Fact File: Denise Katrina Smith (Vanity) Born January 06, 1959, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

The role of Laura Charles, high priestess of music video-disco jockeys, whose domain is the night club/TV studio Seventh Heaven, is played by Vanity, in her first screen role.

Described in Louis Venosta's screenplay, Laura Charles is "a gorgeously sexy beauty with a sultry ocean breeze for a voice and a drop dead presence on stage, a fresh, lovely young woman." These words were not written explicitly with Vanity in mind but very well could have been!

Vanity was an ex girlfriend of Prince and at the time had just signed to Motown as a solo recording artist and whose first album was being cut and produced for the company as she began her role. Her one previous album, made with a different label, was called "Vanity 6" after the name of the group of which she was a member.


"Moving from city to city [when growing up] was no particular trauma to me, unless you call cartons of milk and David's cookies for dinner a trauma. But, no, I've been used to moving all my life. I come from a family of kids who were shunted about, between my father and my stepmother, and my real mother, and my grandparents who lived on a farm. I used to drive a tractor. I grew up feeding ducks, and chickens, and pigs, and horses. I had 17 dogs. I may not have been the farmer's daughter, but granddaughter, yes"

-Vanity



"Vanity 6," composed of two other women and herself, was a Minneapolis-based group, part of the musical "family" of rock star Prince. As a Prince-linked musical ensemble, "Vanity 6" shared tours with Prince. A number of songs on her new album were written or co-written by Vanity, as was "Seventh Heaven" from the soundtrack, which se performs herself during the movie.

Vanity was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada where she sang in church choirs. Her early ambition was to be not a singer or actress but a lawyer. Fate intervened, however, and she became first a model, then a singer, songwriter, performer, and then actress.

She left home at the age of 15 and went first to Toronto, then to Montreal. At the age of 18 she moved to New York City where she signed with the Zoli Model Agency.

Asked when she began to realize that she could make it professionally as a singer, she replied, in her Last Dragon dressing room, "Last week?" And as a songwriter? "The week before." And who encouraged her in her profession? "Little King Kong," she smiled. "And Jamie Schoop, my manager"

Asked at the time whether she had any long-range or short-range marriage plans she replied: "Medium-range. Yes, I'd like to get married someday, but first you have to find the time for marriage. Not to mention the guy. Right now both that kind of time and that kind of man are in hiding."

She earlier had spent six months as a model in Japan, an experience she found "New, strange, very exciting. She has never had any formal acting training, although the camera operator of The Last Dragon, Peter Salim, said of her, "I knew the first day, the first time I looked at her through the camera, that she could make it sit up and take notice, and make it keep noticing. The lady has instinct, presence, ability. All she needs is someone to bring it out; in other words, direction.

After The Last Dragon she appeared in a number of movies, notably "Action Jackson" and did a number of appearances on TV shows like "Miami Vice" and later (in the 90's) "Silk Stalkings" and "Highlander". Her last film appearance seems to have been in 1993 in "Da Vinci's War".

In 1996, she was hired as Director of Public Relations for The Genesis Technology Group.

Goldilocks88 said:

Doesn't Apollonia (who plays the part Vanity should've played) call Prince "King Kong" in the love scene of Purple Rain? Also, I believe Vanity's song "Wild Animal" is about Prince (she describes him and their relationship), and in the song she calls him, "my little King Kong."