What Happened To The Girl From Huey Lewis' Stuck With You Video?
Back in the 1980s, music videos played a much more prominent role in the conversation about popular music than they do today, due in no small part to the fact that MTV actually played music videos back then. Indeed, a song's accompanying video may have gotten more attention than the song itself, perhaps because it pushed boundaries technologically, or maybe because its subject matter was controversial.
Huey Lewis and the News, the popular band behind such hits as "The Power of Love" and "The Heart of Rock & Roll," also produced memorable videos. However, the San Francisco rockers eschewed technological innovation and controversy in their videos in favor of humor and sight gags.
One such video accompanied the 1986 hit "Stuck with You." In the video, Huey visits a fancy yacht club in some unspecified Caribbean locale. There, he meets a well-dressed, champaign-drinking woman and takes her out on his "yacht," which turns out to be a rickety rowboat. Further wacky misadventures ensue.
The actress who portrayed Huey's date did not fade into obscurity after her brush with fame, however. She married a bankable action star and has herself forged a career in journalism.
This is the true story of Keely Shаye Smith, the actress from Huey Lewis' "Stuck with You" video.
The Stuck with You video shoot was just another job for Keely Shaye Smith
Back in 1986, 23-year-old Keely Shaye Smith was an up-and-coming actress trying to get gigs whenever and wherever she could, as she said in an interview with Noblemania. When she heard about a casting call in The Bahamas, she and her then-boyfriend flew down, and Keely competed with hundreds of other actresses for the part. Eventually, she got the job, for which she did a week's worth of work and was paid scale (the minimum wage for daily work set by the actors' union).
The shoot was difficult, she said. There were long days in the brutal Caribbean sun, much of them spent on small boats away from the action. When she was bored, Keely would swim in the ocean — in her silver dress, which she couldn't change out of for lack of a place to change her clothes.
The shoot wasn't a total grind, however.
"I do recall being awakened from a deep sleep by Huey and some of the guys well after midnight and being persuaded to join them at the casino. Huey spotted me $500 and that's the night I discovered I was a natural at playing blackjack!" she joked.
Her acting career fizzled, and she went into journalism
After the video became a hit on MTV, Smith told Noblemania, she got a lot of attention.
"Suddenly I was the 'girl in the video.' People wanted to meet me. Men wanted to meet me ... After 'Stuck with You,' I had a plethora of casting calls. And requests for blind dates," she said.
However, her acting career failed to take off following the video. Save for a few appearances on "General Hospital," she spent most of her career in the TV and movie industries behind the camera or in non-acting roles.
"[I was a] correspondent and producer for morning news programs including 'The Home Show,' 'Good Morning America,' 'The Today Show' ... and 'Entertainment Tonight.' I co-hosted 'Unsolved Mysteries' with Robert Stack for two seasons and wrote, produced, and hosted my own ecologically-minded home and garden series for PBS called 'Home Green Home,'" she said.
These days, she spends her time advocating for causes she believes in.
"My husband and I are philanthropically minded and involved in a number of environmental, animal, and children's issues," she said.
She married actor Pierce Brosnan
In 2001, Keely Shaye Smith married former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, whom she had met years earlier, according to an archived version of his website. Indeed, the Irishman and his beloved tied the knot at a 900-year-old church on the Emerald Isle. They have two sons, according to Food World News, Dylan and Paris.
These days, it appears that Smith's identity is largely that of Pierce Brosnan's wife. For example, on IMDb, she goes by Keely Shaye Brosnan. Similarly, as recently as 2014 she was splitting her time between her political and social advocacy in the States and traveling the world with her husband. Further, Mr. Brosnan is an artist, and Keely has curated his original paintings for exhibits, she told Noblemania.
In 2017, Brosnan told People that he and his bride enjoy the simple things in life, using a recent day trip as an example.
"My wife and I took a short road trip up to Santa Barbara — we were going for a romantic weekend and to look at houses and drink great wine. We didn't listen to any music, but we just listened to the sounds of each other's voices and sorted out the world," he said.