Reagan Wilson Bio
Reagan Wilson was an American actress, glamour and nude model. She was born on March 6, 1947, in Torrance, California. Playboy named her its October 1967 Playmate at 20. Her appearance came during the 1960s, as Playboy grew into a major force in American magazine publishing.
Wilson had natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 40-25-35.
Reagan Wilson arrived in Los Angeles with ambitions that extended well beyond modeling. She had studied journalism in Montana and talked seriously about writing, imagining herself as a humorist while insisting she also had at least one serious novel in her. Acting provided another outlet. Television work included The Big Valley, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Munsters, while modeling later took her to Paris, London and New York.
Her Playboy photographs acquired an afterlife no conventional publicity campaign could have matched. Photographer Ron Vogel shot the centerfold later copied, laminated and secretly slipped into Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad’s cuff checklist with the caption “Preferred Tether Partner.” Conrad discovered it while standing on the Moon. Images of Angela Dorian, Cynthia Myers and Leslie Bianchini were hidden in the astronauts’ checklists as well, but the prank remained largely unknown until Playboy revisited the story for Apollo 12’s 25th anniversary.
Wilson also found herself caught in the changing politics surrounding women, sexuality and Playboy. At the University of Washington’s 1968 Men’s Day event, members of Radical Women interrupted her appearance to protest the magazine’s portrayal of women. Decades later, activist Barbara Winslow reflected that the protest had been misdirected at Wilson rather than at the men who held institutional power—a revealing footnote to the rapidly changing cultural climate in which Wilson was working.
Her film career included a body-double assignment for Julie Newmar in Mackenna’s Gold, followed by appearances in Blood Mania and Running with the Devil. She returned to Playboy for the 1979 “Playmates Forever!” pictorial, but her later life moved in a different direction. After marrying writer Barry Hornig in 1982, Wilson joined him in running a textile and rug business in Santa Monica.
Wilson died in March 2026 at the age of 79. Her career ultimately wandered much farther than the writing and acting plans she described in the 1960s: television, international modeling, film, business and one of Playboy’s strangest connections to the space program all became part of the same story. Few centerfolds can claim an audience that literally included someone standing on the Moon.
