Erika Eleniak is a $4 million dollar actress from the United States. Erika Eleniak was born in Glendale, California, and spent her adolescence as a hardcore partier.
On the advice of a close friend, she ended up going to Alcoholics Anonymous. She approached Playboy Magazine when she was nineteen, and her debut pictorial was published in July 1989.
Despite making her on-screen debut in the early 1980s with “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial,” she did not pursue a full-time acting career until the late 1980s.
She went on to star in guest parts, recurring roles, or co-starring roles on sitcoms including “Charles in Charge,” “Full House,” and “Baywatch,” the show that put her on the map.
She then turned her attention to film work, appearing in films such as “Under Seige” with Steven Seagal, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Chasers,” “A Pyromaniac’s Love Story,” “Stealth Fighter,” “Final Voyage,” and “Brilliant.” She also appeared in “Desperate Housewives” as a guest star.
Career
At the age of 12, Eleniak played the girl kissed by Elliott in the school scene in the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Henry Thomas, her 10-year-old co-star, told People magazine that filming the sequence was difficult for him: “When I had to kiss the girl, I had to do it twice!” “I’m not a big fan of females.”
In the horror film The Blob, which was a remake of the 1958 film of the same name, she played Vicki De Soto, a victim of the beast.
Eleniak was featured in a nautical-themed pictorial in the July 1989 issue of Playboy. In the same year, she began a recurring part as Charles’ girlfriend Stephanie Curtis on the TV series Charles in Charge, and she also won a job on Baywatch as female protagonist Shauni McClain, which she portrayed from 1989 until 1992.
She also appeared in “One Last Kiss,” a November 16, 1990 episode of Full House, as Carrie, Jesse’s high-school girlfriend.
In the 1992 film Under Siege, Eleniak played a Playboy Playmate hired to perform a striptease for the captain of a US Navy warship. She is referred to in the film as “Miss July 1989,” the month in which Eleniak was named Playmate of the Month in real life.
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In 1993, she starred as Elly May Clampett in the film adaption of The Beverly Hillbillies. The next year, she co-starred with William McNamara in the Dennis Hopper-directed romantic comedy Chasers.
Eleniak and McNamara collaborated on another film, Girl in the Cadillac, in 1995, and starred as identical twins in the interactive video game Panic in the Park in 1995. Until 2003, she continued to make independent films.
In June 2005, Eleniak starred on the reality television show The Real Gilligan’s Island.
Eleniak has struggled with his weight. She was once hospitalized for laxative usage and was underweight owing to an eating disorder. She was overweight by 2006, and she took part in the fourth season of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club.
She discusses her work with presenters Ross Dyer and Julian Bayes on 80’s Movie and Music Fest Cafe, a British comedy podcast on iTunes, in 2006. During the filming of Celebrity Fit Club, she presented a lighter take on Baywatch and her challenge.
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Private life
Eleniak was briefly engaged to Billy Warlock, her Baywatch co-star who also played her love interest on the show. Eleniak married bodybuilder Philip Goglia on May 22, 1998, however the marriage ended in divorce after only six months. Eleniak fell in love with Calgary, Alberta, after filming Snowbound there in 2001.
Roch Daigle, a major grip on the production, became her boyfriend. She wanted to get out of Los Angeles because she found commuting to and from Telluride, Colorado, to be too burdensome. She bought a house in Calgary, where Daigle was living.
They married in the end. Eleniak fell pregnant in 2005, however the pregnancy was revealed to be ectopic six and a half weeks into her pregnancy, necessitating emergency surgery and resulting in a miscarriage. Eleniak became pregnant again later in life and gave birth to a daughter.