Deborah Adair

Deborah Adair was born in Lynchburg, Virginia on May 23, 1952 to a father who was a Navy officer and a mother who was a Spanish teacher. She grew up with her brother Ashley and sister Ann. Her major influences were her mother and grandmother who always taught her to have confidence and self-assurance by telling her that she can have any job she wanted. She earned a degree in advertising and marketing at University of Washington, working afterward as a copywriter, commercial producer and assistant promotion manager for radio stations in Seattle, Washington. She waited tables and worked as a stewardess for a short time. But a flair for dramatic reading in high school led to voice-over work on commercials, then local stage productions. She found an agent who helped her land small parts in several TV series. But her big break came in 1980 when she was cast as Jill Foster Abbott on "The Young and the Restless."