This Day in Horror: Happy Birthday Vanity
Born on this day in 1959: actress and singer Vanity
Born Denise Matthews, the name Vanity was given to her by Prince, whom she met while attending the American Music Awards with Rick James. She and Prince became romantically involved, and he put her at the front of a girl group, Vanity 6.
After years of modeling, her first acting role was as Merry in the Canadian slasher flick Terror Train, about a group of medical students who are being hunted during a New Year’s celebration on a train. It was a small role and her character lives. She starred as the eponymous star in Tanya’s Island, a Z-grade movie in which she is trapped in a love triangle between her abusive boyfriend and a man-ape. For both of these, she was credited as D.D. Winters.
I will always know her from the episode of Friday the 13th: The Series entitled “The Secret Agenda of Mesmer’s Bauble.” She played Angelica, a pop singer who was the obsession of a geeky music clerk. He uses a cursed necklace to not only get close to Angelica, but to actually become her. Vanity underwent some impressive prosthetics for the role.
An addiction to crack-cocaine led to renal failure in the 1990s, during which she was not expected to live. But she did live, and received a kidney transplant. During this time, she became a born-again Christian, turned her back on her Vanity persona and got rid of everything associated with her “former” life. She turned to Evangelical preaching, and lived as Denise until her death in 2016.
Categorized:News This Day in Horror
