Wonder Woman star Lynda Carter was desperate to return to the stage in her own forthcoming musical revue - because she has been plagued by the shadow of her infamous character on the classic show.

The American actress and singer first took her cabaret act across the U.S. last year and is set to return to her musical roots with an onstage revival in New York on Tuesday. And Carter is convinced her return is the only way she could part ways from her role in the iconic 1970s super-heroine show - to prove she is a different person from her sexy small screen character.

She tells the New York Post: "(It's) not to make more money, not to be more famous - it's for the pleasure of me. Wonder Woman always overshadowed me. People ask about her all the time. I can either distance myself or embrace her. I have all the shows, all the costumes. I think she was fantastic. But I never felt I, personally, was a sexy person. There's this 'ooohh and aaahh' for that character, but it's not really for you yourself. They call you sexy, but you don't feel like it."

As far as typecasting goes, it is very difficult to escape any iconic TV
character--be it Maxwell Smart or the Fonz or a zillion others--but when the
character is also a comic book superhero, then you have two different
audiences to deal with: the mainstream TV fans and the comic book fans.
That's why if George Reeves had lived, the rest of his life he would have
been known as Superman (don't we still think of Adam West as Batman?).
Success can be both a blessing and a curse.