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Birth Name: Laura Elena Herring Martínez

Place of Birth: Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico

Date of Birth: March 3, 1964
Ethnicity:
*Austrian, German (father)
*Mexican (Spanish, possibly other) (mother)
Laura Harring is a Mexican and American actress and model. In 1985, she was the first Latina woman crowned Miss USA.

She was born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, and spent much of her childhood there, before moving to San Antonio, Texas. Her father, Raymond Herring, was a developer and organic farmer, of Austrian and German descent. Her mother, María Elena Cairo, is a spiritual teacher, of Mexican (Spanish, possibly other) descent.

Photo by Prphotos.com

Tagged as: Austrian, German, Mexican, Spanish, Spanish-Mexican

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Birth Name: Laura Elena Herring Martínez Place of Birth: Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico Date of Birth: March 3, 1964 Ethnicity: *Austrian, German (father) *Mexican (Spanish, possibly other) (mother) Laura Harring is a Mexican and American actress and model. In 1985,

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Mexican actress Laura Harring (born Laura Elena Harring Martinez on March 3, 1964) became the first Hispanic to win the Miss USA crown and continued on to make the top 10 at the 1985 Miss Universe pageant.

Harring was literally chosen on sight to play a role in an NBC miniseries ( The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory) by the producers who saw her Miss USA appearance on television. After that first acting experience, she went on to appear in several television series including Baywatch Nights, Silk Stalkings, and The Shield, having recurring roles on NBC's soap Sunset Beach and the ABC daytime drama General Hospital.

"As I turned my head, shots were heard and it felt like a rock hitting my head like from a slingshot. But then when it hit my head, immediately there was a very loud sound almost like an alarm going off in a building."

The actress is perhaps best well known for her performance in David Lynch's cult film Mulholland Drive (2001), opposite Naomi Watts and Justin Theroux. Harring worked twice more with Lynch in Rabbits (2002) and Island Empire (2006).

In 2009/10, Harring appeared as Evelyn Bass (using the alias Elizabeth Fisher) on the teen drama Gossip Girl, and on June 15, 2010 guest-starred on the police procedural television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, playing the matriarch of a powerful political family who will go to great lengths to protect her own.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Laura, you were born in Mexico, but grew up in Texas?

Laura Harring: Yeah, I lived in San Antonio for many years and went to an all girls' school. We wore the little sailor outfits and even the shoes were part of the uniform. Everybody head to wear the same kind of shoes. It was kind of nice because you didn't have to think about what to wear (laughs).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): At age 12, something horrific happened to you.

Laura Harring: I got shot in the head. It was in a cinema parking lot in a car with my entire family. I was actually looking out the window. I was up front on the passenger side, my mom was in the middle, and I was looking at the movies.

As I turned my head, shots were heard and it felt like a rock hitting my head like from a slingshot. But then when it hit my head, immediately there was a very loud sound almost like an alarm going off in a building. It was a weird experience and everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. It was very surreal and I'll never forget it.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Did you suffer any phobias from the experience?

Laura Harring: For two years I was afraid of a dark room because it was night when it happened. So walking in a dark room was very scary for me. Loud sounds were scary because my nerves were on edge. It was like I was expecting the shot to come at any moment. But, I'm fully recovered now.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Thank goodness for that. Your mom's a psychotherapist. I'll bet you couldn't get away with anything as a child (laughs).

Laura Harring: Right (laughs). Actually it has helped me with different characters in my work. They call it transpersonal psychology so it's not like normal psychotherapy. It studies the spiritual aspects of the human experience.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What made you become interested in beauty pageants?

Laura Harring: When I was a social worker in India, I did manual labor and at the time it was not fashionable or trendy to do so, but I had a desire to help and I came back from that experience totally changed. I wanted to do things to make a difference. I also love to travel and when I found out that I'd be able to travel throughout Europe, that was sort of the deal breaker (laughs).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): After that experience you became interested in acting.

