Biography
The inspiration for over a dozen web shrines, B-movie queen and pop diva Kari Wuhrer has built an expansive list of credits since debuting in the early '80s. Born in Brookfield, CT, to Andrew, a police officer turned salesman, and Karin, a payroll accountant, Wuhrer began her career by singing in local talent contests. As a teenager, she would sneak into Manhattan to play with her punk rock band, Freudian Slip. She also began taking acting classes and persuaded her mother to take her to an audition for Ford Modeling Agency's Talent Division. The company signed her on the spot. She started appearing in commercials, and later juggled her acting roles with drama classes at N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. After making her film debut in
Fire With Fire (1986), Wuhrer became an MTV veejay and the co-host of network's quiz show
Remote Control. She then paid her own way out to Hollywood to make a cameo in the
Andrew Dice Clay vehicle
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990). Wuhrer eventually settled in Los Angeles, appearing in Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991) and landing a guest spot on Fox's Married With Children. Her own 1993 Fox series, Class of '96, failed to attract viewers, but the network still hired Wuhrer to bed
Brian Austin Green in two episodes of
Beverly Hills 90210 in 1994. That same year, she began landing more substantial roles, acting opposite
Jack Nicholson in
Sean Penn's
The Crossing Guard and
Laurence Fishburne in
John Singleton's
Higher Learning (1995). Wuhrer played a gypsy in Stephen King's Thinner (1996), before increasing her fan base exponentially when she joined the cast of the sci-fi series
Sliders in 1997. While portraying sultry Maggie Beckett on the hit show, she appeared with
Jennifer Lopez in
Anaconda (1997) and
David Schwimmer in
Kissing a Fool (1998), as well as headlined numerous B-films, straight-to-video releases, and television movies. In 1999, Wuhrer, who sang and composed songs for several soundtracks, released her first album. Entitled Shiny, it boasted the popular single "There's a Drug." The new millennium saw Wuhrer leaving
Sliders and lending her talents (and internet following) to the computer game series Command & Conquer, starring as Agent Tanya in Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. She made two guest appearances on CBS's
CSI and appeared in a string of B-pictures and independent pictures, including
Spider's Web (2001),
The Rose Technique (2001),
The Medicine Show (2001),
Berserker (2001), and
Malevolent (2002). A veteran of over 40 screen roles, Wuhrer then cashed in on her cult status for Centropolis Entertainment's big-budget homage to low-budget creature flicks,
Eight Legged Freaks (2002) -- proving that she had both wit and staying power. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide