British actor and model Annabel Schofield, best known for her role in Dallas and as the star of a memorable 1989 jeans advert, has died at the age of 62.
The British star died on 28 February from cancer, having first had surgery for the illness in 2023. She restarted chemotherapy in November 2025 after finding that it had spread to her brain.
Born in Llanelli, Wales, in 1963, Schofield was a notable face on London's fashion scene in the 1980s, where she appeared on the cover of major fashion magazines, including Vogue in Germany.
Tributes were led by Melissa Richardson, who at the time owned Take Two, the London agency that Schofield was signed to. Richardson remembered Schofield as a favourite of the fashion photographer David Bailey, who had appeared in "countless shoots" for Italian Vogue.
"She was the forerunner of Take Two – without her, we could never have made it as we did," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "We loved her because she was funny and real and beautiful and down to earth. She never changed from the sweet little 17-year-old Welsh girl I first met. She was directly loyal, caring, and above all, a raging beauty. She knew her craft. She was the best.”
The daughter of John D Schofield, a production executive who worked on films including Jerry Maguire and Romancing The Stone, Schofield grew up around film sets before pivoting to modelling, when she starred in campaigns for brands ranging from Versace and Yves Saint Laurent to Rimmel and Revlon.
One iconic campaign saw Schofield appear in a TV advert for Bugle Boy Jeans. In the advert, a man is shown standing alone in a desert, until a black Ferrari pulls up beside him. The window is rolled down, revealing Schofield, who asks: "Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you’re wearing?" before driving away.
At the height of her modelling career, Schofield relocated to Los Angeles, where she landed a role in the low-budget film Bloodtide in 1982 before being cast in the long-running American sitcom Dallas.
The soap, which centres on a Texas oil family, was then in its 11th season. Schofield played Laurel Ellis, a friend of Clayton Farlow (Howard Keel) who is blackmailed by series lead JR Ewing (Hagman) into having sex with him to protect her friend.
Schofield appeared on the show for 11 episodes, and in a 2012 interview said that Keel had been one of her favourite actors to work with.
Other roles followed, including a performance in 1990 sci-fi thriller Solar Crisis opposite the late Charlton Heston, who Schofield said in the same interview was "definitely not" one of her favourite actors to work with. She also performed in Dragonard and Eye of the Widow.
Later in her career, Schofield followed in her father's footsteps and moved behind the camera, founding her production company Bella Bene Productions in Burbank, California in 2010.
After starting a blog called The Cherry Alignment about the culture and style of the 1980s, Schofield released a semi-autobiographical novel of the same name in 2013.
Schofield posted about her cancer diagnosis on Instagram frequently, and after restarting chemotherapy in November, she underwent surgery again in January. Having had to stop work due to her illness, she asked for support on a GoFundMe page, which amassed nearly $35,000 (£26,100) in donations.
"I’m very wobbly and now waiting to find out if I need more chemo or radiation. I swear it never seems to end," she wrote.
The actor is survived by her mother.
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