Laura Harring: Well, what happened was the producers of an NBC four-hour special called The Alamo saw me on stage as Miss USA (waving goodbye). That was on national television and they said, "That's the perfect girl for the role opposite Raul Julia in The Alamo." You know those stories you read in magazines about how people were discovered and often you think they can't be true? Well, it kind of happened that way to me.

The producers called the Miss USA people and said they'd like to audition me. I was confused because there were so many girls there they could have chosen. But, I guess that attitude was perfect for the role, that I had a little bit of aloofness. I went to the audition with no acting experience whatsoever and was hired.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): That is a story right out of a fairy tale. You have also appeared on the daytime dramas Sunset Beach and General Hospital.

Laura Harring: That was so much fun, but such hard work! If you have a storyline going on, there are a lot of pages to read! But, the thing I love about television is that you don't know where your story is going so it's so much fun and exhilarating. Your life on screen is full of surprises.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Speaking of surprises, I must mention Mulholland Drive.

Laura Harring: There's a lot of mystery behind Lynch always.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Absolutely. Was the nude scene uncomfortable for you to film?

Laura Harring: Yeah, anytime that you're ... you know, acting is very vulnerable with your clothes on, then without your clothes, well ... (laughs). But, with David there is always a safe feeling, there's always a good energy.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You had a car accident on the way to that audition and also had the same thing happen to your character in the film.

Laura Harring: Yeah, they had not told me that before I got there. But, on my way to the audition I couldn't believe how my luck had turned because I had been doing theater, but wasn't getting paid. For three months I was having the time of my life but I wasn't getting paid. So I couldn't believe my luck had changed in such a way that a casting director would call me directly.

I was on my way to the audition, so excited, and thinking about celebrating that I rear-ended the car in front of me. The dad of another actor said, "You know what, we're on our way to an audition, too. There's no harm done here." So we both just left. When I sat down and read the script and saw the opening of the movie and the car wreck, it was so funny! It made me relax, though, and think that maybe this was meant to be.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): There have been rumors flying about a Mulholland Drive 2.

Laura Harring: As I said before, there's a lot of mystery surrounding David Lynch (laughs).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Did you audition for the role of Chuck's mother on Gossip Girl?

Laura Harring: I did actually audition for it. I wasn't very familiar with the show but I did know it was a very hot show. After I got the role, I saw what an intriguing, fun, amazing show it was. The cast and everyone just made everything fun.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Your character was also pretty mysterious.

Laura Harring: Right, I found my niche ... mystery gal! Just call me mystery gal!

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Absolutely, and then there's your appearance on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Laura Harring: Oh, that was a big ... that was a naughty one!

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What's it like to work with Jeff Goldblum?

Laura Harring: He was so amazing! He's 6'5", you know, so the way he walks is so comedic. But when you see him on the screen it's completely the opposite. We would joke around on the set, but Jeff is very talented, unique, and very interesting. I was very fortunate to work with him.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What's next for you, Laura?

Laura Harring: I have a couple of things brewing. I'm producing and have written an abstract film. It will be made in South America. Shooting is so relaxed over there. I love it there, so much fun, like being in Europe with the feel of Latin America. I like the fact that I'm being creative in a different venue, writing, versus behind in front of the camera. It's really exciting for me.

© 2010 Smashing Interviews Magazine. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written consent of the publisher.

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Laura Harring Interview: 'Mulholland Drive' Star Discovered at Miss USA Pageant

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Mexican actress Laura Harring (born Laura Elena Harring Martinez on March 3, 1964) became the first Hispanic to win the Miss USA crown and continued on to make the top 10 at the 1985 Miss Universe pageant.

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Read all about Laura Harring with TVGuide.com's exclusive biography including their list of awards, celeb facts and more at TVGuide.com

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Photo: JB Lacroix/WireImage

David Lynch's masterpiece Mulholland Dr. hit the Criterion Collection last week, and it's lost none of its terrifying, dreamlike allure. (If anything, it's gained some over the years.) Central to the film's artistry are its two brilliant female leads, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. Both actresses were relative unknowns at the time - indeed, both had kind of given up on Hollywood, which fits perfectly with the film's themes of disillusionment and despair in the Dream Factory - and Mulholland 's success supercharged their careers.

