Julie Benz was born May 1, 1972 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a surgeon father and a figure ice skater mother. Following in her mother's footsteps, Benz began skating at the age of 3 and was ranked 13th at the 1988 U.S. Junior Ice Dancing Championships with her partner, David Schilling. When an injury forced her to give up ice skating at age 16, Benz decided to try her hand at theater and took up acting at New York University. She moved to Los Angeles after graduating and landed small parts in various television shows like Married with Children, Sliders, Diagnosis Murder and the Aaron Spelling pilot, Cross Town Traffic. In 1997, she and fellow
Angel co-star
Charisma Carpenter both auditioned for the role of Buffy on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer . They both lost to
Sarah Michelle Gellar but Carpenter got cast as Cordelia Chase and Benz got called back to play the vampire Darla.
Darla, played by Julie Benz on Angel, was once a prostitute in the Virginia Colony before being transformed into a vampire by the Master, who is the self-proclaimed lord of the vampires. She was responsible for siring Angel, who became her lover and companion for over a hundred years and is also the mother of Angel's son, Connor.
(Photo courtesy of The WB)