Laura Harring made history as the first Latina to be crowned Miss USA in 1985. A year after her reign, the striking brunette was married to a German count and had begun her acting career playing Raul Julia’s wife in the NBC TV-movie “The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory” (1987). After clashing with her husband over her desire to pursue an acting career, Harring obtained a divorce and landed the lead in “The Forbidden Dance” (1990) and a one-year (1990-91) stint on the ABC daytime serial “General Hospital”. Her career really took off, though, after she landed one of the leads in the David Lynch pilot “Mulholland Dr.” in 1999. When ABC passed on the project, Lynch received funding from producer Alain Sarde and StudioCanal to expand the material into a feature film which was released to glowing reviews in 2001.
