Pia Zadora (born May 4, 1953) is an American actress and singer. After working as a child actress on Broadway, in regional theater, and in the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), she came to national attention in 1981 when, following her starring role in the highly criticized Butterfly, she won a Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year and the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress.

When her film career failed to take off, she became a singer of popular standards and made several successful albums backed by a symphonic orchestra; as a singer, she earned a measure of respect from critics who had previously written her off as an actress.

Biography

Zadora married businessman Meshulam Riklis in 1977, when she was 23 and he 54. Ms. Zadora was a second rate marquee headliner at the Rivera Hotel in Las Vegas during the early 1970s due to her association with Riklis & Sinatra. Zadora and Riklis bought the Beverly Hills mansion Pickfair Manor in January 1988 from Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss for almost $7 million. They demolished most of the structure while keeping the guest houses, claiming that termites and time had made repairs difficult. The mansion, which drew its name of "Pickfair" from having once been the shared home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, was torn down and a new 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m) mansion was built on the property. Zadora later claimed on a September 2012 episode of BIO's Celebrity Ghost Stories that Pickfair was razed due to a troubling apparition which appeared to her and children when her husband was away on business. Riklis commissioned a nude oil portrait of Zadora, which greeted visitors; the painter of this portrait remained unknown as of early August 2012.

Zadora and Riklis divorced in 1993, and Zadora remained in the mansion until late 2005 or early 2006, when she sold it to Korean businessman Corry Hong for $17,650,000.

Zadora's second husband was writer-director Jonathan Kaufer. They were married from August 1995 to November 2001, and had one child, Jordan Maxwell Kaufer. Zadora's three children are Kady Zadora, Kristofer Barzie, and Jordan Maxwell; Kady and Kristofer are her children with Meshulam Riklis. Kady was named after Zadora's film character in Butterfly, which later inspired the call letters for station KADY-TV in Oxnard, California after Riklis acquired it in 1988. After he divested himself of his ownership, it changed its call letters to KBEH.

Zadora has been married to Michael Jeffries, a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, since 2005 and currently resides in Summerlin, Nevada. Zadora and Jeffries met after Zadora contacted the Las Vegas Police to report a stalking incident.

On June 2, 2013, Pia Zadora was arrested on domestic battery and coercion charges in Las Vegas, where she currently resides.