Carmen Electra

Born: April 28 1972
Where: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

The onetime Playboy centrefold has starred in Hollywood movies ranging from the Scary Movies series to Starsky & Hutch.

Of Irish, German and Cherokee heritage, she attended the School of Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati from the age of nine.

She worked as a dancer at Ohio's Kings Amusement Park before she was spotted by Prince fronting an all-girl rap group aged 18 in Los Angeles.

He signed her to his Paisley Park label and she had a moderate success with the single Go-Go Dancer but her self-titled 1993 debut album bombed.

However, she scored in 1996 by baring all for the pages of Playboy and as one of the Playboy Cheerleaders in a best-selling video.

After succeeding Jenny McCarthy as co-host of MTV's popular dating game show Singled Out in 1997, she was tapped to fill the void left by a departing Pamela Anderson on the syndicated Baywatch.

In 1998, she married madcap basketball player Dennis Rodman in the Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas. The couple divorced the next year.

She had made her small screen debut in Erotic Confessions and had appearances in Baywatch before making and her big screen debut in 1998 in the drama Starstruck.

In an attempt to save the struggling Hyperion Bay series, she was cast as a cut-throat vixen, moving away from the earnest exploration of thorny relationship issues in favour of lots of lingerie (and an occasional plot).

Her efforts, however, were in vain as the network ceased production on the series after the producers fulfilled the initial order.

In 2000, she was cast in the film spoof Scary Movie and followed it up with the drama Perfume and the musical romance Get Over It with Kirsten Dunst.

Subsequent outings included the rom-com Rent Control and the action comedy Whacked! before she landed the role of Staci in Starsky & Hutch with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

In 2005, she starred in the Jenny NcCarthy-scripted flop Dirty Love and also appeared in the sequel Cheaper By The Dozen 2 with Steve Martin.

Recent work includes the spoofs Date Movie and Scary Movie 4 and she plays a porn star in the upcoming comedy I Want Candy.