British actress Victoria Tennant was the daughter of powerful talent agent Cecil Tennant (her godfather was Sir Laurence Olivier, one of Tennant's clients) and ballerina Irene Baranova. Trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Tennant made her first film appearance in 1972's The Ragman's Daughter. She began the Hollywood phase of her career after scoring a success as Pamela Tudsbury in the megahit TV miniseries The Winds of War (1983). She revived the character for the 1987 sequel War and Remembrance, and also essayed such glamorous roles as silent movie queen Estelle Taylor in the 1988 TV biopic Dempsey. In 1986, Victoria Tennant married comic actor Steve Martin, with whom she appeared in All Of Me (1984) and LA Story (1991); their later divorce was one of the motivating factors in Martin's rueful public confession that he was "stupid" in matters of the heart.