• May 03, 1993
• Vol. 39
• No. 17

Joe Lando

• 

From PEOPLE Magazine

Let's just call him the Big Hunk on the Prairie. As strong and silent Sully on the CBS hit series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, the mountain man with the cascading wouldn't-it-be-great-to-run-barefoot-through-it hair and impeccable pecs has been cutting viewers down to sighs. "He's gorgeous," says costar Jane Seymour, who briefly dated Lando, 31. Medicine Woman's producer, Beth Sullivan, is more voluble: "He's got a devastating smile. It'll melt you. It's a one-two punch—the blue eyes in a certain way, the smile in a certain way, and whammo, there's nothing you can do to resist it."

Raised near Chicago, Lando left home at age 18 and while knocking around the country did little to protect his natural resources. Courtesy of barroom brawls and motorcyle accidents, he has broken his nose five times, all his fingers, his wrists, his cheek and jawbone and has had more stitches than a couturier gown. What the former pizzamaker, stuntman and soap actor (One Life to Live) won't spar with is his sex-symbol image. "It's part of the job. If you take it seriously, you get yourself in trouble." Too busy right now for a serious relationship, Lando, who lives alone in a funky old Hollywood apartment, envisions settling down with "an intelligent woman. I like women who are better educated than myself, and more worldly." Sounds like good medicine.