Interestingly, for a while, the film itself looked like it may never see the light of day: It was originally supposed to be a TV series, but Lynch wound up reshooting and recutting it as a feature after the network rejected the pilot. Over the years Harring has starred in films like John Q, The Punisher, and Love in the Time of Cholera, and shows like Gossip Girl and The Shield. (She also reunited with Lynch for brief parts in his series Rabbits and his last feature, Inland Empire.) We caught up with her recently to reflect on the experience of making the film, how she got the part, and why she thinks it's so creepy and great.

How did you wind up getting cast in Mulholland Dr.? I've heard David Lynch has an odd casting process.
He does. I had met him at a premiere of the pilot for Twin Peaks. The casting director that he often used, Johanna Ray, took me to the premiere; her son Eric DaRe was in it, and I had done a movie with him. So I met David there, but it was a very brief hello; he didn't remember me later. About a year or so later, I got a call from my music manager at the time - I didn't even have an acting manager - saying Johanna Ray had called him because David had seen a photo of me. And David's creative process is such that he saw the photo, he felt I was the right girl, he called Johanna and said, "I want to see her today!" She wanted me to go see him that second.

At the time, I was doing theater, really arty stuff, and I had kind of given up on Hollywood. I was driving to the gym, I was in warm-ups, and I was so excited about David Lynch wanting to see me that I crashed my car! I couldn't believe the coincidence when I did go see him the next day, the assistant said, "Are you aware that the script starts with your character driving, and she gets in a car accident?" I got goosebumps.

David didn't say much when I first walked in. He just looked at me - Johanna had said no makeup - and in his deep voice said, "Good." He kept saying, "Good." I finally cracked up. Then we started talking, and he found out that I was a meditator. My mother had taken me to somebody to teach me transcendental meditation at 14 years old. I think, in David's world, he thought that was a sign. That was our only meeting.

What did you think of his directorial style?
He's very poetic - he always talks in metaphors and similes, and uses his hands and his voice to get you into that world. For example, he'll start whispering when he wants you to be very quiet. Or he'd tell me, "Walk like a kitty cat, Laura." He'll give you symbols like that, and that actually makes it easy. Kitty cat: That's graceful and fluid. I get it. David has an ability to make people feel - to put people in a state of mind and to take them on a journey - and that is true of both audiences and actors on a set. He's very specific with his ideas. When you give him what he wants and he's happy, you feel as an artist very fulfilled. Because he's very true to his ideas. As he says, "You have to be true to your ideas, or you die."

Your character is so vulnerable for so much of the movie. It's almost nerve-racking to watch. How did you tackle that aspect of the character?
Because of the amnesia, one of the hardest things to do is to not think. When you have amnesia, there's a certain emptiness. You know that blank space between thoughts? That's what I tried to focus on - to slow my breath down and just listen to the sounds in the room so that my mind would be still. And then to add the image of the dark clouds that he always talked about that are always following me. This creepy, weird cloud of darkness. So that put me in a state of fear. When you're scared, you're a bit confused.

I was relatively young at the time, so I didn't know how to shake it off. I would go home and feel nauseous and scared. I couldn't get out of that Lynchian world. Now I know how to let it go - you can take a hot bath with oils, or play salsa music, to just literally get that energy off your body. But at the time I was so young that I was living in that world constantly.

What was it like when you learned that the pilot hadn't been picked up?
I was confused. I also thought, David's an independent thinker. His genius is beyond people's comprehension. A lot of his work comes from the deep subconscious mind - from the collective consciousness, particularly if you're familiar with Eastern philosophy. How do we know that this reality we're speaking in right now is the real reality? When you're sleeping and dreaming, maybe that's the real reality. Of course, this is just my opinion, but I think that's what he's tapping into when Diane wakes up and reality is completely different from the beginning of the film. Mulholland Dr. is a journey for each person to take on their own - your own experiences and your own thoughts will project onto the screen what's really happening within you. I think that's why people responded so favorably to it. But that's probably also one reason why it was so hard for the network to accept it.

