She made her name playing Pamela Barnes Ewing in Dallas, wife of oil tycoon Bobby (who producers famously brought back to life after he ‘died’ in a hit-and-run, putting the whole of series 10 down to Pamela’s ‘nightmare’). After leaving Dallas in 1987, Victoria went on to become a bestselling author, honing her beauty, health and fitness expertise in three books: The Body Principal (1983), The Beauty Principal (1984) and The Diet Principal (1987). In the 2000s, she wrote a fourth book, Living Principal (2001).
Today, Pamela focuses on rescuing and rehabilitating animals on her farm outside LA.
So how does she stay fit and healthy? The key to staying youthful is, she says, moderation. ‘I don’t believe the word diet is what you don’t eat,’ she told HuffPost. ‘To me, the word diet is what you do eat. I don’t want to spend a lifetime in a negative dance with food, nor feeling deprived of the joy of food.
‘The way that I created my diet, which is the way I eat, the way I cook and the way I order when I’m eating out, is that moderation, as in almost everything, is the key. I do believe in eating organically, and I don’t believe in eating processed foods.’
Charley Gallay
And she has one indulgence: ‘I do believe in eating dark chocolate and I’m happy to say I do so every day of my life. On my death bed, I don’t want to say, “I wish I’d had the chocolate.”’
The science suggests she’s on to something. According to British Heart Foundation senior dietitian Dell Stanford: ‘Dark chocolate has a higher cocoa solid content than milk or white – and cocoa solids are a good source of flavanols, a type of chemical that naturally occurs in plants. Flavanols give dark chocolate its slightly bitter taste and its potential health benefits, such a helping to lower blood pressure and making blood vessels more flexible.’