Angie Dickinson

As she advanced from winning local beauty pageants to landing roles in unremarkable movies, Angie Dickinson's career seemed to be following an upward, if unspectacular, path. And if her acting wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, her liaisons with high-profile costars (Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson) and her 1966 marriage to Burt Bacharach ensured her a place in Hollywood's upper echelons. It wasn't until the seventies, though, that Dickinson met her pop-culture destiny, playing Sargeant Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson on Police Woman. Pepper was a lot of firsts: the first woman to have men report to her, the first unmarried female officer, the first to display self-doubt and, occasionally, a weakness for Jack Daniels. While she was doing all that, she also carved out a new look for the powerful woman—briskly beautiful in minimal makeup, blond hair permanently tousled from running down perps, her white Bianca Jagger–esque pantsuit adding to her unconscious swagger. Take that, Sydney Bristow.