Jaclyn Smith lifts lid on 'explosive' Charlie's Angels co-star

Jaclyn Smith has opened up about working with an "explosive" Charlie's Angels co-star.

In her new memoir, the actress called out Kate Jackson, claiming she had a "temper" and "flew into a fury" on the set of the hit TV series.

Titled I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, the book describes how Jaclyn, now 80, found Kate, 77, to be a "complex" personality, and while she saw her co-star as "savvy and skilled, and at times downright silly", she also remembered times the actress "flew into a fury over some slight".

The show, which ran from 1976 until 1981, featured the two women as crime-fighting "Angels" alongside Farrah Fawcett and later, Cheryl Ladd.

Jaclyn recalled an incident in which Kate allegedly took control of her on-set motor home, causing the crew's union members to worry.

"She climbed behind the wheel of her motor home, with me by her side, and just drove it in circles around the lot, over and over," Smith wrote. "It was funny at first, but the teamsters were not happy with us."

Kate, Jaclyn also said, had a particularly colourful vocabulary and would often shock crews by letting out "a long, bellowed string of expletives that made even the cameramen and lighting guys blush".

Elsewhere in the book, Jaclyn recounted how illicit drug use was rampant behind the scenes of the show.

"People were doing drugs, in particular, cocaine ... with some people using it constantly," she wrote. "The more drug use I saw on set, the more time I spent in my motor home. I was in there a lot by the end of the series."