Laura Elena Harring was born in the northern Mexican city of Los Mochis on March 3, 1964. With German and Austrian lineage, she already stood out in her native land, where she grew up for the first 10 years of her life. At age 11, she and her family moved to San Antonio, Texas. When she was 12, she was in her parents' car when two cars behind them got into a gunfight. A stray bullet hit the car and grazed her head, missing her brain by one millimeter. Already multilingual and with an irrepressible travel bug, she convinced her family to let her go to Switzerland at age 16, where she spent her high school years attending Aiglon College. After graduation, she backpacked through Europe and Asia, going as far as India, where she spent a month as a social worker, digging ditches and planting vegetable patches. She eventually returned to America, settling down in El Paso, Texas. With good looks and grace in spades, she decided to enter the world of beauty pageants. She won the title of Miss El Paso, and soon after, Miss Texas. In 1985, at only 21 years of age, she became the first Hispanic to ever win the Miss America crown.

Thanks to her victory, Harring got the chance to return to Europe. It was during her trip that she met Count Carl von Bismarck and married him, earning the title of countess. Though divorced, she retains the title to this day. While in Europe, Harring studied theater at the London Academy of Performing Arts, specializing in the French style of Commedia dell'Arte. In 1987, she got into television, her first project a minor role in the made-for-TV movie, The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory. After another TV film the following year, she made the move to the big screen, as Jerri in the low-budget slasher flick Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989). Despite being virtually unknown, the movie made enough of a splash to lead to Harring's role in the equally corny Lambada: The Forbidden Dance in 1990. For the next seven years, Laura's potential was practically wasted with minor roles in forgettable movies and TV shows, including a season of General Hospital. Her future fans would remember her fondly as a sexy policewoman in Aaron Spelling's Sunset Beach, in 1997. But soon Harring was left to find more work that would severely undervalue her talents, such as a made-for-TV movie recounting the Elian Gonzales saga.

In 2000, Harring played a minor part alongside Adam Sandler in Little Nicky, and starred in another short-lived TV show, Black Scorpion. But the role she was waiting for -- the chance to display her finesse and femme fatale essence -- would come the following year, in Mulholland Drive. In the critically-acclaimed David Lynch film, she played an amnesiac named Rita and was apparently instructed by Lynch to act like a cat. The final product blew away many men, especially the lesbian love scene with Naomi Watts. Harring's phone rang a lot more after the film's release in 2001. Her other film credits include 2002's John Q with Denzel Washington and Derailed with Jean-Claude Van Damme, as well as 2003's Willard with Crispin Glover. In 2004, she could be seen in The Punisher, a movie based on the comic book of the same name and starring John Travolta (Harring plays Travolta's wife). Harring also starred in 2004's Return to Babylon, along with fellow beauty Maria Conchita Alonso. Laura Harring, still single, currently lives in Los Angeles. In her spare time, she dances the tango and practices yoga.