Carla Gugino is an American actress who has worked in many hit television series and movies. She is best known for her role as Ingrid Cortez in the Spy Kids trilogy and the title character of the TV series Karen Sisco. She started her career with modeling and later shifted her focus on the small and big screen alike; both of them earned her fame and recognition.
Carla was born on August 29, 1971 in Sarasota, Florida to an Irish-Italian father and a mother of English descent. The family relocated to Paradise, California, when Carla was just four years old. She was a straight-A student and graduated as a valedictorian. When she was just 15 years old, she was approached by a modeling agency in San Diego which made her shift base to New York. Despite, her short height of just 5’4’’, she walked the ramp for many labels. But the experience of living life in fast lane was too much for her and she moved back to California to finish her studies. Here she got a good piece of advice from her aunt; model Carol Merril who is best known for her work on Let's Make a Deal game show. She asked Carla to get herself enrolled in acting classes and she promptly prepared herself under drama coach Gene Bua in Los Angeles.
Career in Movies
Gugino soon broke into the acting scene with her debut movie, Troop Beverly Hills (1986) which was a comedy. This was followed by tits and bits parts in other movies, but nothing substantial came her way until 1993 when she was selected to play the role of Norma in the Robert De Niro/Leonardo Di Caprio drama This Boy's Life. In 1995, she worked in Miami Rhapsody. After that, she tried her hands at small screen with a co-starring role on the Michael J. Fox sitcom SpinCity. But after just 12 weeks, Carla started missing her film life and moved back to movie making, leaving the show in middle. Besides the show, her other television credits were ALF, Doogie Howser, M.D., Saved by the Bell, Who's the Boss? , The Wonder Years, short lived CBS science fiction series, Threshold and the last season of Chicago Hope. Incidentally, Gugino also featured in the Bon Jovi's 1994 song video "Always".
In 1998, she starred opposite Nicolas Cage in Brian De Palma's action thriller Snake Eyes and thriller, Judas Kiss which she also co-produced. But she got recognition on an international basis with her role as Ingrid Cortez in the very popular Spy Kids (2001). She went on to star in the two sequels of the movie, Spy Kids 2: Island Of Lost Dreams (2002) and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003).
Her other notable work includes of art-house film Lovelife(1997), along with Saffron Burrows and Sherilyn Fenn, Son in Law (1993), The One (2001) with Jet Li, Sin City (2005) and Night at the Museum (2006).
The lady has also dabbled in theatre with an off-Broadway play Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams opposite actress Blythe Danner in 2006. She has recently appeared in few episodes of the series, Entourage and also worked in one of the many movies written and directed by her long time boyfriend, Sebastian Gutierrez, Rise: Blood Hunter (2007) which has Lucy Liu in lead. Showing her daring spirit, this lady has also appeared Nude on the cover of Allure magazine’s 2007 issue.
Her future projects include a starring role in the upcoming movie, Watchmen where she lays Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Spectre.
