US:As several courtroom spectators looked on and wept, jurors in the Phil Spector murder trial on Thursday watched images of the late Lana Clarkson playing a talking Barbie doll, a groupie and a nun on a videotape the 40-year-old actor made months before her death to promote her show business career.
Clarkson's longtime agent, Nick Terzian, testified that the actor's career remained vital and her hopes unimpaired as she worked to come back from an accident that had sidelined her for nine months.
Clarkson was "a consistent money-maker," Terzian testified. "She had a good career with us. Many people in the city make a lot of money working as an actor who don't get mobbed by paparazzi."
The images and testimony contrasted sharply with the despondent woman with a failing career the defence has tried to portray over the four-month trial.Prosecutors sought to rebut the defence theory that she shot herself on February 3rd, 2003, after meeting Spector at the House of Blues. Spector, the 67-year-old producer of hit records, is charged with second-degree murder.
Terzian said that three days before she died, he told Clarkson that she had been picked for two modelling jobs, leaving her "ecstatic" about her career and her life. Terzian testified that Clarkson had a solid career, was established in the Hollywood job market and loved acting. She was a seasoned professional who had experienced ups and downs but had stuck with it, he said.
Asked by prosecutor Alan Jackson to respond to defence suggestions that at age of 40, Clarkson was over the hill, Terzian testified: "That's completely false. A 40-year-old actress will compete against 40-year-old actresses. She's not going to compete against a 20-something actress."
In the video she made to promote herself, Clarkson played a talking Barbie doll, a rock music groupie, a Little Richard impersonator, a Las Vegas showgirl, a nun and a lonely woman on a succession of bad dates. The video, " Lana Unleashed", was made about 15 months before she died. As it was shown, several spectators wept at the larger-than-life images of the late actor.