'Fall Guy' star Heather Thomas faced stalkers, shot one of them at peak of fame

Actress Heather Thomas has been out of the spotlight for a scary reason.

The "Fall Guy" actress and 1980s TV star revealed in a new interview that the reason she left Hollywood in the 1990s due to harassment. Thomas, 67, starred in the 1981-86 series as Jody Banks, a stunt performer.

"I did a lot of work after 'The Fall Guy,'" Thomas said on a Monday episode of the "Still Here Hollywood" podcast. "I did a lot of movies. And then I was just getting so many stalkers."

The actress, who also starred in the 1980s films "Zapped" and "Cyclone," said she would get two stalkers a week and filed "tons of restraining orders."

She said one stalker jumped her gate carrying a "giant buck knife," while another stalker cut open a window screen to get in her bedroom. "I shot him" with birdshot, she said, or small lead shotgun pellets used for bird hunting.

"I don't know if this is true now ... You could be in a soap commercial, and they would fixate on you," she said. "And there weren't a lot of stalker laws."

She recalled getting a box of bullets or stolen funeral wreaths from graveyards sent to her home. Thomas, who has three daughters, said she wouldn't leave the house for months at a time because of the harassment, though her children were largely unaware. "I always had a bodyguard in the house. Because that's where I didn't want to come home to a dark house."

She said leaving the limelight didn't immediately solve the issue, "not for a couple of years."

In 2024, Thomas, with co-star Lee Majors, starred in an after-credits cameo for "The Fall Guy" movie remake starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. That year she also starred in the drama "The Ghost Trap." She's only credited in one other film since 1998, for the musical comedy "Girltrash."

In 2008, Thomas published her first novel, "Trophies."