Catherine Ovenberg
Catherine Oxenberg (born September 22, 1961) is an American actress. Best known for her performance as Amanda Carrington on the 1980s prime time soap opera Dynasty, she is the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia and Howard Oxenberg.
Oxenberg was born in New York City, but grew up in London. She is the eldest daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (born 1936) and her first husband Howard Oxenberg (1919–2010), a Jewish dress manufacturer and close friend of the Kennedy family. Her sister is Christina Oxenberg. Princess Elizabeth is the only daughter of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (who served as regent for his cousin’s eldest son King Peter II of Yugoslavia) and Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark.
Elizabeth is a maternal first cousin of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and also a maternal second cousin of Queen Sofía of Spain and Charles, Prince of Wales, making Catherine a third cousin of Felipe VI of Spain and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Through her maternal grandfather Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, of the House of Karađorđević, Catherine is also a great-great-great-granddaughter of Karageorge, who started the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1804.
Catherine Oxenberg’s maternal grandmother, Princess Olga, was the daughter of Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia and Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark, himself the son of another Romanov grand duchess, Queen Olga Konstantinovna of the Hellenes and her Danish-born husband King George of Greece, brother of Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom and the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. Princess Olga was the sister of Princess Marina, who married Prince George, Duke of Kent (an uncle of Queen Elizabeth II); and Olga/Marina were also paternal first cousins of the Duke of Edinburgh (husband of Queen Elizabeth II) through their respective fathers Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, who were brothers.
As of 2011, Oxenberg was 3936th in the line of succession to the throne of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms.
Oxenberg was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, Kensington, London, St. Paul’s School, Harvard University, and Columbia University.
Oxenberg made her acting debut in the 1982 made-for-television film The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, in which she played Diana, Princess of Wales. In 1984, Oxenberg joined the hit ABC prime time soap opera Dynasty — then at its height of popularity — in the role of Amanda Carrington. Oxenberg left Dynasty in 1986, following a salary dispute after the end of her second season, and the role was recast with Karen Cellini. Though Oxenberg’s publicist insisted that the actress left Dynasty voluntarily, several media outlets reported that she was fired.
Oxenberg was the guest host on the May 10, 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live, making her the only descendant of a royal family to host the show. Oxenberg starred as Princess Elysa in the 1987 television film Roman Holiday. She also appeared in The Lair of the White Worm in 1988, and reprised the role of Diana, Princess of Wales in the TV film Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After in 1992. From 1993 to 1994, she starred in the short-lived series Acapulco H.E.A.T..
Oxenberg was portrayed by Rachael Taylor in the 2005 telemovie Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure, a fictionalized retelling of the behind-the-scenes goings-on during the production of Dynasty. In 2006, Oxenberg appeared in the TV special, Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar, in which she was reunited with her former Dynasty castmates to reminisce about the series.
In 2019, Catherine Oxenberg produced and narrated Escaping the NXIVM Cult: A Mother’s Fight to Save Her Daughter where Andrea Roth portrayed her.
Personal life
Conan O’Brien mentioned in a 2000 commencement speech that Oxenberg is listed directly ahead of him in the Class of 1985 Harvard freshman Facebook. A contemporary Harvard Crimson piece indicates that she was at least initially in the Class of 1983, dubbing her “queen of the Facebook”.
Oxenberg’s first marriage was to the producer Robert Evans, in Beverly Hills, California, on July 12, 1998, but the marriage was annulled nine days later.
Oxenberg met actor Casper Van Dien during the filming of the 1999 TV movie The Collectors, and they worked together again in the 1999 Evangelical Christian thriller The Omega Code. On May 8, 1999, they married at Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2005, the couple appeared in their own reality series, I Married a Princess, which aired on the Lifetime Television channel in the United States and on LIVINGtv in the United Kingdom. Van Dien filed for divorce from Oxenberg in 2015.
Oxenberg is the mother of India Riven Oxenberg (born 1991), whose father was not publicly revealed to be convicted drug smuggler William Weitz Shaffer (b. 1946) until October 28, 2017, when Shaffer confirmed he and their daughter India had been in contact for years, even while he was in prison. Van Dien had a son and a daughter from a previous marriage: Casper Robert Mitchum Van Dien and actress Caroline Grace Van Dien. Van Dien and Oxenberg have two daughters together: Maya Van Dien (born 2001) and Celeste Alma Van Dien (born 2003).
While Oxenberg and Van Dien were married, and before she involved India in the NXIVM cult, she was a celebrity ambassador (with Van Dien) for the non-profit organization Childhelp.
Oxenberg acknowledged, in November 2017, that she had interactions with Keith Raniere and his NXIVM organization, bringing her daughter India into NXIVM in 2011 for what she thought would be “a self-help, business-oriented program”.Oxenberg confirmed that her daughter became heavily involved in the cult, and that she had initiated what proved to be a failed intervention for India. In August 2018, Oxenberg revealed that India had left NXIVM in June, after the arrest of Raniere, and they were working on their relationship. In August 2018, Oxenberg’s book Captive: A Mother’s Crusade to Save Her Daughter from a Terrifying Cult was published.
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