Actress Audrey Landers Always Dreamed of Being a Torch Singer

Don’t lump Audrey Landers in with the ever-growing list of actors seeking to exploit their recognition for singing careers.

For Landers, who portrayed Afton Cooper on “Dallas” for 5 1/2 seasons and was a regular on the daytime soaps “Somerset” and “The Secret Storm” while in her teens, music has always come first.

“When other kids were having schoolgirl crushes, I was dreaming about the drama of being a torch singer,” says Landers, who is making her Los Angeles singing debut at the Cinegrill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Tuesday through Saturday. “It’s something I always wanted to do. My mom played a lot of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney records when I was young, and I identified with them, and the sentiments and emotions. They’ve always influenced my life.”

Even before she was a teen-ager, Landers received professional recognition for her singing and songwriting.

“At 12, I wrote a song, cut a demo of it, and had the opportunity to sing it on ‘The Merv Griffin Show,’ ” recalls Landers. “It was called, ‘The Apple Don’t Fall Far From the Tree,” about a girl who is pregnant and afraid that the child is going to turn out just like the father. Having it come out of the mouth of a 12-year-old shocked some people, and I did not end up singing that on ‘The Merv Griffin Show.’ I ending up doing ‘New World in the Morning,’ a very milquetoast kind of song, a beautiful song, but it was certainly not anything anyone could blink at.”

Landers stint on “Dallas” helped launch her European singing career, where she has received 14 gold singles, three gold and two platinum albums. She finds the acting industry more hospitable to crossovers than the recording industry.

“Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton and Cher have been welcomed with open arms and accepted by the acting media,” Landers says. “It’s very rare that you can find an actress who can cross over to music. That is another reason that I concentrated so much on my European music career, because there I am accepted as a musician.”