Born in 1973 in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA.

There are places in the world where starving people still practice the familiar rain dance — they beat their drums to simulate thunder, bang firebrands together to create sparks that simulate lightning, and spray water into the air with their mouths to simulate rain. Sometimes the rain comes, sometimes it doesn't.

The most enthusiastic practitioners of this sort of sympathetic magic are not to be found in the pages of National Geographic, however, but in Femme Fatales, where certain obscure people starved for attention beat their own drums, toot their own horns, and otherwise imitate the trappings of celebrity with the hope that fame and adulation will rain down on them in abundance. Sometimes the fame comes, sometimes it doesn't.

For Christa Campbell, long an obscure model/actress whose biggest role to date is still “Young Bettie Page” in an old E! True Hollywood Stories, the fame dance might be starting to work.

Which is nothing short of amazing given the paucity of her resume on the one hand and the little drum-beating she's done on the other — all she did, it seems, is show up at premieres and pose in front of paparazzi as if she were a big star. (One of the fundamental principles of salesmanship preached in Boiler Room: “Act as if ” — i.e., act as if you're a big deal, and others might believe you.) And while this hasn't exactly resulted in a downpour of fame for Christa, auspicious dark clouds have nonetheless been gathering: in an episode of Rank, the once-famous Brooke Burke sought to discover Hollywood's most eligible bachelor by asking the opinion's of some of Hollywood's hottest young starlets — Christina Ricci, Eliza Dushku, and, as if she were in the same rank, Christa Campbell.

But then, why shouldn't she be in the same rank as Eliza or Christina? She's obviously beautiful, she's relatively young, she can probably act as well (or as badly) as any other over-rated Hollywood nymphet, and she's no stranger to the megalomania of superstardom. (Among her self-admitted defects, she has a tendency to get a pretty big head.) She may not have the charisma of a Reese Witherspoon, but why couldn't she be the new Shannon Elizabeth or Denise Richards? Or at least be the new Nikki Cox?

To borrow the end of every episode of History's Mysteries, we may never know the answer to why some actress/models like Christa Campbell, Angelyne (the busty blonde on the ancient Hollywood billboard) and others continue to languish in the Phantom Zone of obscurity while others go on to fame and fortune. But if Christa's primitive fame dancing can fool E! into thinking she's a bigger star than she really is, she might be able to fool someone else — someone who could give her a bigger, better part in a film than she's been getting.

It could happen. It won't — we'll sooner see her story added to a new edition of Frazer's The Golden Bough — but it could happen.

(If it can happen, it had better happen soon, before she gets too old for anyone to care, for when the meat-beating stops, all the drum-beating in the world won't help her.)

Also sprach Golem.
(More recent commentary below)

Christa Campbell in Next Month’s Playboy
Thursday, August 23, 2007
The headline across the top of the September issue of Playboy reads “THRILLER! CHRISTA CAMPBELL NAKED”. And as a B-movie aficionado, I guess I’m duly thrilled ... but is anyone else?... Read more

Film

• 88 Minutes (2006) .... Suzy Q
• Lonely Hearts (2006) .... Sara Long
• Relative Strangers (2006) .... Big guy’s girl
• The Wicker Man (2006) .... Donna
• 2001 Maniacs (2005) .... Milk Maiden
• Death by Engagement (2005) .... Stacy
• End Game (2005) .... Mistress
• Mansquito (2005) .... Liz
• Mozart and the Whale (2005) .... Therapist
• Malibu's Most Wanted (2003) .... Angry Feminist
• The New Guy (2002) .... Tommy Lee's girlfriend [uncredited]
• Spring Break Lawyer (2001; MTV) .... Limo Babe Defendant
• The Crew (2000) .... Nurse
• Red Handed (1999)

• Red Letters (2000; HBO) .... Lauren

• Black Hole (2006) .... Caudwell
• Deadly Water (2006) .... Emily
• D.O.A. (1999) .... Kathy
• From Pinup to Sex Queen: Bettie Page: The E! True Hollywood Story (1998) .... Young Bettie Page

• Summerland: “Pilot” (Jun 1, 2004) .... Model
• Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: “Sabrina Unplugged” (Nov 1, 2002) .... Tina
• JKX: The Jamie Kennedy Experiment: “Cell phone” (2002) .... Jamies girlfriend
• The X Show (Feb 22, 2000) .... Host
• The X Show (Feb 4, 2000) .... Host
• Unhappily Ever After (Jan 15, 2000) .... Kirsten
• Thunderbox (2000) .... Host
• All That (1995)

• Lingerie Passion (2002) .... Model
• Erotic Confessions: “Gone Skiing” (Apr 16, 1999) .... Lodge clerk
• Erotic Confessions: Volume 6 (1996) .... Megan [segment “Party for Two”]
• Erotic Confessions: “The Painting” (1996) .... Maid
• Erotic Landscapes (1994)

Miscellaneous

• Christa Campbell Filmography
  Internet Movie Database
  Always up-to-date filmography
• TheBettiePage.com
  News, pictures, and merchandise regarding the pin-up legend

Christa Campbell at Actresses A - Z