Elizabeth Berkley

Elizabeth Berkley is an American actress.

She performed in several ballets, including Swan Lake, and in 1983 she appeared in some musicals.

Berkley was a teenage model for Elite before pursuing an acting career.

She made her television debut in the 1987 television film Frog, while making a number of guest appearances on other TV shows.

In 1989 she auditioned for the role of Kelly Kapowski in Saved by the Bell, but the producers of the show could not decide whether to cast Tiffani-Amber Thiessen or her.

In the end, they created for Berkley the character Jessie Spano, a role she played from 1989 to 1993 in both of the show's television and film installments.

She played Jessie Spano in the television series Saved by the Bell and Nomi Malone/Polly Ann Costello in the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls.

She voiced the title role of the anime film Armitage III: Poly-Matrix and had supporting roles in the films The First Wives Club and Roger Dodger.

In theater, she received critical acclaim for her performance in Hurlyburly.

Berkley was born and raised in Farmington Hills a suburb of Detroit in affluent Oakland County, Michigan.

She is the daughter of Jere, a gift-basket business owner and Fred Berkley, a lawyer.

She has an older brother, Jason.

Her family is Jewish.

She was raised in a Conservative Jewish household and had a bat mitzvah.

She was born with partial heterochromia, a condition of differently colored irises; her right eye is half green and half brown and her left eye is all green.

She graduated from Calabasas High School in Calabasas, California.

From a young age, she danced and practiced in a room her parents set up for her in the basement.

When she became interested in pursuing dance professionally, she traveled to New York City to train with dancers and choreographers.

After leaving Saved by the Bell to pursue a film career, Berkley won the role of Nomi Malone, the lead character in the controversial Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls (1995).

The sex and nudity-laden film was given a NC-17 rating in the United States (the first big-budget film to receive the rating), was a box office bomb during its original, theatrical run, and was widely panned by critics.

Berkley's performance received negative reviews, with Todd McCarthy describing it in Variety as "harsh, graceless and quickly tiresome", and Janet Maslin of The New York Times writing that Berkley displayed "the open-mouthed, vacant-eyed look of an inflatable party doll."

In the wake of the film's negative fallout, Berkley made a reportedly "tempestuous" exit from her talent agency, Creative Artists Agency, and spent the following week meeting with ICM, William Morris Agency and United Talent Agency, eventually signing with the latter.

In January 1996, she landed a supporting role in The First Wives Club, a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler.

She then played a Madonna body-double named Tina in the independent film The Real Blonde.

Berkley was cast in the title role in the anime film Armitage III: Poly Matrix, which also starred Kiefer Sutherland, and she booked supporting roles in independent films such as The Taxman, Tail Lights Fade, the acclaimed Roger Dodger (winner of the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival), and Moving Malcolm.

She also had a small role as a call girl hired by Al Pacino's character in Oliver Stone's sports drama Any Given Sunday, as well as a key supporting role in Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

She appeared on stage with Eddie Izzard as Honey in the London stage version of Lenny in 1999.

Berkley made her Broadway debut in the comedy Sly Fox with Richard Dreyfuss in February 2004, three months after her marriage to artist Greg Lauren.

She replaced Catherine Kellner as Bonnie in the 2005 off-Broadway production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly, appearing with Ethan Hawke, Parker Posey, and Bobby Cannavale.

Berkley received praise for her role in the show, with Charles Isherwood of The New York Times even going as far as apologizing to her for his past criticisms of her ability, stating that the fact she held "her own among this skilled company of scene-stealers is a testament to how much her talent has grown."

In 2006, she appeared at the sixth annual 24 Hour Plays alongside Jennifer Aniston, Rosie Perez, and Lili Taylor, in which six writers, six directors, 24 actors, and production crews have 24 hours to write, direct, and perform six 10-minute plays.

Berkley has been seen in many dramatic television roles, guest-starring on series such as CSI: Miami, NYPD Blue, Without a Trace, Threshold, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

She had a recurring role in the successful and critically acclaimed sitcom Titus, playing the title character's sister Shannon.

She also starred in the Lifetime television film Student Seduction, where she played Christie Dawson, a high-school teacher wrongfully accused of sexual harassment by one of her students, who becomes obsessed with her.

It was followed by another made-for-television film in 2007, Black Widow, where she played a woman suspected of killing her husbands for their money.

The film Meet Market, where she starred with Julian McMahon, Krista Allen, and Aisha Tyler, was released straight to DVD in 2008.

In 2008, Berkley signed on to appear in a multiepisode arc of CSI: Miami, in which she plays Horatio Caine's (David Caruso) ex-lover, Julia Winston, who is also the mother of his recently discovered son.

The episodes in which Berkley appeared were very highly rated and all of them featured in the top-10 Nielsen ratings chart.

She has since appeared in the show's season-six finale.

Berkley hosted Bravo's reality series Step It Up and Dance, a competition featuring the exploits of 10 wannabe dancers who compete against each other to win a cash prize of $100,000, and the opportunity to work with and perform for some of the country's top choreographers.