Personal details
- Birth Date: 1962-06-10
- Height: 5′ 6¼″ (1.68 m)
- Birth Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
- Parents: Stanley Gershon
- Professions: Actress, Producer, Writer
Gina Gershon’s story is honestly just wild, and kinda awesome. She kicked things off as a backup dancer in Beatlemania (back in the early ‘80s—blink and you’d miss her), but it wasn’t long before she was chewing up the scenery in cult classics and basically becoming the queen of camp. Most folks remember her blasting onto the scene—literally—out of a volcano in Showgirls, wearing nothing but attitude and maybe half a costume. That was 1995, and suddenly she was everywhere, cementing her spot as Hollywood’s go-to for sultry, don’t-mess-with-me types. Born in Woodland Hills, LA, the youngest of three, Gina had artistic blood running through her veins—mom was into interior design, dad did the import/export hustle, and the family roots stretched from Russia to Holland to Poland. She caught the acting bug early (like, playing in Bye Bye Birdie at age seven early) and convinced her parents to move to Beverly Hills so she could chase the dream. After bouncing from Emerson College to NYU, she graduated from Tisch and started building a real-deal acting career, even co-founding the Naked Angels theater company. Her big break? Pretty in Pink, followed by making out with Tom Cruise at 8am in Cocktail—not a bad way to pay the bills. She never really went the mainstream route, picking weirder, juicier roles (Bound, anyone?) and never really fading out, even when other actresses from her era got tossed aside. She’s done Broadway, written a children’s book, and just generally done whatever the hell she wanted, critics be damned. There’s only one Gina Gershon, and she’s still out there hustling.
Back when they were making Showgirls in ‘95, Paul Verhoeven apparently wanted to recreate the infamous leg-crossing scene Sharon Stone nailed in Basic Instinct. Yeah, that one. But the actress wasn’t having it. She straight-up declined. Can you blame her? I mean, that scene from Basic Instinct was already legendary, and trying to do a repeat in Showgirls probably would’ve just felt like a cheap imitation. The director might’ve been chasing that same shock value, but honestly, lightning rarely strikes twice in Hollywood. Plus, Showgirls had enough wild moments of its own without borrowing from another notorious flick. Some folks say this move showed the actress had some serious agency, refusing to be boxed in by a recycled gimmick. So, no dice for Verhoeven—he had to find a different way to grab the audience’s attention. Guess you could say that was one boundary that wasn’t about to be crossed.
Honestly, when I first landed my role in Showgirls back in '95, I braced myself for this super gritty, intense experience—something with a real edge, you know? But then as filming kicked off, the vibe totally flipped. It went from “dark, serious drama” to, well... something way campier, almost over-the-top. So I figured, why not just lean into it? I cranked up the camp, dialed in the theatrics, and started playing the character like I was auditioning for RuPaul’s Drag Race. My thought was, if I’m going to go out there, let’s make it so unforgettable that drag queens would actually want to dress up as my character for Halloween. That’s how wild and fun I wanted it. No regrets—if you can’t be iconic, what’s even the point?
June 10, 1962
5′ 6¼″ (1.68 m)
Konidela Ram Charan
Los Angeles, California, USA
Stanley Gershon and Surekha
63 years old