| Carmen Electra was born in Cincinnati (Ohio)
on April 20, 1972. Of course,back then she was Tara Leigh Patrick, just
a little girl growing up in White Oak, Ohio. At the age of nine, she was
selected for the School for Creative and Performing Arts.While she was
there she took singing lessons, and by her teenage years, she was dancing
in musicals and doing her own choreographing for the school's theater ensemble.
Her goal was to eventually make it out to Los Angeles and get a record
deal, and at age fifteen, she took her first big step.
She moved out to Minneapolis to stay with her
sister and half sister, and earned money acting as a model for the Target
department stores. Four years later, she packed up shop and
moved to L.A., changed her name to Carmen Electra, and one week later,
she met the artist formerly known as Prince. For all practical purposes,
she had just been ‘discovered’.
In 1992, after meeting and auditioning for
Prince, Carmen was signed to his Paisley Park Records label. Despite the
fact that Prince took her under his wing (including promotions for her
album in Rolling Stone and on MTV) her first album was a dud. The
video for the single "Go-Go Dancer" was seldom seen on MTV, and when the
12" single hit the stores in June (1992) it almost went straight to the
bargain bin. In 1995, Carmen reinvented herself and appeared on the
Nickelodeon show ALL THAT. In March of 1996, Carmen posed nude for
Playboy and did a Playboy video, PLAYBOY CHEERLEADERS, in which she sings
the show stopper ‘2-4-6-8.' Also in 1996, Carmen hosted MTV's Loveline
- only a glimpse of things to come.On October 4, 1996, Lisa Berger (MTV's
senior vice president of original programming) announced that Carmen had
been selected to
replace Jenny McCarthy on the MTV show SINGLED OUT. The deal
was for at least 65 episodes.
Since that announcement, Carmen was signed
on to
replace Pamela Anderson on BAYWATCH, she has appeared in a comic book,
appeared as a national spokesperson for Budweiser and recently filmed a
small role in the independent feature DUST AND STARDUST, a
movie about making it and not making it in Hollywood.
Carmen currently lives in Los Angeles, and
the last we
heard, she was definitely having the last laugh. |
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