lady-in-waiting to a princess who has to rescue a knight from a sorceress' spell. Paula had a difficult time with her career after that, as she found it impossible to get other movie roles. She auditioned a number of times for the producers and director of the movie The Clan of the Cave Bear which starred Daryl Hannah, but in the end she did not get the role. I believe around that time she decided to abandon her acting career. Paula and her boyfriend moved to Seattle, Washington in the late 1980s and got married there."

I am happy to report that on October 5, 2001 Paula's older sister, Laura, posted to our very own message board! She informs us that Paula is very much alive and "nurturing a career of a different kind, raising a beautiful, brilliant, lovely daughter." She also dispels a rumor about Paula which appeared in a Spring 2000 magazine interview with the director of "Liquid Sky."

It is also worth noting that both my source and Alfred Sole haven’t had contact with Paula for many years. Sole last contacted Paula in the early 1980s to congratulate her on her performance in Liquid Sky. He is surprised that she hasn’t had a film career.