Gina Gershon's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) The Batman Catwoman Tripping the Rift (CA) Six Spider-Man Shikata Snoops Glenn Hall The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd Randy Category 7: End Of The World FEMA Direct… Rocked with Gina Gershon Gina Gershon

Main Movie Roles 2010 - Love Ranch 2009 - The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard 2008 - Beer for My Horses 2007 - P.S. I Love You 2007 - What Love Is 2006 - Dreamland 2006 - Man About Town 2006 - Delirious 2006 - Kettle of Fish 2006 - I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With 2005 - One Last Thing... 2004 - Out of Season 2002 - Slackers 2001 - Driven 1999 - The Insider 1998 - Palmetto 1997 - Face/Off 1996 - Bound 1995 - Showgirls 1992 - The Player 1991 - Out For Justice 1991 - City of Hope 1991 - Jungle Fever 1988 - Red Heat 1988 - Cocktail 1986 - Pretty in Pink 1985 - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

BIOGRAPHY:

Since making her unaccredited debut as a dancer in Beatlemania (1981) (1981), Gina Gershon has established herself as a character actress and one of the leading icons of American camp. For it was fourteen years after her movie debut that Gina made movie history as the predatory bisexual who was the leading light of a Las Vegas leg-line in director Paul Verhoeven (I)'s kitsch classic Showgirls (1995). Exploding out a a plaster-of-paris volcano clad in nothing but body makeup and a G-string, Gina Gershon obtained cinema immortality. After Showgirls (1995), she solidified her reputation playing a lesbian sexpot in the Wachovski Bros' neo-noir Bound (1996). She now is an icon in that part of the gay community that worships camp like a secular religion.

Of French, Dutch and Russian-Jewish extraction, Gina Gershon was born on June 10, 1962 in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, the last in a brood of five kids. Raised in the San Fernando Valley, she got the acting bug early, appearing at the age of seven in a school production of Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Because of her acting ambitions, her parents moved to Beverly Hills so Gina could attend Beverly Hills High, where she indulged her acting jones by appearing in a student production of The Music Man (1962). Her first love, she says, is singing.

After graduating from high school in 1980, she attended Emerson College in Boston, but took a part in the musical "Runaways". She transferred to New York University, where her official biography says she studied philosophy and psychology, but she graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts, taking a bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama in 1983. In New York City, while perfecting her craft, she co-founded the theater company, Naked Angels, with Helen Slater (I).

Her big screen breakthrough came with a part in the 1986 "Brat Pack" teenage hit Pretty in Pink (1986). She also had parts in the Tom Cruise vehicle Cocktail (1988) and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Red Heat (1988). Of this period, she says, "One of my first gigs, a movie called Cocktail (1988), I found myself at 8 in the morning, in bed, practically naked, having to make out with Tom Cruise; hmmmm... movie business - so far, so good".

Citing Frank Sinatra's song "My Way" as an inspiration, she says that following Cocktail (1988), "I was fortunate enough to play many diversified roles in film, television and stage. Not always to the liking of my managers and agents, but I always did what I wanted...." She played Nancy Sinatra (I), Frank's first wife, in the TV miniseries Sinatra (1992) (TV).

Gina Gershon became a celebrity in Showgirls (1995), one of the most god-awful movies to ever be committed to celluloid, but of the "so bad it's good" ilk. She won what kudos the film had coming to it, unlike her hapless co-star, Elizabeth Berkley, the object of her character's lust. The following year, Gershon solidified her claim on second-tier stardom playing the calculating lesbian "Corky" in the crime movie Bound (1995). She never did capitalize on her mid-1990s breakthrough, but the 45-year-old Gershon is established he as a character actress and is never out of work, unlike most of her female peers who started out in the industry at the same time. Though no classic beauty, the talented thespian remains gainfully employed while many actresses of her vintage are out of work as she is possessed of a unique look and smoldering sex appeal that comes across on camera.

Gershon is versatile, too, as at home on stage as she is in front of the camera. After appearing in off-Broadway and regional theater productions, she made her Broadway debut as a replacement in Sam Mendes (I)' revival of Cabaret (1972) in January 2001. For six months, she played the key role of "Sally Bowles", returning that October to reprise the role for another month. In 2008, she once again appeared on Broadway in the revival of the farce "Boeing Boeing" on Broadway, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival.

Gina Gershon also is a children's book writer. In 2008, Putmam Juvenile published her "Camp Creepy Time", a tale of a boy who discovers aliens at his summer camp, which she co-wrote with her brother, Dann Gershon. "Camp Creepy Time" recently was optioned by DreamWorks, which plans to turn it into a movie. In 2008, she also released a CD featuring nine sons which she wrote or co-wrote, "In Search Of Cleo".


TRIVIA:

• She graduated Beverly Hills High School in 1980. While there, she starred in a production of "The Music Man".
• Actress 'Helen Slater (I)' (qv) is one of her friends; she helped her found The Naked Angels.
• Recently sang with ex-'Guns N' Roses' (qv) members 'Slash' (qv), 'Duff McKagan' (qv) and 'Matt Sorum' (qv) at the Sundance Festival (Jan 21st 2003).
• Attended high school with 'Lenny Kravitz' (qv).
• Went to the same school as _"All My Children" (1970)_ (qv)'s 'Jamie Luner' (qv).
• She is a founding member of the New York based theatre group, Naked Angels.
• Recently said that she would love to run Playboy Magazine. She had offered to do a pictoral for them, but was disappointed with how Playboy wanted her to pose and withdrew her offer. When asked what she'd like to see done differently, she said that the magazine should return to a "hip 70s style".
• When she was a little girl, she almost drowned looking for starfish on the beach.