Carmen Electra Biography

NAME: Carmen Electra

OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Television Actress, Pin-up, Reality Television Star

BIRTH DATE: April 20, 1972 (Age: 39)

EDUCATION: Cincinnati’s School for the Creative and Performing Arts

PLACE OF BIRTH: Cincinnati, Ohio

Originally names Tara Leigh Patrick, Carmen Electra was born on April 20, 1972, in Sharonville, Ohio. Carmen Electra's talents were evident when she was a child, as she attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts at only 9 years old.

In school, Carmen Electra began taking singing lessons and practicing her vocal talents. By the time she was a teenager, she was performing in musicals (as a dancer) and doing her own choreographies. Her ultimate ambition was to go to Los Angeles and sign a record deal. And by the tender age of 15, Carmen was on her way to realizing her dream.

Carmen Electra grew up near Cincinnati, Ohio, in the town of White Oak and got her first boost when a scout for Prince spotted her fronting for a rap group in Los Angeles. She released a self-titled album for Prince's Paisley Park label in 1992. She then toured Europe as Prince's opening act on his 1992 Diamonds and Pearls Tour. In March 1997, she appeared in cartoon form as the model for a character who's a singer and a vampire ("but a good vampire", says her publicist) in a comic book series called "Embrace".

Roles in a slate of lesser films—"Sol Goode" (2001), "Whacked!" (2002), "Rent Control" (2002) and the long-delayed bomb "My Boss' Daughter" (2003), which was released solely because of Ashton Kutcher's burgeoning popularity—followed before the actress spent a season as a sideline correspondent on Comedy Central's robot vs. robot competition "Battlebots" in 2002. She again donned her red swimsuit for the reunion telepic "Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding" (NBC, 2003), posed for a second top-selling Playboy shoot and had a cameo as a Hollywood celebrity in "Uptown Girls" (2003). Meanwhile, she continued to generate interest in her personal life, with a lengthy and public engagement to Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro (the couple married in November 2003, with the entire wedding process and ceremony filmed for broadcast by MTV on the 2004 series "Till Death Do Us Part"), a glamorous makeover, her own strip aerobics DVD and a headlining association with the hot Hollywood dance troupe the Pussycat Dolls, a retro-burlesque-style collection of the music industry's top dancers, choreographers and celebrity guest performers (including Christina Applegate, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, Charlize Theron, Jaime Pressly and Pamela Anderson).