Actress Sherilyn Fenn had her first taste of show business while touring the country with her mother, a rock musician. Fresh out of high school, Fenn decided to put her stunning physical attributes to good use as a Playboy bunny, but, alas, she failed to survive the first year of "bunny school." After posing for perfume and designer jean ads, Fenn made her film debut in The Wild Life (1984). She skyrocketed to fame in the early '90s as Audrey Horne in David Lynch's cult TV series Twin Peaks. (Her singular series highlight was the scene in which she tied a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue.) Fenn played a seductive wife in Gary Sinese's 1992 version of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and the following year replaced a recalcitrant Kim Basinger in the role of a haughty beauty whose arms and legs are amputated by a love-obsessed surgeon in Boxing Helena, directed by David Lynch's daughter, Jennifer Lynch. The apex of Fenn's '90s roles, however, may well have been her take-no-prisoners 1995 TV performance as screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor.
Sherilyn Fenn
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Biography by AllMovie
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Factsheet
- Studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Hollywood.
- Posed for perfume and clothing ads before becoming an actress.
- Rose to fame by playing Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks.
- Appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine in December 1990.
- Has a 1993 song named after her by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who she worked with on Two Moon Junction (1988).
- Appeared on a 2003 episode of Gilmore Girls that was meant to be a backdoor pilot episode for the character Jess. When the pilot wasn't picked up, she returned to the show in 2006 as a completely different character.