Rebecca Schaeffer thought it was sweet that a fan was sending her stuffed animals and other little gifts at the studio where she was filming her sitcom My Sister Sam . Playing a spunky teen who goes to live with her photographer sister in San Francisco was her big break after just a few acting jobs, and the work kept coming after the CBS show was canceled in 1988. Schaeffer costarred in the racy big-screen farce Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills , which hit theaters in June 1989.
She had wrapped the TV movie Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair , about the real-life 1985 hijacking of a cruise liner, with screen legends Eva Marie Saint and Burt Lancaster . Dyan Cannon had just directed her in a movie, The End of Innocence , in which Schaeffer played a younger version of Cannon's character. She was even said to be in the running for the lead in an upcoming romantic comedy called Pretty Woman .
And on the morning of July 18, 1989, the 21-year-old from Oregon was waiting for a potentially life-changing delivery. Schaeffer was scheduled to audition later that day for the very coveted role of Michael Corleone's daughter Mary in The Godfather Part III for director Francis Ford Coppola , and she was expecting a messenger to drop the script off at her West Hollywood apartment any minute. But when the bell rang at 10:15 a.
m., Schaeffer went to answer the door and was fatally shot by 19-year-old Robert John Bardo . He had been obsessed with the actress for three year.