Laura Harring

About Laura Harring

Laura Elena Harring (née Herring Martínez, formerly Gräfin von Bismarck-Schönhausen; born March 3, 1964) is an American actress and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss USA 1985 and later began acting in television and film. She is best known for her lead role as Rita in the 2001 movie Mulholland Drive. Her other films include The Forbidden Dance (1990), John Q (2002), Willard (2003), The Punisher (2004), The King (2005), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), Ghost Son (2007), The Caller (2008), Drool (2009), Sex Ed (2014), and Inside (2016). She also played Carla Greco in General Hospital (1990–1991), Paula Stevens on Sunset Beach (1997), and Rebecca "Becca" Doyle in The Shield (2006).

Harring is of Austrian, German, and Mexican descent. Her mother, María Elena Martínez-Cairo, is a Mexican spiritual teacher, real estate investor, and former secretary. Her father, Raymond Herring, was a Mexican developer and organic farmer of Austrian-German descent. In 1987, she married German nobleman Count Carl-Eduard von Bismarck-Schönhausen, great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck. They divorced after two years of marriage in 1989.