Clarkson’s audition video prompts tears

As several courtroom spectators looked on and wept, jurors in the Phil Spector murder trial Thursday watched images of actress Lana Clarkson playing a talking Barbie doll, a groupie and a nun on a videotape that she made just months before her death to promote her show business career.

Clarkson’s longtime agent, Nick Terzian, testified that the 40-year-old actress’ career remained vital, and her hopes unimpaired, as she plotted to come back from a debilitating accident that had sidelined her for nine months.

Clarkson was “a consistent moneymaker,” Terzian testified. “She had a good career with us.... Many people in the city make a lot of money working as an actor who don’t get mobbed by paparazzi.”

The larger-than-life images and testimony conjured up a portrait that contrasted sharply with the despondent woman with a failing career that the defense has tried to portray over the four-month trial.

Clarkson’s character emerged front and center at the trial as prosecutors sought to rebut the defense theory that she shot herself Feb. 3, 2003, after meeting Spector at the House of Blues, where she was a hostess.

Spector, the 67-year-old producer of hit records for the Beatles, Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner, is charged with second-degree murder.

Terzian said that three days before she died in Spector’s Alhambra mansion, he gave Clarkson the good news that she had been picked for two modeling jobs, leaving her “ecstatic” about her career and her life. One of the jobs was scheduled for Feb. 8, 2003 -- five days after her death.

Terzian, who represents hundreds of actors and models, testified that Clarkson had a solid career, was established in the difficult Hollywood job market and simply loved acting.

He said she was a seasoned professional who had experienced ups and downs in her career, but had stuck with it -- like all successful actors.

On Thursday, testimony by Terzian and one of Clarkson’s good friends provided an in-depth portrait of the actress in her final days and months.

Clarkson had suffered two broken wrists in a fall that kept her out of work for nine months. By October 2002, she had recovered, made the promotional video and branched into voice-over work. Terzian said she was full of plans and energy, and thrilled to be “back in the game.”

Asked by prosecutor Alan Jackson to respond to defense suggestions that at age 40, Clarkson was over the hill, Terzian responded: “That’s completely false. A 40-year-old actress will compete against 40-year-old actresses. She’s not going to compete against a twentysomething actress.”

Also Thursday, Spector issued his longest statement of the trial, pleading with Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler for a delay because one of his six lawyers, Linda Kenney Baden, was out ill.

“I feel very strongly about that. I feel completely naked and completely lost without her at my side,” Spector said. “I feel fervently that I could not proceed without her.”

Fidler denied the request, noting that Spector was still shielded by a phalanx of attorneys.

In the video that Clarkson made to promote herself, she played a talking Barbie doll, a rock music groupie, a Little Richard impersonator, a Las Vegas showgirl, a nun and a lonely woman on a succession of bad dates.

The video, “Lana Unleashed,” was made about 15 months before she died. As it rolled in the courtroom, several spectators wept at the larger-than-life images of the late actress.

Coming back from her injury in late 2002, Clarkson was “very excited to move forward,” a close friend, Nili Hudson, testified Thursday. “She was excited, she was happy, she was like she had always been -- hard-working, tenacious, a self-starter.”

Any suggestion that Clarkson was suicidal at that time is “absurd, absolutely absurd,” Hudson testified. But she acknowledged that Clarkson was depressed as she struggled to recover financially after her long recuperation.

The day before Clarkson was shot to death, Hudson said, the actress told her that she was going shopping for shoes that would be easier on her feet while working at the House of Blues.

john.spano@latimes.com