Carmen Electra

Carmen Electra did not just pose for pin-up photos; she turned being sexy into a full-time art form. Born Tara Leigh Patrick on 20 April 1972 in Sharonville, Ohio, she started out as a dancer at the Kings Island theme park before heading to Minneapolis, where none other than Prince signed her to his Paisley Park label and helped reinvent her with a brand-new, electrifying name.

The music career was short, but the transformation was permanent. In May 1996 Carmen made her first nude appearance in Playboy, and the magazine practically burned the hands of its readers. She would return again and again, in June 1997, December 2000, April 2003 and in the special January 2009 anniversary issue, landing the cover each of the last three times. Few women have ever been invited back to Playboy so often.

Carmen's photos are pure, high-voltage glamour. She has the dancer's control of her body and the showgirl's sense of drama: smoky eyes, glossy lips, a wild mane of hair and a figure that seems designed for leather, lace and very little else. She teases, she smoulders, she laughs, and you never quite know whether she is about to pounce or to wink. It is no surprise she later wrote a book called How to Be Sexy; she had been teaching that lesson with every photoshoot.

Hollywood was quick to cast her. She joined Baywatch as Lani McKenzie, took over as host of MTV's Singled Out, and became a comedy favourite in films such as Scary Movie, Scary Movie 4, Starsky & Hutch and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. She even created her own dance-fitness programme inspired by striptease, bringing a little bit of her sensual magic into living rooms everywhere.

Decades later, Carmen is still the definition of a bombshell. This gallery captures her in her prime: fierce, flirtatious and impossible to look away from.

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