Julie Benz

Julie Benz

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Birth name: Julie M. Benz
Date of birth: 1 May 1972
Place of birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Nickname: Julia
Height: 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
Spouse: John Kassir (30 May 1998 – December 2007)

Famous Quote: “I didn’t expect them to write such a beautiful ending. I really think it was one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever received as an actor. The last three episodes of her life are so wonderful. They were such a gift to play. It was really amazing. They sent me the script and I was on lunch. I was in my trailer crying. You don’t want to tell anyone anything and, of course, we’re not allowed to tell anybody anything. I think she truly is one of the most amazing characters on television.”

Contact Address and Autograph: Addresses and fan mail information

Julie Benz
c/o Vincent Cirrincione Associates 
8721 Sunset Boulevard, #205 
Los Angeles, CA 90069, USA 

Biography:  Julie Benz (born May 1, 1972) is an American actress. For her role as Rita Bennett on Dexter, Benz won the 2006 Satellite Award for Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. She is also best known for her role of Darla on Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A pretty blonde performer with a soulful look and a whispery voice, Julie Benz started out not on stage, but on ice, competing on the national level and ranked 13th in ice dancing, following the lead of her older siblings, a pair of ice dancing champions. Injury led to the end of her skating career but she soon switched modes to acting, starting out in community theater and landing her first film role in Dario Argento’s “Two Evil Eyes” in 1990. The following year she landed her first regular series role, playing the daughter in a 1950s sitcom family that has been relocated to 1990s suburbia on the quirky “Hi Honey, I’m Home” (aired on ABC and Nickelodeon from 1991 to 1992).

Benz was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father is a Pittsburgh surgeon and, contrary to rumor, her mother was never an ice figure skater. The family settled in nearby Murrysville when Benz was two, and she started ice skating when she was three. She competed in the 1988 U.S. Championships in junior ice dancing with her partner David Schilling, coming in 13th. Her older brother and sister, Jeffrey and Jennifer, were the 1987 U.S. Junior Champions in ice dancing and competed internationally. When Benz was 14, she had a bad stress fracture and had to take time off. She grew up in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, graduating from Franklin Regional High School. She later graduated from New York University.

By 1989, with Benz’s figure skating career over, she turned to acting and got involved in the local theater, where she got a role in the play Street Law. Her first movie role was a small, credited, speaking part in “The Black Cat” segment of the Dario Argento/George A. Romero co-directed horror flick Two Evil Eyes (1990). A year later, she got a role on a TV show called Hi Honey, I’m Home (1991). The show was cancelled after two seasons. Benz filled out the 90s with guest shots on such series as Fox’s “Married… With Children” (1994) and “Sliders” (1996), ABC’s “Boy Meets World” and CBS’ “Diagnosis Murder” (both also 1996), before originating the role of vampire Darla on the popular supernatural series “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” (The WB) in 1997. 

Her one-off guest shot was turned into a recurring role, with Darla even making the jump to the spin-off “Angel” in 2000, with a recurring role that became regular beginning in the fall of 2001; she would continue to appear sporadically on the series through its final season in 2004. A smattering of fan sites devoted to Benz’s delightfully sinister Darla popped up on the Internet, with audiences responding well to the actress’ take on the very youthful looking 400-year-old vampire whose main occupation is torturing David Boreanaz’s eponymous bloodsucker cursed with a conscience. Her devilishly seductive performance also made her a favorite featured celebrity model in such “laddie” magazines as Maxim and FHM. With such forgettable short-lived sitcoms as Fox’s “Ask Harriet” (1998) and NBC’s “Payne” (1999) under her belt, Benz seemed to have better luck with supernatural TV drama with a longer running recurring stint on The WB’s “Roswell” from 1999-2000 as well as a featured role in the ABC TV-movie remake “Satan’s School for Girls” (2000) to her credit.

After graduating from high school, Julie entered New York University to study acting. After graduation, Julie moved to Los Angeles to further pursue her career and landed some small roles in movies and TV shows, including a guest appearance on an episode of Married with Children in 1994 and a role in the Aaron Spelling unaired TV pilot Cross Town Traffic. She also starred as Christie Lambert in another unaired TV pilot called Empire in 1995. She went on to guest star in many TV shows which include Hang Time, High Tide, Step by Step and Boy Meets World. She also had a small role in the TV movie The Barefoot Executive. She had an uncredited role in Black Sheep and guest appearances in the shows Diagnosis Murder, Sliders and The Single Guy. She played Kristy in the TV movie Hearts Adrift and a lead role as Julie Falcon in Darkdrive.

