Michael Jackson’s star shined so brightly during his rule over the Billboard music charts and popular culture in the 1980s that anyone and everyone who was associated with him, even temporarily, became famous. This included the doll-faced Ola Ray, the love interest from indisputably the greatest video ever made, “Thriller.” It seemed that she was destined for fame. But in a brave instance of candidness, she explained in later interviews that roles dried up for her when she stopped providing sexual favors for producers.
It also seems like Ray (seen below in a modern picture) may have had a hard time earning cash in her post-“Thriller” life. She recently sued Jackson over video royalties,(she is pictured below) ironically a month before MJ’s death in 2009, and was eventually awarded a settlement for an undisclosed amount of cash in 2012.
