Rebecca Gayheart life and biography

In the '90s Rebecca was known as the "Noxzema girl" due to her television ads for the companies product. She also had a recurring role on Beverly Hills, 90210, and made the jump to the big screen with roles in such films as Scream 2, Urban Legend, Jawbreaker, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter, and Harvard Man. She returned to television in 2003 to star on Dead Like Me and has since appeared on Nip/Tuck, CSI: Miami and Ugly Betty.

Rebecca is a former model and can attribute much of her good looks to her parents', Curtis and Floneva, mixed blood, which includes Italian, Irish, German, and Cherokee descent.

When she was 15, Rebecca won a modeling competition and moved to New York City to pursue a career in modeling and acting. After her first summer there, she finished her high school education at New York's Professional Children's School before she moved onto study at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

Rebecca's modeling career started in advertisements, in which she modeled underwear in Sears and JCPenney catalogs. But when she landed the Noxzema-girl gig in 1991, she garnered national recognition and her career was underway.

A year later, Rebecca became a regular cast member on the daytime soap opera Loving. She played a student who was obsessed with her professor. For the next few years, Rebecca worked steadily in television. Her credits include Vanishing Son, the short-lived sci-fi series Earth 2 (this show placed Rebecca in the hearts of many fans in Germany where the show was a huge hit), Beverly Hills, 90210, Sliders, and the NBC miniseries Invasion.

By 1997, Rebecca hit the big screen with supporting roles in such films as Nothing To Lose, starring Tim Robbins and the emotionally unstable Martin Lawrence, and Scream 2, in which she played a sorority sister named Lois alongside Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette. Her part in the film didn't last long, but it was memorable enough to get her cast in more movies.

In 1998, Rebecca starred in Urban Legend and in 1999 she starred alongside Rose McGowan and Pam Grier in Jawbreaker. That same year, she nabbed a leading role in the disappointing movie Puppet, directed by Felix R. Limardo. By the end of the year, Rebecca had returned to television and starred in 13 episodes of the short-lived drama entitled Wasteland, but the show was canceled soon after it aired.

Unfortunately, Rebecca's private life mirrored her almost-there success on film. Perhaps it was her beauty, perhaps it was her drive to succeed or perhaps it was a very busy 1999, but whatever the case was, it ended her engagement to notable director (Rush Hour, 1998; Red Dragon, 2002; X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006) Brett Ratner.

Rebecca kept up her hard work in 2000 with an appearance in the Quentin Tarantino vehicle and Robert Rodriguez conceived, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter. Although the film received some praise, it didn't do very well at the box office. She also starred in Shadow Hours (2000) and took an uncredited role in Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), which gave Eva Mendes one of her first forays onto the big screen.

In 2001, Rebecca starred in two movies: Doppelganger and Harvard Man, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Eric Stoltz, and she appeared in the pilot for Inside Schwartz.

Unfortunately, 2001 is also the year in which Rebecca accidentally hit and killed 9-year-old Jorge Cruz Jr. with her car. After pleading no contest to the charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in 2002, Rebecca was sentenced to three years probation, a one-year suspension of her driver's license, and she was ordered to pay a $2,800 fine and to do 750 hours of community service. The judge also ordered her to make a public service announcement that highlights the dangers of jaywalking and drivers who don't stop when other cars have stopped.

As a result of the incident, Rebecca lost all her potential ad campaigns (both on television and in magazines) with companies.

Since the tragic incident, Rebecca's life and career has seemed to toe the line. Before marrying actor Eric Dane in 2004, she appeared in the film Pipe Dream (2002) with Mary-Louise Parker and Jill Hennessy, and on the television shows What I Like About You, Dead Like Me, featuring Jasmine Guy and Mandy Patinkin, and The Division.

In the years that followed, Rebecca kept her gorgeous face in the media with appearances on such hit television shows as Medium with Patricia Arquette, Nip/Tuck, Vanished with Ming-Na, CSI: Miami costarring Emily Procter, and Ugly Betty starring America Ferrera. Rebecca still hasn't given up hope in film either; she appeared in 2005's Santa's Slay with Emile de Raven, and in 2006's Bunny Whipped.The following year, Gayheart starred in the Broadway comedy, Boeing-Boeing opposite Christine Baranski, Mark Rylance, Greg Germann, Paige Davis and Missi Pyle. She has a guest role on The Cleaner in 2009.

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