Katherine Kelly Lang was just 25 when the first episode of The Bold and the Beautiful aired in March 1987.
Today, she is one of only two original stars of the soap opera, which celebrated its 37th season this year.
Through it all, Lang has starred as Brooke Logan Forrester, who became a key member of the family-owned Forrester Creations fashion house.
While her character has wed a staggering 15 times — of which eight weddings were to Ridge Forrester — in real life Lang married and divorced twice before meeting “the love of [her] life.”
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The rise of a star
Lang was born Katherine Kelly Wegeman on July 25, 1961, in Hollywood, California.
She is the granddaughter of Oscar-winning cinematographer Charles Lang. Her mother Judy Lang, now 84, was an actress and her father Keith R. Wegeman was a Winter Olympics ski jumper.
After attending Beverly Hills High School, she started acting professionally, making her film debut in the 1979 film Skatetown, USA opposite Scott Baio, Maureen McCormick and Patrick Swayze.
She told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2020, “Patrick had this aura about him on set. He was god-like; so confident with his moves and dreamy nice.
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“He was meticulous about everything he did and when he walked into a room, everybody stared.”
More film roles and appearances in TV shows and music videos followed before she auditioned for the role of Brooke Logan.
Becoming Brooke
She told Soap Opera Digest in 2023 she won the role after auditioning opposite the only other lasting member of the cast, John McCook, who plays Eric Forrester.
“I was so nervous but John put me at ease right away and we did the scene together – and I landed the role of Brooke Logan,” she recalled.
The character was introduced as a member of her mother’s catering staff hired for a party thrown by the wealthy Forrester family. There Brooke fell in love with Eric Forrester’s son Ridge, played by Ronn Moss.
Lang told Daytime Confidential she was drawn to the role of Brooke after previously passing up other soap operas.
“It was pretty much a girl from the other side of the tracks that falls in love with the young socialite, Beverly Hills guy,” she explained.
“She comes from a hard-working family in the Valley. I liked that it’s kind of how I grew up.
“I grew up in Encino in a hard-working family. I didn’t grow up with money, and it was kind of interesting to have that excitement of falling in love with the rich family.”
The show first aired in March 1987 and was a hit. It wasn’t long before the character of Brooke, who was portrayed as somewhat of a vixen, became pivotal to the show.
Despite being in love with Ridge, she first married his father, Eric Forrester.
By 1990, a new character, psychologist Dr Taylor Hayes, who was first played by Hunter Tylo, was introduced and marked the start of a decades-long love triangle between the two women and Ridge.
Early storylines saw Brooke start working at Forrester Creations as a chemist working on a new product, before she became co-chief executive of the company.
But it was her on-off relationship with Ridge, who was played by Ronn Moss until 2012, that has been the most enduring.
An enduring TV romance
It took seven years of “will-they-won’t-they” storylines before the two characters finally wed for the first time.
When asked by Soap Opera Digest to name her favourite of Brooke’s 15 on-screen weddings, she said, “Brooke’s first wedding to Ridge, where she arrived on horseback in Malibu. It was such a fairy-tale moment.”
But it would not be her last on-screen marriage, with Brooke eventually marrying 15 times. Among her husbands was Nick Marone, played by Jack Wagner.
In real life, Lang and Moss enjoyed a close friendship, which endures today.
When asked in 2023 who she missed working with most, she named Moss and actress Susan Flannery, who played Stephanie Forrester.
“Ronn was so easy for Brooke to fall in love with over and over and over and over again,” she said.
In 2007, she told The Sydney Morning Herald, it was sometimes hard to separate their professional and personal lives. “Sometimes I just call him Ridge out of habit.”
During a 2020 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, she described Moss as a “very dear friend and true gentleman.”
“I couldn’t be happier for him to be my on-and-off-again screen husband for all these years.”
Love life
In real life, Lang has been married and divorced twice. Her first marriage to film director Skott Snyder lasted from 1989 to 1995 and produced two sons, Jeremy and Julian.
She told The Sydney Morning Herald, “I didn’t go into my first marriage… thinking I would get divorced… But that’s exactly what happened.
“The marriage lasted longer than it should have because it was a difficult one. But going through divorce is horrible and horrendous.”
She said she “didn’t think I would marry a second time” before she wed actor Alex D’Andrea in 1997.
That marriage produced a daughter, Zoe, before they announced their separation in 2012. The divorce was finalised in 2014.
“Relationships aren’t easy. You learn a lot about yourself when they don’t work out,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“You discover your boundaries and the sort of people you work best with.”
In 2013, Lang met Dominique Zoida, whom she described to The Sydney Morning Herald as “the love of my life.”
“To finally have a man come into my life who is completely right for me is something I wasn’t expecting. We are best friends and love doing everything together.”
‘It still makes me happy to come to work every day’
This year, Lang celebrates her 37th year playing Brooke.
The role has netted her five Daytime Emmy Award nominations, including this year’s Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
She has also taken out a number of awards from her dozens of nominations.
Last year she looked back on signing her first four-year contract.
“At that time, four years seems like a long time, because when you’re young, time seems longer,” she told Daytime Confidential.
“Four years really goes by like ‘that’. So, it went by so fast and I just decided to re-sign, and re-sign, and re-sign.”
She also told the publication, “I’m so happy I stayed on the show. It’s something that I’m proud of, actually, to be somewhere for a long period of time.
“It still makes me happy to come to work every day. It feels like family.”
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That ‘family’ includes co-star Ashley Jones, who plays her on-screen daughter Bridget. The two are close and often holiday together.
Like former co-star Moss, who owns a home there, Lang, now 63, spends a lot of time in Italy, where The Bold and the Beautiful often films on location.
This year, she was a guest at the Venice International Film Festival and also attended the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.
She works with a number of cancer charities, including Cancer Support Community. She is also a regular visitor to Australia and competed on the 2019 Australian season of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
Lang dotes on her one grandchild, Zuma, the daughter of Zoe.
In January she took to Instagram to share photos of them at California ski resort, Big Bear.
“It was a fun ski day! It has been my dream for a while to get my granddaughter skiing! She took a lesson in the morning with @ashleyaubra son Hayden and then in the afternoon they skied with us! First time skiing for Zuma and Hayden!! I am so proud of them!”
Lang reportedly earns about $4300 per episode, but with 250 filmed a year, that brings in a whopping $1 million annually from the show alone.
She has a reported net worth of about $17 million.
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