Julie Ann Strain (February 18, 1962 – January 10, 2021) was an American actress and model. She was chosen by '' Penthouse'' as

Pet of the Month This is a list of the models who have appeared in the American edition of '' Penthouse'' magazine and were either named Pet of the Month or Pet of the Year from September 1969 to the present. Pet of the Year names are in bold type and are typic ...

in June 1991 and Pet of the Year in 1993. Her biggest mainstream acting role was Julie, the protagonist in '' Heavy Metal 2000''.

Early life

Strain was born in

Concord, California Concord ( ) is the largest city in Contra Costa County, California. According to an estimate completed by the United States Census Bureau, the city had a population of 129,295 in 2019 making it the eighth largest city in the San Francisco Bay ...

. A graduate of

Diablo Valley College Diablo Valley College (DVC) is a public community college with campuses in Pleasant Hill and San Ramon in Contra Costa County, California. DVC is one of three public community colleges in the Contra Costa Community College District (along wit ...

, she had an extensive athletic background. She later moved to

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Veg ...

and later

Hollywood, California Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Picture ...

Career

Julie Strain was '' Penthouse'' Pet of the Month for June 1991 and ''Penthouse'' Pet of the Year for 1993. With over 100 films to her credit, Strain was nicknamed the "Queen of

B-movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feat ...

s". She modelled for many comic book artists, including

Simon Bisley Simon Bisley is a British comic book artist best known for his 1990s work on ''ABC Warriors'', '' Lobo'' and ''Sláine''. Early life Simon Bisley began drawing when he was six years old. He is self-taught, with only a short one-year stay at an ...

, Milo Manara, and

Kevin Eastman Kevin Brooks Eastman (born May 30, 1962) is an American comic book artist and writer best known for co-creating the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Peter Laird. Eastman was also formerly the editor and publisher of the magazine '' Heavy Meta ...

, whom she would later marry. Her likeness was also used in animation. She provided the voice for the main character in the animated film '' Heavy Metal 2000'', and was the basis for the third-person shooter video game '' Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2''. She was a frequent guest panelist at comic book conventions like the

San Diego Comic-Con San Diego Comic-Con International is a comic book convention and nonprofit multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California since 1970. The name, as given on its website, is Comic-Con International: San Diego; but it is ...

. In 1997, ''Heavy Metal'' published Strain's

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, ''Six Foot One and Worth the Climb'' (). It was heavily illustrated with stills from her film and modeling career, plus paintings by

Boris Vallejo Boris Vallejo (born January 8, 1941) is a Peruvian-American painter who works in the science fiction, fantasy, and erotica genres. His hyper-representational paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy fiction ...

Julie Bell Julie Bell (born October 21, 1958) is an American fine artist, illustrator, photographer, bodybuilder and wildlife painter. Bell is also a fantasy artist and a representative of the heroic fantasy and fantastic realism genres. Bell has won Che ...

and Olivia De Berardinis.

Personal life and death

Strain was tall. She was married to ''

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' is an American media franchise created by the comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It follows Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael, four anthropomorphic turtle brothers (named after It ...

'' co-creator

from 1995 to 2006. He co-starred in several of her films such as ''Day of the Warrior'' and '' L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies: Return to Savage Beach.'' Much of her youth was wiped from her memory by retrograde amnesia, due to a head injury after a fall from a horse in her 20s. In November 2018, her boyfriend Dave Gram announced that she was in the late stages of

dementia Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...

, believed to be a result of her fall, and was receiving hospice care at home. In January 2020, Malibu Bay Films, a studio which Strain worked with frequently, incorrectly reported that she had died, but then quickly retracted their statement after its error was established. One year later, Strain died on January 10, 2021, at age 58.(redacted January 13th, 2021; the actress is once again reported as still living)

Partial filmography

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Strain, Julie 1962 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American actresses 21st-century American actresses American female adult models People from Concord, California Place of death missing American voice actresses Deaths from dementia in California Penthouse Pets of the Year Actresses from the San Francisco Bay Area American film actresses Penthouse Pets