5 Celebrities You Forgot Guest Starred On Charlie’s Angels

“Charlie’s Angels” hit the airwaves in 1976, and the original series ran through 1981 largely thanks to its tremendous star power. Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett played the trio of cops turned private investigators on the iconic crime show, and John Forsythe voiced their titular boss but did not appear on screen. David Doyle played John Bosley, who ran the detective agency’s day-to-day operations, and there were some changes to the main cast over the years. Cheryl Ladd replaced Fawcett beginning in Season 2, and Shelley Hack joined the cast when Jackson left before Season 4. Hack was in turn bumped in favor of Tanya Roberts for Season 5, who later played Midge Pinciotti on “That ’70s Show” but died in 2021. There were plenty of big-name guests who dropped in on the Angels from time to time as well.

The list of “Charlie’s Angels” guest stars reads like a who’s who of TV in the late ’70s, and a Season 4 crossover episode with “The Love Boat” featured four stars from that show: Gavin MacLeod, Bernie Kopell, Fred Grandy, and Ted Lange. We churned through the roster of “Charlie’s Angels” guest stars and singled out a handful based on their level of fame at the time and how memorable their guest appearance was. You can watch the series for free with ads on Tubi or Roku TV and catch all these stars in action. Episode numbers for “Charlie’s Angels” vary depending on the source, so we’ve identified each one primarily by title and season with a mention of commonly used episode numbers.

Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie Lee Curtis’ breakout 1978 performance in “Halloween” as Laurie Strode came on the heels of a few television appearances, including a starring role on a Season 3 episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” The episode is called “Winning Is for Losers” and stars a 19-year-old Curtis as up-and-coming pro golfer Linda Frye. Linda is targeted by assassins at a tournament and enlists the help of the Angels to figure out who is behind the attempt on her life. The episode also features radio DJ Casey Kasem as sportscaster Tom Rogers and Ray Wise as Evan Wilcox, who is an early suspect in the crime.

Curtis had previously starred on “Operation Petticoat,” a short-lived sitcom about a team of nurses who are deployed on a U.S. Navy submarine. Her episode of “Charlie’s Angels” aired exactly a week before “Halloween” premiered, but Curtis said it was her performance in the film that landed her the part of Linda Frye. 

In an interview with “60 Minutes” posted to YouTube in 2025, Curtis explained, “My big break after ‘Halloween’ was, I was on ‘Love Boat’ with [real-life mom] Janet Leigh playing my mother, and then I was in a ‘Charlie’s Angels’ episode where I am Cheryl Ladd’s best friend, pro golfer.” Curtis had also made one-off guest appearances on “Columbo” and “Quincy, M.E.” before becoming a big movie star, but she played an important main character on her episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” Curtis is still going strong a half-century later; she won an Oscar in 2023 for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and an Emmy the following year for her performance as Donna Berzatto on “The Bear.”

Robert Reed

Robert Reed was a classically trained Shakespearean actor when he was cast as Mike Brady on “The Brady Bunch,” and anchored that show as the blended family patriarch from 1969 through 1974. He was still famous for that role in 1980 when he appeared on a Season 4 two-part episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” 

He played attorney Glenn Staley on both halves of “One Love … Two Angels” near the end of Season 4. Reed steps well out of the America’s Dad mold here, as Glenn turns out to be the big bad guy in this episode. He commits several white-collar crimes and two murders in an attempt to protect his family’s fortune, but is ultimately found out by the Angels.

Reed followed his “Charlie’s Angels” appearance with a starring role on “Nurse” as Dr. Adam Rose, and he remained a fixture on television until his death in 1992. He also found his Shakespearean roots again, teaching the bard’s plays at UCLA near the end of his life. Fittingly, Reed’s guest spot on “Charlie’s Angels” touched on the Shakespearean tropes of family intrigue and murder by poison. 

Sammy Davis Jr.

The title of “Charlie’s Angels” Season 2, Episode 12 is “Sammy Davis, Jr. Kidnap Caper,” and that tells you pretty much everything. The inimitable Rat Pack entertainer even stepped in to play himself as a crime victim who hires the Angels for protection afterwards. Martin Kove played one of the kidnappers — more than a half-dozen years before he made it big as bad guy John Kreese in “The Karate Kid” — but Davis truly shines throughout the episode. In a very meta scene, Davis plays himself as the master of ceremonies for a celebrity lookalike contest, awarding first prize to himself as Sammy Davis impersonator Herbert Brubaker III.

He went on to play Chip Warren in a four-episode arc on the daytime soap “One Life to Live” two years after his 1977 “Charlie’s Angels” appearance, then became a big-screen star in 1981 with his performance as Morris Fenderbaum in “The Cannonball Run.” Davis died in 1990 of complications from throat cancer, and the lights on the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed two days later as a tribute.

Tom Selleck

Tom Selleck’s Season 1 appearance  on “Charlie’s Angels” came four years before his breakout role as Thomas Magnum on “Magnum, P.I,” but he was already enough of a heartthrob (even sans mustache) to be cast as the love interest of Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith) for a single episode. He played Dr. Alan Samuelson, who was Kelly’s boyfriend for the briefest of television show timelines. Selleck most recently starred as New York Police commissioner Frank Reagan on “Blue Bloods,” but that series recently ended after 14 seasons. 

Selleck reflected on his “Charlie’s Angels” appearance on an episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show” posted to YouTube in 2021. “They were trying to experiment with boyfriends for the Angels, and I was going to be Jackie Smith’s boyfriend.” He explained that his character never returned, then pointed out that producer Leonard Goldberg was involved in both “Charlie’s Angels” and “Blue Bloods,” admitting, “… my part didn’t end up recurring, they fired me after the first episode … I like to kid Leonard about that.”

Selleck was 31 and just getting started as a professional actor when he guest-starred on “Charlie’s Angels.” He was 35 when “Magnum, P.I.” premiered, but says that was good timing for him. In 2025, he told Hour Detroit, “When I burst on the scene not as a young leading man but as a grown-up leading man, it turned out to be a huge advantage because I was relatively unknown at the time.”

Jane Wyman

Jane Wyman’s star shone as brightly as any actress in the 1940s and ’50s, but had faded slightly by the time she appeared on a Season 5 episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” The second installment that season is titled “To See an Angel Die” and centered around the kidnapping of Angel Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd). Wyman played Eleanor Willard, a psychic who contacts the Angels on a hunch and helps get Ladd safely reunited with her friends. 

Eleanor has to work hard to win the confidence of Kris’ fellow Angels Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith) and Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts), but her agreeable nature and effectiveness in locating Kris leads to a genuine friendship by the episode’s end. There’s an implication in the final minutes that Eleanor might join forces with the Angels, but Wyman’s arc ended with the single appearance. Her episode aired in 1980, and was one of a handful that took place in Hawaii after the Charles Townsend Detective Agency opened a temporary office in Honolulu. Wyman later starred as Angela Channing on “Falcon Crest,” earning a spot on our ranking of TV’s greatest villains for that performance.