Dallas Star Charlene Tilton Admits ‘I Had No Idea What I Was Doing’ After Being Cast as Lucy Ewing at 17

• Charlene Tilton is opening up about her time on the most iconic television show of the 1980s and the overnight success that came with it
• In an interview with Woman’s World, the Dallas star says, “I had no idea what I was doing” when cast as Lucy Ewing at age 17
• But she learned from her costars, whom she says had a “stellar work ethic”

As J.R. Ewing’s scheming niece Lucy on Dallas, Charlene Tilton was one of the most well-known actresses of the 1980s. But in a new interview, Tilton admitted she was so young when she was cast on the popular nighttime soap, that she was learning as she went.

Tilton was a fixture in pop culture, appearing on more than 500 magazine covers at the time and starring in a 1981 episode (which focused on her character’s wedding) that drew 65 million viewers.

But in an interview with Woman’s World, Tilton said she had “no idea what I was doing” when she was first cast.

“I was fortunate that after I got Dallas, the people I was surrounded by such as Oscar nominee Barbara Bel-Geddes [who played Miss Ellie Ewing], Jim Davis [Jock Ewing] and Larry Hagman [J.R. Ewing] had a stellar work ethic and I just watched them. I learned things such as you always arrive 15 minutes early,” Tilton told the outlet.

She continued: “You come to work prepared; you know your lines, it’s an all-for-one environment, no one is a diva, no one is demanding, and you always be professional. That’s how I got educated. I had no idea what I was doing when I was cast in Dallas because I was 17 years old.”

Tilton’s first job as an actress was in the 1975 film Freaky Friday, starring Jodie Foster. Stints on Happy Days and Eight Is Enough followed before she landed the role in Dallas.

“I was in over my head because it was a lot of work, I was only 17 and the show was a worldwide phenomenon,” she said. “When I wasn’t filming, I travelled all over the world doing interviews, events and appearances. I look back now and realize it was such a whirlwind. It was crazy and it was all going so fast.”

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Elsewhere in the interview, Tilton touched on her childhood, which was marked by profound turbulence.

“When I was 5 years old, my mom was taken away from me in the middle of the night because she was having a nervous breakdown. She was out of control. They had to beat her with clubs and put her in a paddy wagon right in front of me,” she told Women’s World.

After, she said, she bounced from foster home to foster home.

“I was told I was not wanted,” she described. “I would hear them talking when they thought I was asleep. One family had two kids of their own and I heard them say, ‘When are we going to get rid of her because I don’t want to share my room with her?’ ”

In an earlier interview with PEOPLE, Tilton opened up about her troubled childhood, and the connection she felt to her character, Lucy, who was raised by her grandparents: “She was desperate to find the love of the parents she never had. I understood what made her tick.”