Fans of Sky One's Sliders will already know Kari Wuhrer, who plays parallel-universe-traveling Capt. Maggie Beckett in the sci-fi series. But the 33 year old Connecticut born actress has been a favourite pin-up in American homes since she followed up some teenage modelling with a stint as a VJ on MTV's Remote Control. "I became a so-called celebrity for a little while," she says. "It wasn't for anything creative - it wasn't like I had to do anything to earn it."

After leaving MTV, Kari won roles in films such as The Crossing Guard with Jack Nicholson. "I played this carefree party-girl stripper," she says, "and I had to learn to dance and go through the whole training process. You have to be extremely comfortable with your body to do that. And I was working with Jack Nicholson, which had it's own built-in fear factor."

Experiencing fear must have done something for her, because Kari then took roles in Stephen King's Thinner and the big-snake-eats people-in-the-Amazon movie Anaconda, which also starred Latino lovely Jennifer Lopez. "There's a city in the middle of the Amazon called Manaus, and we stayed in a hotel that I guess they'd consider a four star but which was surrounded by jungle - the humidity was so bad that if you turned your air conditioning off for a minute, the walls would start raining" she says. "It was great. Everyone was complaining like hell and they all wanted to go home, but I loved it. I wish we could have shot the whole film down there."

Kari now balances her film and tv career with a singing career, which she first tried when she was 14. "I used to have to sneak out of the house to play gigs in New York at night, and then get dropped off at school the next day. My parents were none the wiser." As well as the upcoming release of a single, "Shiny" and a new series of Sliders, Kari has also made an independent film called Kate's Addiction. "I play this lesbian who's in love with her college roommate and kind of goes psycho and kills people, " she says. "I'll try anything once...."

   

 

       

Sliders in on Sky One every Monday at 9PM