Inside the life of Baywatch Star Carmen Electra
Carmen Electra was born Tara Leigh Patrick on April 20, 1972, in Sharonville, Ohio.
As a young girl, Carmen was shy and loved expressing herself through singing and dancing.
Her father was a guitarist for Bootsy Collins and her mother a backup singer and Electra decided to be a professional dancer or a “bad-ass drummer” in a band.
She told Smoke Magazine in 1997, “I always wanted to be a star. When I was three years old, I sort of decided that this is what I wanted to do.”
Her parents supported her dreams and she found herself in the prestigious School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati at age 9, where she went on to study ballet, modern dance, and choir.
After graduating from high school she decided to move to Los Angeles.
Carmen Electra recalled, “I saved up my money, and took my mom to lunch and told her that I was going to fly to [Los Angeles] with a girlfriend to try it out for a week, to see if I even liked it.”
It seemed like her star was there as it didn’t take long before a singer named Robin Power approached her in a nightclub and the rest is history.
Robin Power saw her and knew he has found an undiluted talent while Electra on the hand was finding it hard to believe it was real.
“I was nervous because I still didn’t know whether or not to believe that this was real,” she recalled.
“That first time I met Prince, he was very quiet,” she said. “I was very shy, so there was this awkward moment of us just kind of standing in front of each other. He broke the ice by asking me if I wanted to play pool.”
Prince was the one who gave her the name Carmen as she was initially answering Tara.
“I loved it, but I reminded him that my name was Tara. He told me, ‘You look like a Carmen, so, to me, you’re Carmen,’” Electra explained.
Carmen Electra told Untitled Magazine, “That was pretty huge for me at the time because I just left Cincinnati, Ohio, to pursue my dreams and try to make something happen. So meeting Prince and having that opportunity, for someone like him to believe in me was just so inspiring. I got to dance and have my band. It almost feels like it was a dream. Sometimes I think, ‘Did that happen?!’”
During her stay over there she found a new interest, in acting and soon left to pursue her dreams she soon landed a role in Baywatch, her dream show.
With her celebrity status rising she soon got married to Dennis Rodman in 1998, but their marriage only lasted for nine days.
Carmen told Hollywood Life in 2016, “Well, a lot of reasons why it didn’t work out, and it would take forever to tell everything. We were in Vegas, and he proposed to me. It was real, true love there. People kind of thought it was a stunt, but I saw a different side of him, and I don’t know, I just sometimes can be co-dependent and want the best in people.”
“I think that maybe I can make them happier, but you can’t change anybody. You can change if you want to, but you can’t change anyone else. When we were together, I spent a lot of time in Chicago; it was awesome. Watching him play – he’s just this amazing athlete.”
She went on to get married again to Dave Navarro in 2003, but their marriage ended 4 years later. The Baywatch star wasn’t ready to give up on love and has dated several celebrities. We wish her all the best.
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