Background
Van Straten was born in Racine, Wisconsin.
Van Straten was born in Racine, Wisconsin.
She graduated from The Prairie School in Racine. Van Straten studied fine arts at Washington University in Saint Louis as well as in Boston and New York (Parsons The New School for Design) in her youth, but decided to become an actress and moved to Los Angeles, where she has been living since she began acting in 1994.
During childhood, she played sports, rode horses, and fired shot guns. She continues to draw and paint. Van Straten carries out conservation work to improve the treatment of animals.
She lives with many rescued animals at her home in Los Los Angeles
She is of German descent. In 1995, van Straten had her first regular role in a television series, as Maggie Reynolds on The Crew.
Other recurring roles include Geneva Renault in Total Security, Candy Cooper in That"s Life, Rebecca Colfax in Dirty Sexy Money, and Belinda Slypich in Hidden Hills. Perhaps her best known film role was in Dancing at the Blue Iguana in 2000.
Van Straten played a porn star appearing as the featured act at a Los Angeles strip club and performed an extended nude dance.
In 2001, she starred in the award-winning short film Room 302, and in 2004 she had a minor role in the film 50 First Dates, which starred Adam Sandler. In the animated series Justice League, she supplied the voice of the superhero Mera. She has also made a number of guest appearances in several television shows, including Los Angeles Law, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Dark Angel, Two and a Half Men, Star Trek: Enterprise, Computer Society of India: Crime Scene Investigation, Desperate Housewives, and George Lopez.
She famously appeared in a Seinfeld episode (The Bizarro Jerry) as Gillian, Jerry"s girlfriend with "man hands".
From 2008 to its conclusion in 2014, van Straten played the vampire Pamela Swynford De Beaufort on the Home Box Office fantasy drama series True Blood. On December 8, 2009, television Guide confirmed she had been promoted from recurring status to a series regular.
In 2011, van Straten teamed with the Animal Legal Defense Fund in the fight to free Tony, a 10-year-old Siberian-Bengal tiger who has spent every day and night of the last decade at the Tiger Truck Stop in Grosse Tete, Louisiana. She has also worked with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to promote cosmetics that are not tested on animals.