A native of Berlin, Maryland, Linda Harrison was Miss Berlin at 16, then a model in New York's Garment Center. Homesickness brought her back to Maryland, where she entered and won the state beauty pageant. During the finals in the Miss International contest (held in Long Beach, California), she was "spotted" by talent scout Mike Medavoy and presented at 20th Century-Fox. Throughout her acting years at Fox, and amidst movie roles in Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and others, she dated studio boss Richard D. Zanuck and married him in 1968. They were divorced in 1978, but she still occasionally turns up in the casts of Zanuck movies.
She and Charlton Heston are the only two actors to appear in both the 1968 and 2001 versions of "Planet of the Apes."