Rebecca Schaeffer (November 6, 1967 – July 18, 1989) was an American actress and model. During the 1980s, she emerged as one of Hollywood’s most promising young stars, radiating a sweet “girl-next-door” charm before her life was tragically cut short. Known for her signature curly hair, bright brown eyes, and expressive dimples, she successfully transitioned from a teenage commercial model into a beloved television actress.
At age 16, Schaeffer moved from Portland, Oregon to New York City to pursue modeling full-time. Standing at 5'7", she struggled to secure high-fashion runway jobs but found steady work in catalog printing and commercials. She earned her first significant acting break in late 1984, playing Annie Barnes on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live for a six-month stint.
Her definitive rise to fame arrived in 1986 when she was cast as Patricia “Patti” Russell in the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam. Starring alongside Pam Dawber, Schaeffer became a recognizable household name and graced the cover of Seventeen magazine. After the cancellation of My Sister Sam in 1988, she pursued mature film roles, appearing in the 1989 black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. By mid-1989, she was actively preparing to audition for the role of Mary Corleone (Al Pacino’s daughter) in Francis Ford Coppola’s high-profile film, The Godfather Part III.
As her celebrity status grew, an obsessed 19-year-old fan from Arizona, Robert John Bardo, began stalking her for over three years. He wrote fan mail, made multiple attempts to breach security on her filming sets, and eventually became enraged after seeing her in an adult love scene in Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. In May 1989, Bardo paid a private detective agency $250 to obtain Schaeffer’s unlisted home address directly from California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records, a practice that was entirely legal at the time. On July 18, 1989, Bardo confronted the 21-year-old actress at her West Hollywood apartment doorway and shot her point-blank in the chest. She died shortly after at the hospital.
Schaeffer’s death sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry and fundamentally changed privacy laws in the United States. Prompted by the tragedy and heavy lobbying from her co-star Pam Dawber, California passed the nation’s very first anti-stalking legislation in 1990, setting a precedent for the remaining 49 states. The loophole that allowed the public to buy personal address information from state databases was permanently closed when the U.S. Congress passed the Drivers Privacy Protection Act in 1994, safeguarding the private details of citizens and public figures alike.
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