Spartan Profiles: Karen Steiner

BEYOND BAYWATCH

             They look at first sight like Baywatch regulars, and indeed, Karen Steiner, ’87, and her twin sister Kara, ’87, did guest star on the television show. “We played troublemakers,” Steiner says with a chuckle. “We disrupted David Hasselhoff and his impending romance with Yasmine Bleeth.”

            Although Karen and Kara have had many TV roles on shows like Team Knightrider, Vengeance Unlimited and The Pretender, and also starred in many ads, notably ones for Budweiser, Pringles and Planter’s Peanuts, they have now gone solo. Karen lives in Vacaville, between Sacramento and San Francisco, where she’s renovating a Victorian house while pursuing a fulltime-acting career. Kara has opted to become a fulltime special education teacher in Los Angeles.

            Natives of Chicago, the twins followed their brother John, ’83, to MSU, and then followed him again to Hermosa Beach, CA, where he works for Hughes Aircraft. “We really enjoyed surfing,” says Karen. “We were asked to audition for Sweet Valley High, which needed twin sisters, but did not get the role. We were approached by an agent, and soon began doing commercials.” However, they landed many other “twin babes” roles and before long they were partying with Hollywood celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

            Karen and Kara also appeared on Fox’s Magic Johnson Hour, when Earvin approached them and said, “Do I know you from somewhere?” The answer was “Yes, at MSU!” Karen, who graduated from Solano College’s Actor Training Program, remembers taking film courses at MSU from Erik Lunde and the late Jim Cash. “They were fabulous,” she says. “Their classes were always full.”

            She still raves about MSU. “Those were the best four years of my life,” she says. “I came back every Homecoming for about five years after I left. After I got married (1996 to Floyd Ray), I told my husband that if we were going to have kids, they’d go to MSU.”