Birthname: Tara Leigh Patrick
Date of birth: 1972-04-20
Birthplace: Sharonville, Ohio, USA
Height: 5' 4"
Nationality: American
Profession: actress, model
Carmen Electra (born Tara Leigh Patrick, April 20, 1972 in Sharonville, Ohio) is an American glamour model, television personality, actress and singer.
Biography
Early life
Electra was born Tara Leigh Patrick in Sharonville, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, to an Irish father and a German and Native American (Cherokee) mother. She attended Princeton High School in Sharonville for four years and also attended, very briefly, Walnut Hills High School.
Career
After moving to California, she met singer Prince (a Minneapolis native), who persuaded her to change her name to Carmen Electra. Soon after, she signed a recording contract with Paisley Park Records, Prince's company, marking the start of a short-lived singing career with a girl rap group.
In 1995, Electra started appearing in various television programs. Then, in May of 1996 she appeared in Playboy magazine. This led to an increasing role as a television personality on various shows, including regular roles on Baywatch and MTV's Singled Out.
Electra has appeared in several films, such as Good Burger (1997), The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (1999), the horror spoof Scary Movie (2000) and one of its sequels, Scary Movie 4 (2006), and the remake of the 1970s TV show Starsky & Hutch (2004). She has also made cameo appearances as herself in The Simpsons episode The Frying Game and the 2006 comedy American Dreamz. She regularly performed with the exotic dance troupe The Pussycat Dolls. Electra also created the highly successful Carmen Electra Aerobic Striptease series of DVDs which combines classic stripping moves with a low impact workout. Her most recent movie appearance is as Eugene Levy's trophy wife in Cheaper by the Dozen 2.
Her acting work is regularly derided by critics; in the Roger Ebert review of the film Dirty Love, he states:
- "The Carmen Electra character, meanwhile, struts around like a "ho" in a bad music video, speaking black street talk as if she learned it phonetically, and pulling out a gun and holding it to a man's head because she thinks, obviously, that pulling guns on guys is expected of any authentic black woman. A scene like that would be insulting in any other movie; here it possibly distracts her from doing something even more debasing."
In 2005, she joined the voice cast of the animated series Tripping the Rift, replacing Gina Gershon as the voice of the sex android "Six".
Surprisingly, given her early work in Playboy and her reputation as a sex symbol, Electra has been very reluctant to appear nude on screen. She has only done one genuine nude scene in a movie, early in her career in The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human.
Personal life
Electra achieved considerable notoriety during her on-again, off-again marriage to basketball star Dennis Rodman from 1998 to 1999. The wedding to Rodman took place at Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas, Nevada. Later, she had a brief affair with Tommy Lee, the ex-husband of Pamela Anderson. Borrowing another page from fellow Baywatch companion Anderson's publicity playbook, Electra was quoted in August 2004 that she was thinking of having her breast implants removed. She told World Entertainment News Network,
On November 22, 2003, Electra married Dave Navarro, former lead guitarist for the rock band Jane's Addiction. The couple documented their courtship and marriage on an MTV reality show in 2004 called .
In 2006, Electra revealed she had a lesbian little girl crush on Joan Jett starting when she was eight years old. She remembers especially lusting after Jett watching the music video of "Do You Wanna Touch Me" where Jett opens a trenchcoat to reveal her bikini clad body..
The same year she also admitted she lusts after supermodel Kate Moss: "I fancy Kate Moss. She has the best style. People need to give her a break. Yeah, I'd love to meet Kate. You can't deny her beauty and her sexuality."
On July 17, 2006, she and Navarro announced their separation. Their rep confirmed their separation to Star Magazine. Electra filed for divorce on August 10, 2006..
Philanthropy
Carmen Electra's mother, Patricia Patrick, died from brain cancer at the age of 61. As a result, Electra cofounded Head to Hollywood with Ken Baker. It is "an organization that brings brain-tumor patients and their families to Tinseltown for a VIP experience."
