Joan Severance

In 2006 Severance appeared in My Network TV telenovela Wicked Wicked Games. She was also in shows like CSI: Miami and One Tree Hill. In 2013 she was in American Horror Story: Asylum. In 2014 she was on Celebrity Wife Swap with Robin Leach.

Severance was also on the covers of the January 1990 and November 1992 issues of Playboy magazine, both featuring her in a nude pictorial. More recently, Joan, at age 52, appeared in a six-page editorial along with an interview in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of Genlux Magazine.

Her most notable role was a villainess on the TV series Wiseguy; she played half of a brother/sister crime team (the other half was played by Kevin Spacey) to great acclaim. Their partnership was reprised in See No Evil, Hear No Evil. In the early 1990s, Severance appeared as Samantha "Sam" Dooley, the Martian Belle, in two training videos for Virtual World Entertainment alongside other actors such as Cheech Marin, "Weird Al" Yankovic, R. Lee Ermey, and Judge Reinhold. From 1998 to 1999, Severance played Security Chief Camille Hunter on the Aaron Spelling television series Love Boat: The Next Wave on UPN.

In 1986, Severance began auditioning for acting bits at the urging of her friend Robin Leach. She made her debut in a small role in the first Lethal Weapon film in 1987. She usually takes the femme fatale roles in lower budget horror and murder-mystery movies, most notably Lake Consequence (1993), Criminal Passion (1994) and Payback (1995). She was featured alongside Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the 1989 comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and as Hulk Hogan's love interest, Samantha N. Moore, in the wrestling film No Holds Barred (1989). She had leading roles in Roger Corman's Black Scorpion (1995). She starred in and co-produced a sequel, Black Scorpion II: Aftershock (1997), and The Last Seduction II (1999).

Severance married fellow model Eric Milan in 1977. They separated amicably in 1984. According to Severance they "just grew apart".

Joan Severance was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Martha and John C. Severance. Her father was an IBM Systems Manager who had to move frequently around the world. "By the time I was 11," said Severance, "we'd lived in 12 different places." She and her family also lived in Libya, but in 1967 had to flee the country because of the Six-Day War. They left the Middle East and returned to the United States, settling in Houston, Texas.

Joan Marie Severance (born December 23, 1958) is an American actress and former fashion model.