mo_rizwan
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I was star of Michael Jackson's £700m Thriller video... and got paid £600
Exclusive: 25 years on for best-selling album ever
By Deborah Sherwood And Annette Witheridge 03/02/2008
Thriller was the video that changed pop music forever... and turned Michael Jackson into the biggest star in the world.
Made by a top Hollywood director and lasting 14 minutes, it was the most expensive pop promo of its era with a then unprecedented budget of £400,000.
It helped Jackson's Thriller album to become the biggest seller of all time with profits of £700million.
Now, as a 25th anniversary edition of Thriller is released this week, featuring remixes by stars such as Kanye West, we can reveal how the unknown actress chosen to star alongside Jackson was paid just £600.
Ola Ray was a 22-year-old glamour model trying to break into acting in 1982 when she beat hundreds of other hopefuls to the part of Jackson's girlfriend in the mini-horror movie.
The former Playboy centrefold was a huge fan of the singer and says she was always confident of landing the role. "The minute I walked into the audition I knew it was mine," she says. "I read a few lines, danced to some music and the rest is history."
Ola still had to wait two weeks until she got the good news. But she'll never forget her first meeting with Jackson.
"I was getting changed, so I was crouched down half-naked on the dressing room floor and he came in and giggled," she recalls.
"I was used to taking my clothes off in front of strangers.
Michael seemed very relaxed about it." Ola, 47 and a full-time mum living in California, knew Thriller was going to be no ordinary video. "It helped that I was crazy about Michael and he seemed taken by the fact I was a Playboy model," she says.
Ola and Michael became good friends during the two-week shoot. She says she loved to flirt with the star, who was then dating actress Brooke Shields. "I teased him, saying I wanted to be his girl," she says.
"After we shared a limo, I sprayed my perfume around so he'd remember me. He was cute but childlike. Michael then was nothing like the Michael of today. He loved chasing me or jumping out from behind a wall."
The Thriller video, directed by John Landis of Blues Brothers fame, was a record-breaking success, helping start the MTV phenomenon.
The album is still the biggest seller of all time, with 104 million sold.
But Ola didn't have a share of the honeypot and ended in financial trouble. She says Michael used to help out with cheques of around £2,500. "I did lots of TV commercials but I wasn't exactly flooded with work," she says.
"Everyone thinks I made millions but I don't care... I wouldn't change anything." She saw Jackson a few years later but lost touch.
In 1992 Ola was charged with cocaine possession and after a stint in rehab she left Los Angeles to start a new life in Sacramento, where she lives with her daughter Iam, 12.
Ola says: "I'm just so proud to have been part of something that's still so special."
104m sold.. no one can Beat It
104MILLION copies of the Thriller album were sold - 50million in the US alone.
It topped the US chart for 37 weeks, was No1 here too, and spent 190 weeks in the charts.
Its sales record is unlikely to be broken thanks to a long-term decline in record sales.
Thriller spawned five Top 10 UK hits, including Beat It, P.Y.T. and No1 Billie Jean.
It cost £400,000 at a time when most video budgets were around £25,000.
Source: Sunday Mirror
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