Her childhood was filled with change. Sheryl Ann (later "Sherilyn") was the youngest of 3 kids. She and her two older brothers were raised by their musician mom, Arlene Quatro, who moved the family around Michigan. She and her mom went to L.A. when Sherilyn was 17. Within a couple of years, Sherilyn was working in TV and film, with multiple projects every year since 1984. Sherilyn, the petite (5' 4") beauty, had a small but memorable part in the gender-bender flick Just One of the Guys (1985). Her biggest claim to fame would come in 1990, when she got the prize role of Audrey in "Twin Peaks" (1990) after reading for all the female leads. Sherilyn made a memorable impression as the cherry stem-twisting siren. This was her breakout role; even now she says of her "Twin Peaks" (1990) experience: "It still makes me feel kind of proud and special to be part of something like that". Her most over-the-top movie role was as the armless, legless star of Boxing Helena (1993) (a role which Kim Basinger backed out of). Back on TV, Sherilyn plays the juicy part of Billie Frank, a former soap actress confronting alcohol and other demons in "Rude Awakening" (1998) on Showtime. A frequent visitor on the set is her son, Myles. On the set, Sherilyn is noted for having a quirky sense of humor and a joie de vivre. Off-screen, Sherilyn is proud of the friendship she has maintained with her ex-hubby Toulouse Holliday, a musician and film technician. Sherilyn lives with her son, Myles, and two cats: Ophelia and Redmond. Sherilyn practices meditative kundalini yoga, and every room in her house has féng shui elements-- crystals in one corner, water in another. Sherilyn enjoys biking, swimming and cooking, and of course being a mom: "After I had my son, I found life much funnier and brighter".
The sultry, versatile Sherilyn Fenn was born into a family of musicians (her mother is keyboard player Arlene Quatro, her aunt is rock-star Suzi Quatro, her grandfather Art Quatro was a jazz musician and her father Leo Fenn was the manager of such bands as Suzy Quatro's 'The Pleasure Seekers', 'Alice Cooper', and 'The Billion Dollar Babies'), of Italian and Hungarian descent on her mother's side and Irish and French descent on her father's side. Sherilyn traveled a lot with her mother and two older brothers before the family settled in Los Angeles when she was 17. Fenn, who says herself she's demure, didn't want to start with a new school again, and began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute instead.Sherilyn Fenn began her career with a number of B-movies including The Wild Life (1984), teen-fantasy movie The Wraith (1986) and skater film Thrashin' (1986). She had a memorable part in the cult teen-comedy Just One of the Guys (1985) in which she tries to seduce teenage-girl-disguised-as-a-boy Joyce Hyser. Fenn landed her first starring role as an engaged heiress to an old Southern family who falls for carnival worker Richard Tyson in Zalman King's erotic drama film Two Moon Junction (1988), after which she said she wanted to hide for a year.Fenn won her most outstanding role and made an indelible impression when she was cast by David Lynch, Mark Frost and Johanna Ray as the tantalizing, reckless Audrey Horne, the high-school femme fatale from the critically acclaimed cult TV series. The character of Audrey was one of the most popular with fans, in particular for her unrequited love for FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan), her style from the '50s (with her saddle shoes, plaid skirts and tight sweaters), and a memorable scene in which she knotted a cherry stem in her mouth. In the show's second season, when the idea of pairing Audrey and Cooper was abandoned, Audrey was paired with other characters like Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and John Justice Wheeler (Billy Zane). Shortly after shooting Twin Peaks' pilot episode, David Lynch gave her a small but impressive part in Wild at Heart (1990) as a girl injured in a car wreck, walking with a windshield through her head on Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern's way. "I just pictured her being able to do this," said Lynch of the scene, "she's like a broken China doll." David Lynch, who once described Sherilyn Fenn as "five feet of heaven in a ponytail," said about her: "She's a mysterious girl and I think that actresses like her who have a mystery - where there's something hiding beneath the surface - are the really interesting ones."After two nominations (Emmy and Golden Globe) and a pictorial in Playboy magazine, Fenn was propelled to stardom and became a major sex symbol. She chose to focus on widening her range of roles and was determined to avoid typecasting. "They've offered me every variation on Audrey