In 1996, Julie auditioned for the role of Buffy in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), but lost out to Sarah Michelle Gellar. However, she was offered a small role as a vampire girl in the unaired pilot in which she did such a good job that her part was expanded to a few more episodes in playing the vampire Darla. With that, her career had finally taken off. She guest starred in more TV shows like The Big Easy and Fame L.A. whilst getting a small, but memorable, role playing a receptionist in the movie As Good as It Gets (1997). She went on to star in the short spoof film Eating Las Vegas, TV Movie A Walton Easter and a small role in Inventing the Abbotts as a co-ed.

In 1998, she had a recurring role in the TV show Ask Harriet (though the show was cancelled and only 2 of her 5 appearances aired) then guest starred on Conrad Bloom and The King of Queens. She also starred in two movies, the popular dark comedy Jawbreaker as Marcie Fox and Dirt Merchant which premiered on September 19th 1999 on SightSound.com before landing a lead role in another TV show called Payne as Breeze O’Rourke whom is a proud virgin working at the Whispering Pines Inn and was similar to the Polly character from Fawlty Towers, the show was cancelled after one season (only 8 of the 9 episodes aired). She also had a recurring role on the show Roswell, starred in the TV movie Satan’s School for Girls and had a lead role in the horror movie parody Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth as Barbara.

She reprised her role as Darla in 2000 for the Buffy spin-off series Angel appearing in every season of the show for at least one episode. She had a funny role in the romantic comedy film The Brothers in which she was the only white person featured in the principal cast and was a Guest Host for the TV show Rendez-View. She was cast as Ellie Sparks in Glory Days and appeared in the unaired pilot; however she left the show. She guest starred on She Spies and was in the featured cast for the mini-series Taken as Kate Keys. She did various voices for the video game Hot Shots Golf Fore!, appeared in the short film The Midget Stays in the Picture and took over the role of Ursula for George of the Jungle 2.

Julie went on to guest star in Peacemakers, Coupling, Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Oliver Beene. She landed the lead role of Annie Garrett in the Hallmark TV movie The Long Shot. Benz also provided the voice of Miranda Keyes in the video game Halo 2, though she did not return to the role in the sequel Halo 3 as Bungie wanted to try a new direction with the Miranda Keyes voice by giving the character an accent, replaced by Justis Bolding. She played the lead role of Danielle in Bad Girls From Valley High a film shot in 2000 under the title of A Fate Totally Worse Than Death was released on DVD in 2005. She had a small role in the critically acclaimed TV movie Lackawanna Blues. In the Scifi Original Locusts: The 8th Plague she played the lead female role Vicky and she also appeared in the straight-to-DVD movie 8mm 2 as Lynn. The film was originally called The Velvet Side of Hell and was not supposed to be a sequel to 8MM. 

Julie then guest starred on popular shows like Supernatural, CSI: Miami, Law & Order and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She had a supporting role in a Swedish independent movie called Kill Your Darlings, a lead role in the Lifetime Movie Circle of Friends and joined the main cast of TV show Dexter as Rita Bennett. She plays the lead female Sarah in Rambo and she is also going to be the lead role in the fifth film of the popular Saw franchise, Saw V. She had a lead role in the sequel The Punisher: 

War Zone as Angela Donatelli. Benz’s career received a major boost when she was cast by producer Steven Spielberg in the highly rated SciFi Channel miniseries “Taken” (2002), playing the mother of an angelic-looking child (Dakota Fanning) who is actually the result of a generations-long series of extraterrestial experiments that have made her the key to the alien domination of earth. Next she took over the role of Ursula in the direct-to-video sequel “George of the Jungle 2″ (2003), then headlined the telepic “The Long Shot: Believe in Courage” (2004) as a jilted single mom who rebuilds her life by becoming involved in showing horsesbefore appearing the ensemble cast of the HBO adaptation of the play “Lackawana Blues” (2005). Benz was previously married to actor John Kassir. The date of the marriage was 30 May 1998 and she filed for divorce in December 2007.

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