Great body, not so great body of work.
Model and actress Valerie Perrine celebrates her 67th birthday today. Without any formal training as an actress, shes had a decades-long career on film. Her beginnings are sensational: she started out as a Las Vegas showgirl. While in Vegas, she met her fianc, a wealthy gun collector who accidentally shot and killed himself a month before their wedding. Shes never married.
After her run as a showgirl, Perrine scored a role in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 and played porn actress Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse-Five in 1972. She ascended to stardom with blistering speed when she won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her 1974 role in Bob Fosses Lenny as Lenny Bruces wife, stripper Honey Bruce. In 1978 she won acclaim for her role as Lex Luthors lover in Superman.
She also has the distinction of being the first actress to appear purposefully nude on American television (in Bruce Jay Friedmans Steambath) and has been photographed for Playboy twice, first in 1972 and then again in 1981.
Perrines been working steadily since she got her start in film, with a few ups and a few downs--for example, her 1980 Razzie Worst Actress-nominated role in Cant Stop the Music, though the films since become a cult hit. She had a supporting role in Mel Gibsons 2000 film What Women Want. Most recently, in 2008, she appeared in Redirecting Eddie.
