Ola Ray on ABC News.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Girlfriend Ola Ray Grateful For Opportunity

Michael Jackson, Ola Ray (photo: MCA/Universal / Courtesy: Everett Collection)On Monday, it will be three years to the day that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, died at the age of 50.

Ola Ray, the female lead in his iconic 1983 "Thriller" video, still can't forget the experience of working with him.

Ray -- now 51 and living in Sacramento, Calif., with her teenage daughter -- landed the gig after Flashdance actress Jennifer Beals turned it down. She almost didn't get it after video director John Landis learned she had posed in a 1980 Playboy centerfold. But Jackson didn't seem to mind her racy past. "He seemed taken by the fact that I was a Playboy model," Ray told the Sunday Mirror.

The 13-minute horror short -- which the Guinness Book of World Records calls the most successful music video of all time, selling more than 9 million copies -- depicts the two on a date. It takes a very dark turn when the singer transforms into a werewolf.

From day one, Ray said she and Jackson had chemistry.

Ola Ray on ABC News."When we did the dancing, when he had to walk around me and flirt with me … That was when I was like 'Oh my God, like Ola, I could not believe I was the girl, I was the one chosen,'" she told ABC News in a 2010 interview.

Jackson was playful off-camera as well.

"He kept saying, 'I can't wait until I do the werewolf scenes so I can chase you,'" she told author Mark Bego for his book On The Road With Michael.