Horne. None of which were as good or as much fun." She turned down the Audrey Horne spin-off series that was offered to her, and unlike most of the cast, chose not to return for the prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), as she was then shooting Of Mice and Men (1992). Sherilyn turned to the independent world, to manage to carve out a career on her own terms as a character actress, and imposed her old Hollywood-style beauty (with her lily-white skin, vertiginous boomerang eyebrows, beauty mark next to her left eye and topaz eyes) with many varied roles. Fenn starred in the neo-noir black comedy Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel (1992) as a sultry, seductive femme fatale, opposite Whip Hubley and David Hewlett. She played John Dillinger's girlfriend Billie Frechette in ABC's gangster movie Dillinger (1991) (TV) opposite Mark Harmon. Her acting coach Roy London chose her to star in his directorial debut Diary of a Hitman (1991) (costarring Sharon Stone, also one of London's alumni), in which she plays a mother determined to protect her child from hit-man Forest Whitaker. According to Fenn, the turning point in her career was when she met Roy London in 1990, with whom she learned "to find the roles that you're passionate about, that speak to you on some level and which will help you grow on some level," which has then become her line of conduct. In 1992 she played a sad and lonely country wife, desperately in need to talk to somebody in Gary Sinise's film adaptation of Of Mice and Men (1992) opposite Sinise and John Malkovich. "Sherilyn's one of the reasons we got such a great ovation at Cannes," said Sinise. "Gary Sinise was one of the first people who didn't see me like a lot of other people did," she said "It was a wonderful experience. Horton Foote adapted the novel and he fleshed out my character, and he made her much, much more." The same year saw her starring in John Mackenzie's Ruby (1992), as small-town stripper/singer Sheryl Ann DuJean (a fictional character inspired by the women around John Kennedy, notably Marilyn Monroe), alongside Danny Aiello and Arliss Howard. In 1993 she starred in the romantic comedy Three of Hearts (1993) as Kelly Lynch and William Baldwin's love interest, and Carl Reiner's detective film parody Fatal Instinct (1993) as Armand Assante's devoted secretary and Sean Young and Kate Nelligan's rival. Fenn gave an impressive performance in the controversial Boxing Helena (1993), directed by David Lynch's daughter Jennifer Chambers Lynch as a narcissistic seductress, amputated and imprisoned by desperately in love Julian Sands, who makes her become his personal Venus de Milo in an effort to possess her. She showed great range and courage in taking the part of Helena which was a way for her to avoid being type-cast, with a radically different role from what she'd done in the past. "I like taking risks and I decided to put every bit of me into the role," she said. Both Lynch and Fenn were proud of their work in it but the film - which was overshadowed by the lawsuits against Kim Basinger after she dropped out - ultimately was a critical and commercial failure. After a short break during which she married guitarist/songwriter Toulouse Holliday and gave birth to a son, Sherilyn Fenn portrayed actress Elizabeth Taylor in NBC's Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story (1995) (TV). "Playing Elizabeth Taylor was probably the hardest job I've ever done." During the shooting, she fought to keep integrity in the script, in order to accurately portray Taylor. She also portrayed Potiphar's wife Zulaikha in Showtime's biblical TV movie Slave of Dreams (1995) (TV) opposite Adrian Pasdar and Edward James Olmos. The film was directed by multi-award winning Robert M. Young and produced by Martha De Laurentiis and Dino De Laurentiis.In the late 1990s, Fenn's career took a downturn. Hollywood didn't appreciate her frankness ("when I go to an audition and I don't like the script, they know it") and she began to be more and more uninspired by traditional Hollywood movies. "I was a brat", she said. "I didn't like anything, even then. It was crazy, I was very picky. In other words, I didn't take advantage of what was happening necessarily then. But they also have a way of putting you in a category. I wasn't into playing the Hollywood game. I only responded to certain things." She then began to alternate TV movies and small independent films. In 1996 she joined the winning ensemble cast in the insightful romantic comedy Lovelife (1997) as Jon Tenney's low self-esteemed girlfriend. The film was written and directed by "Tru Calling" (2003)'s creator Jon Harmon Feldman and costarred Matt Letscher, Bruce Davison, Saffron Burrows and Carla