Bunty Bailey: What the Girl From A-ha’s Legendary ‘Take on Me’ Music Video Is Up to 40 Years Later

The music video for a-ha’s 1985 hit “Take on Me” is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time, and 40 years after it hit MTV, it remains a technical marvel. The video perfectly illustrates the swooningly romantic song using an innovative mix of pencil-drawn animation and live-action footage to tell the story of a woman who gets pulled into a comic book and finds love with the hero, as their worlds quite literally collide.

The distinctive look of “Take on Me” was achieved by rotoscoping—an intricate technique in which an animator draws over live-action footage frame by frame—and while its artistry could potentially be replicated today with CGI, it wouldn’t have nearly the same feeling of music video magic, as the handmade nature of the drawings is a large part of its charm. All told, animator Mike Patterson created around 3,000 drawings for the video over 16 weeks, and he recalled, “I knew that it was going to look good but I had no idea it was going to be in heavy rotation on MTV for a year.”

“Take on Me” wasn’t just popular on MTV—it became the first ’80s music video to hit over 2 billion (yep, that’s billion with a B!) views on YouTube, and Patterson has said, “What’s crazy for me is that I have students who were born after the video and they say it was their favorite video.”

The male lead in “Take on Me” was a-ha’s falsetto-voiced frontman, Morten Harket, while Bunty Bailey played the lovestruck girl. Read on to learn how the little-known actress and dancer became a part of music video history and what she’s been up to since the ’80s.

How Bunty Bailey became the romantic heroine of ‘Take on Me’

Bunty Bailey (whose birth name is Therese) started as a dancer, often performing with the British dance group Hot Gossip as well as onstage in West End shows and in commercials. The year before “Take on Me,” she appeared in the music video for Duran Duran’s “The Wild Boys.”

Bailey got the “Take on Me” gig after the costume designer for a commercial she was in told her that director Steve Barron was casting a music video for an up-and-coming band. Getting the role that would define her career was simple: As she recalled, “I met him, he showed me the storyboard and asked me to act out a few things. That was it. I got the job.”

Bailey had no idea just how big the video would become, and she even started getting fanmail for her role. “Take on Me” also proved pivotal in her personal life, as she began dating her costar, a-ha’s singer Morten Harket, shortly after meeting him during the shoot. The ’80s power couple were together for a few years, and she reprised her role in the video for the band’s next single, “The Sun Always Shines on TV.”

Life after ‘Take on Me’

After “Take on Me,” Bailey appeared in the music video for Billy Idol’s “To Be a Lover” (1986), as well as videos for artists like Status Quo, Cliff Richard, David Cassidy and AC/DC.

Bailey then had a supporting role in the 1987 horror movie Dolls and could be seen in the comedies Rock and the Money-Hungry Party Girls and Glitch! (both 1988). She starred alongside another ’80s icon, Adam Ant, in the campy 1988 straight-to-video horror movie Spellcaster.

In the ’90s, Bailey stepped away from the spotlight as she became a mom of two boys and taught dance for a few years. She returned to acting in 2008, with a role opposite Shannen Doherty in the low-budget movie Defunct.

In 2012, Bailey was featured on the British series Big Fat Quiz of the ’80s, where the contestants correctly guessed that she was the “Take on Me” girl, and in 2019 she and Harket had a sweet reunion at the cafe where part of the video was filmed.

Bailey hasn’t spoken to the press for a while, but in a 2013 blog interview, she revealed she was working at Eaton Power Quality as an executive assistant. She shared that some of her coworkers were amused by her music video past, saying that after her Big Fat Quiz of the ’80s appearance, “When I went into work the next day, they were ribbing me about it, making fun of me in a friendly way. They joke with me that they want to get me on Celebrity Big Brother or Strictly Come Dancing.”

Bailey has fond memories of her days as a video star, and said, “I feel honored that I was part of such an amazing project.” “Take on Me” was a-ha’s biggest US hit by far, and they’re considered one of the ultimate ’80s one-hit wonders, though they remain hugely popular in their native Norway as well as other countries. The video will forever be Americans’ defining memory of the band, and the combination of the wildly creative animation, the soaring love song and, of course, the chemistry between Harket and Bailey, make it a true classic.