'''Carmen Electra''' (born April 20, 1972) is an American 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.
In spite of the superficial similarity in names, she is not related to adult film actress Tera Patrick, who was born Linda Hopkins Shapiro.
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''. She made a notable appearance on Howard Stern's television show in which she was strapped to a chair and tickled to the point she was laughing hysterically, stating afterward that she has the "most ticklish feet ever," and another where Stern has her riding on a Sybian http://thatvideosite.com/view/2097.html.
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 also 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;