Gugino. Fenn also starred in the romantic comedy Just Write (1997) as Hollywood tour bus driver Jeremy Piven's dream actress who mistakes him for a famous screenwriter. She starred in the 1998 British claustrophobic psychological thriller Darkness Falls (1999) as Tim Dutton's rich, neglected wife, sequestered by despaired Ray Winstone, who wants to understand the events that led to his wife ending up in a coma. While shooting the film in the UK in 1997, Sherilyn hesitated to settle in London in order to start a European career, as she felt tired of Hollywood, and finally decided to stay in the USA.Fenn's return to television was the lead role in Showtime's sitcom "Rude Awakening" (1998) as Billie Frank, an alcoholic ex-soap actress, based upon executive producer/creator Claudia Lonow's experience, who tries to go sober and become a writer but continues to struggle with her self-destructive habits. Sherilyn reteamed with Chris Penn and Adrian Pasdar for Pasdar's art-house directorial debut, the neo-noir Cement (1999), a contemporary re-telling of "Othello", in which she played a tempting, thoughtless femme fatale, the wife of jealous corrupt cop Chris Penn. The film, which won Best Picture awards on the festival circuit, was written by "Farscape" (1999)'s screenwriter Justin Monjo and also starred Jeffrey Wright and Henry Czerny. She also reteamed with actor/director Bruce Davison for his award-winning family comedy, Off Season (2001) (TV) alongside Rory Culkin, Hume Cronyn and Adam Arkin. In 2002 she was cast as Harley Quinn/Harleen Quinzel in WB's "Birds of Prey" (2002) but was replaced by Mia Sara before the series began (Fenn appeared in the unaired pilot episode but dropped out after the network decided to reshoot the episode, due to scheduling conflicts, as the show's creators realized that the character of Harley Quinn would need to be a bigger part of the show, for which Fenn was unavailable). She played a beautiful criminal in $windle (2002), opposite undercover cop Tom Sizemore. Fenn had small roles in the critically acclaimed The United States of Leland (2003) as a woman who represents happiness and joie de vivre to Ryan Gosling, and in Lisa Cholodenko's Cavedweller (2004) (TV) opposite Kyra Sedgwick. She co-starred in 2005 in the ultimately unreleased 'Lesser of Three Evils' alongside alongside Ho Sung Pak and Peter Greene. In 2006, Fenn starred in Whitepaddy (2006) alongside Lisa Bonet and Hill Harper, and co-starred in Emily Skopov's Novel Romance (2006), opposite Traci Lords and Paul Johansson. She was also cast as the female lead in ABC's "Three Moons Over Milford" (2005) but was replaced by Elizabeth McGovern. Shortly after shooting the "Dukes of Hazzard" prequel, The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007) (TV), Fenn stepped behind the camera for the first time and directed in Pittsburgh a documentary film about child enrichment program CosmiKids and its founder Judy Julin.Sherilyn Fenn guest-starred in numerous TV series like "21 Jump Street" (1987) opposite her then-fiancé Johnny Depp and in a 1995 episode of HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" (1989) directed by Robert Zemeckis, alongside Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, in which she played the lover of Humphrey Bogart, who appeared in the episode via CGI special effects. In a 1997 episode of "Friends" (1994) she was Matthew Perry's wooden-legged girlfriend. She appeared in a 2001 episode of "The Outer Limits" (1995) in which her character was duplicated, and played a manipulative woman in a 2002 episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (1999). She joined former co-stars Jeremy Piven on "Cupid" (1998), and Mark Harmon on "Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service" (2003) in 2004. In 2005 Fenn appeared on "The 4400" (2004) in which she plays Jean DeLynn Baker, a 4400 who has the ability to grow toxin-emitting spores on her hands. She appeared on "Judging Amy" (1999) in 2005, and on "CSI: Miami" (2002) in 2006. Fenn was one of several former Twin Peaks stars, such as Dana Ashbrook and Mädchen Amick, to have a recurring role on WB's "Dawson's Creek" (1998). She also had a recurring role on Fox's "Boston Public" (2000). She played two different roles on WB's "Gilmore Girls" (2000), originally appearing in a season 3 episode, which was the pilot for a California-set spin-off titled "Windward Circle", which would have starred Milo Ventimiglia, Rob Estes and Fenn (the network dropped the project citing cost issues due to filming on location in Venice, California). Fenn reappeared in the 6th season as a different character, Anna Nardini, the ex-girlfriend of Luke Danes (played by Scott Patterson) and protective mother to his daughter April.
