Melinda Culea

Actress Melinda Culea is best known to legions of "A-Team" fans for her role as the plucky newspaper journalist Amy Amanda Allen, who hired the team to hunt for a missing fellow reporter who had disappeared in Mexico. The character tagged along with the more-macho-than-thou team for most of the first season and into the second one. But the actress was suddenly fired halfway through that second season for reportedly asking for more money and wanting her role beefed up as well, so that she could participate in the action with the boys--something many of the lead actors on the show and management did not care to do. After the "A-Team" scandal, she continued to work steadily, guest-starring on several shows such as the primetime soaps "Hotel,""Knots Landing," and "Beverly Hills, 90210," as well as other television programs. Aaron Spelling, for whom she would work frequently over the years, cast her as one of the leads in his 1984 program "Glitter," about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at an entertainment magazine. Unfortunately, the show was not a hit and it was canceled before the end of the first season. Her role on the 1995 Joey Lawrence sitcom "Brotherly Love" fared a bit better, lasting two seasons. She can also be seen in the John Candy/Richard Lewis comedy Western, "Wagons East!," which was comedian Candy's last film role. Culea married the film's director, Peter Markle, a year later and retired from acting in 2001.