What changed after that initial pilot? I know he went back and wrote and shot new scenes to turn it into a feature.
Yeah, he wrote about 18 other pages, and we shot it about a year later. I can't remember if he wrote another ending. I kind of remember a couple of other pieces [being] written and given to us. There was just a lot of trust: The stuff that was written after, it was confusing to Naomi and myself because we didn't know what he was going to do. But we knew to trust him because he's a master filmmaker, and we were confident that in his mind, he knew what he wanted. I didn't see it at first, to be honest with you. I just followed his direction, and I did what he told me. Then he and Mary [Sweeney], his editor and partner, went back and recut it - with pieces from the first part, they cut out some stuff and added the new stuff. I imagine things like the sex scenes, which have a surprising amount of nudity, weren't part of the original pilot.

How did you respond when you first saw the film? Did your conception of it change when you finally viewed the whole thing?
I remember the first time I saw it. We were invited to David's house. He has a big screening room in his recording studio. The whole thing - it takes so many turns and twists, and the imagery is so beautiful, and you never forget it. At the end, you're just left speechless. When it finished, there was this silence, and awe. Naomi and I just looked at each other.

The second time was at Cannes. I remember there was this quiet immediately after, and it was hard to tell if the audience loved it or hated it. But I remember that David had prepared us. He said, "You never create expecting people to love it. You create for creating. Some people will like it, some will hate it, and some will love it." I'll never forget this: "Even if you get booed, you walk out with your chin up." I really took that to heart - because there really was a long silence, which I wasn't used to. There's a photo I have in my memory. David peeks his head out, and he's looking at me, and I'm looking at him. And then, a couple of seconds later, there was a roar. A roar of approval. Everybody stood up. We all felt very relieved.

I was in disbelief later when people would give me the newspaper. In Cannes, the papers compared the excitement and buzz to what Marilyn Monroe had when she went there. A few weeks later they compared me to Ava Gardner. I was very humbled by that - you can never compare anyone to Ava Gardner, or Rita Hayworth! These are legends! But I finally got what David meant when he said, "Walk like a kitty cat." There was this strong female power there - of a character who really owns her sexuality, and sensuality. I think that's why they were comparing me to these goddesses. That for me was enough. If I never acted again, I would have still been happy.

How did that affect your career?
Funnily enough, for a while, there was a sense that I was really glamorous - which was strange, given the kinds of things I wanted to do. But it did give me a passport for a lot of independent films and artistic movies, because I had the stamp of approval of a creative genius. I played a lot of very interesting characters. In fact, right now, I'm in the Dominican Republic,playing a crazy, evil woman. It's a lot of fun playing the villain. For the roles that I get on television of whatever, it's more femme-fatale-y stuff. No matter what age I am, people still think of me as this strong femme fatale. And they're always wanting to do a love scene. But nowadays I often find myself saying, "No, this part doesn't need a love scene."

A lot of people in Hollywood, they want to be the top of the top, super-famous, whatever. For me, I'm very happy being under the radar, doing character roles, not being filmed everywhere I go. I would like to pick more. I would like to work with other great filmmakers. I was very happy I got to do films like Love in the Time of Cholera and work with people like Javier Bardem and William Hurt and Raul Julia, before he passed. I owe all that to David Lynch.

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Laura Harring's Car Crash Was a Sign That She Belonged in Mulholland Dr.

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David Lynch's masterpiece Mulholland Dr. hit the Criterion Collection last week, and it's lost none of its terrifying, dreamlike allure. (If anything, it's gained some over the years.) Central to the film's artistry are its two brilliant female leads, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring.

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Laura Harring Celebrity Profile - Check out the latest Laura Harring photo gallery, biography, pics, pictures, interviews, news, forums and blogs at Rotten Tomatoes!

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Laura Harring (born Laura Elena Herring Martínez on March 3, 1964) is a Mexican actress and former Miss USA (1985). She is known for her role as Rita in Mulholland Drive. Description above from the Wikipedia article Laura Harring, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.