The actress Erika Eleniak looked unrecognizable when she was spotted in Los Angeles this week.
The 55-year-old film and television star is best known for starring on Baywatch for three years, from 1989 to 1992.
She played Shauni McLain, the original female lead in the show’s first two seasons.
Although Baywatch — which suffered the tragic loss of one of its stars earlier this year — was unloved by critics and was even canceled by its original network NBC after just one season, the David Hasselhoff–starring series managed to live on in syndication for ten more seasons.
Before her stint on Baywatch, Erika made her film debut in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and she later changed up her image as a Playboy Playmate later that decade.
Now, more than four decades after she got her big break in Hollywood, DailyMail.com takes a look at what Erika looks like now.
The actress and one-time model was pictured out in Los Angeles this week as she took her adorable black-and-white dog for a walk.
Erika looked worlds apart from the clean-cut blonde who previously graced television screens across the nation.
The most obvious changes was the sleeves of tattoos on her arms running from under her T-shirt sleeves all the way to her hands.
The ink was a striking departure from her Baywatch days, when she showed off plenty of unmarked skin.
Erika’s tattoos suited her casual outfit, which included a black graphic T-shirt featuring the fairy Tinker Bell from Disney’s 1953 animated film Peter Pan.
‘Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust,’ it read, referencing a line from the movie.
She kept the low-key vibe going with black cargo shorts that had a rainbow with pink, white and gray stripes running down one leg, and she matched the stripes with her pink slide sandals.
The actress accessorized with a black leather hip bag and wore her shoulder-length blond hair parted down the middle and turned up at the ends.
Erika explained how she changed up her appearance with tattoos during the most recent episode of the Still Here Hollywood podcast with Steve Kmetko.
She revealed that she started her tattoos on her back sometime in her ‘late 20s,’ which would have been after her stint on Baywatch ended at the start of the third season.
‘Every tattoo that I have is significant of something,’ she said, citing on that had her mother’s name for example.
‘I love tattoos. I love that my body is a canvas to tell my stories,’ she added.
Erika was born in Glendale, California, to parents of Ukrainian, Estonian and German descent whose family had previously settled in Canada.
She made a memorable star turn in feature films in 1982 when she was cast as a girl who kisses the film’s child star, Henry Thomas, during a classroom scene in which he’s psychically influenced by the eponymous alien.
Her next film role was in 1983’s Imps*, which only received a belated release in 2009.
In 1987, she began appearing on television with guest roles on Silver Spoons, Still the Beaver and Boys Will Be Boys.
After a multi-year absence, she returned to film to play one of the victims in 1988’s gross-out remake of The Blob, which is now considered a science fiction horror cult classic.
She followed it up with roles in bigger budget films, including the Steven Seagal action film Under Siege, the 1993 film adaptation of The Beverly Hillbillies, the 1995 rom-com A Pyromaniac’s Love Story and the 1996 Tales From The Crypt spinoff film Bordello Of Blood.
Her subsequent films in the late ’90s, 2000s and 2020s were less frequent and were small-budget independent productions.
Erika’s most recently film was 2024’s Lolipop Gang, in which she appeared as herself five years after her previous film role.
As she was starting to appear in more high-profile films, she also had a three-episode run opposite Scott Baio on Charles In Charge in 1989 before beginning her stint on Baywatch.
She appeared in the show’s TV movie pilot Panic At Malibu Pier as Shauni McClain before joining the main cast for the first two seasons.
Her character started up a relationship with Billy Warlock’s character Eddie Kramer, and they married at the beginning of the third season and moved to Australia, ending her time on the series.
The actors were also engaged in real life at one point.
The beginning of her Baywatch career in 1989 coincided with her appearing on the cover of the July 1989 issue of Playboy Magazine.
Just before her stint on Baywatch, Erika appeared as a Playmate on the July 1989 cover of Playboy Magazine when her roommate, a model for the magazine, introduced her to its photo editor, who encouraged her to model.
Erika said she became known as ‘the difficult’ Playmate in the late ’80s because she found shooting for the magazine uncomfortable and bristled at ideas from photographers.
‘I viewed it as a modeling job,’ she clarified on Still Here Hollywood, and she stressed that she always considered herself ‘an actress who did Playboy,’ rather than a real Playmate.
Erika later married the bodybuilder Philip Golgia in 1998, but they divorced after just six months. In the early 2000s she began dating the film worker Roch Daigle, and they moved to Calgary, Canada, before tying the knot in 2005 and later welcoming a daughter together.
Erika’s most recent project was narrating an eight-episode podcast series, The Murder Years, from last year, according to IMDb.
