Carmen Electra Biography

Carmen Electra (born Tara Leigh Patrick on 20 April 1972 in Sharonville, Ohio) is an American glamour model, television personality, actress, and singer.

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 the School For Creative And Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Princeton High School in Sharonville and also attended, very briefly, Walnut Hills High School.

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 rap career. 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."

On the other hand, her performance as adult star Candy Fiveways in the upcoming I Want Candy is said to be outstanding.

In 2005, she joined the voice cast of the animated series Tripping the Rift, replacing Gina Gershon as the voice of the sexy android "Six".

In late 2006, Carmen began to be featured in commercials by Taco Bell.



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,

I had nice breasts to begin with. They weren't the biggest boobs, (but) I just think it was really trendy (to have implants) at a certain time, so I decided to do it. There are moments when I think it's kind of silly and I wish I would've just stayed natural.

On 22 November 2003, Electra married Dave Navarro, former lead guitarist for the rock band Jane's Addiction. The couple documented their courtship and marriage in an MTV celebreality show called 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave.

In 2006, Electra claimed that when she was eight years old she had a lesbian crush on Joan Jett. She remembers especially lusting after Jett while watching the music video of "Do You Wanna Touch Me" where Jett opens a trenchcoat to reveal her bikini clad body. Electra claimed to also lust 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."