Brenda Dickson is an American actress who originated the role of Jill Foster Abbott on the soap opera The Young and the Restless.
Early life and education
Dickson was born in Long Beach, California. As a teenager, she toured Southeast Asia singing and dancing for the armed forces with Bob Hope. At the age of 17, she won the title of Miss California USA in the Miss World pageant; it led to acting offers but she decided to continue performing at USO shows while studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Los Angeles. Dickson was let go from the show in 1987. She filed a $10 million lawsuit against Columbia Pictures in an effort to be reinstated.
In the lawsuit, Dickson claimed William J. Bell blacklisted her and wreaked havoc on her personal and professional life by hiring "Mafia cartel judges and attorneys" to "ruin" her life. As a result, she ended up "broke and homeless" and claimed to have been blocked from working.
In 1987, Dickson released the film Welcome to My Home, described as a "vanity film" A YouTube parody became an Internet meme and has been removed and re-uploaded several times. In 2018, its influence was profiled in Vanity Fair. Dickson, who was interviewed for the article, revealed that she financed the film with $5,000 of her own money.
In May 2013, Dickson released her memoir, My True Hidden Hollywood Story.
Personal life
Marriages
Dickson has been married twice. Her first husband was dentist Robert Rifkin whom she married on September 30, 1976. She married attorney Jan Weinberg on December 25, 1997. They were divorced in 2006.
Legal issues
In 2007, Dickson was jailed in Hawaii because of a civil contempt order stemming from a divorce judgment from her ex-husband Jan Weinberg.
In 2009, the judgment in Weinberg v. Dickson was set aside after an appeals court found that the judge in the original trial had abused his discretion in not guaranteeing Dickson a fair trial and that her imprisonment had been unlawful.
In September 2025, Dickson revealed that she had been evicted from her condo and was now homeless and sleeping on the street. She requested that her followers on social media donate to her GoFundMe page. The money would be used for an attorney, food, and shelter.
Filmography
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-
| 1971
| Men at Law
|
| Episode: "One American"
|-
| 1972
| The F.B.I.
| Donna
| Episode: "The Set-Up"
|-
| 1972
| Deathmaster
| Rona
|
|-
| 1973
| Love, American Style
| Girl
| Segment: "Love and the Sexpert"
|-
| 1973
| Here We Go Again
| Donna
| Episode: "There's a Boy in My Rumaki"
|-
| 1973–1980; 1983–1987
| The Young and the Restless
| Jill Foster Abbott
| Contract role: March 27, 1973 – January 9, 1980, September 8, 1983 – June 18, 1987, June 22 – 24, 1987
|-
| 1976
| Taxi Driver
| Soap Opera Woman
| Archive footage from The Young and the Restless
|-
| 1983
| Falcon Crest
| Tony's Girlfriend
| Episode: "Maelstrom"
|-
|}
Awards and nominations
- 1986 Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for Outstanding Villainess in a Daytime Serial The Young and the Restless.
- 1988 Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Villainess in a Daytime Serial The Young and the Restless.