American actress Eva LaRue was born on December 27, 1966 in Long Beach, California. Of mixed descents—she is part-Puerto Rican, part-French, part-Dutch and part-Scottish—she began acting when she was six years old, and was later a teenage beauty queen, winning local pageants. Before her first breakthrough role, she’s made the rounds of television shows, appearing in series like Freddy’s Nightmares, Perfect Strangers, Santa Barbara, Dallas and Dark Justice.
LaRue became known to audiences in 1993, when she joined the cast of the daytime soap All My Children. She played the role of Maria Santos, the new neurosurgeon at Pine Valley Hospital, who becomes involved—and eventually marries—journalist Edmund Gray (John Callahan). The character was killed off in 1997, after a plane crash, but she returned in 2002 as Maureen Gorman, a person who turns out to have lost all her memories five years before—and is actually Maria Santos Gray. She was nominated in 1997 for a Daytime Emmy because of the role; in 2004, she was nominated for another Daytime Emmy, for Outstanding Original Song, for a song she sang as accompaniment for a scene in the soap.
LaRue also played supporting roles in other television shows. She played police officer Brooke Doherty, the once-wife of Jimmy Doherty (Eddie Cibrian), in Third Watch. She also had a minor role in the drama series Soul Food, which was inspired by the film of the same name. In 2005, she joined the cast of the crime drama CSI: Miami, where she played the role of Natalia Boa Vista. Her character was thought to be a DNA analyst for unsolved cases, but was later revealed to be an FBI informant who is assigned to help build a case against Horatio Caine (David Caruso) and his team. She was later discovered to have been actually defending the lab, and despite being still ostracized after the discovery, she is later accepted as a member of the team. She became a full-time cast member from the fifth season.
-Being on a television series, combined with the effort to maintain a regular fitness routine, together with being a single mom of a five year old, can be kind of harrowing.
-Showing the world you're having fun is what makes you stand out.
