Actress Christa Miller was born on May 28, 1964 in New York City. The daughter of model Bonnie Trompeter, she began her career as a child model, making her television debut when she was just three months old. She had to put her modeling career on hiatus when she underwent surgery to remove a benign bone tumor. She resumed modeling shortly after, but she started taking acting lessons, and gave up modeling altogether when she moved to Los Angeles.

She made her acting debut in 1985, on an episode of Kate & Allie (where her aunt, Susan Saint James, starred). After appearing as a guest on Seinfeld, Northern Exposure and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as well as a few television movies, she got her biggest break when she was cast on The Drew Carey Show. She was one of the comedy’s major characters—Kate O’Brien, friend and later love interest of Drew Carey—and was on board through the sitcom’s most popular points, as well as when it started to drop in prominence.

Miller left the show in 2002, when she took two projects overseen by her husband, producer Bill Lawrence. She took a recurring role in the medical comedy Scrubs, as Perry’s former wife Jordan Sullivan; she also lent her voice in the short-lived comedy Clone High. In 2008, she took a role in the miniseries The Andromeda Strain. She is set to star in the upcoming series Cougar Town.