Laurene Landon

Laurene Landon (born March 17, 1957) is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her roles in Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2, Hundra, Airplane II: The Sequel, and ...All the Marbles with Peter Falk. 

Landon was born as Laurene Landon Coughlin on March 17, 1957, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is half Irish and half Polish and describes herself as being "bi-Polish".

When she was four, her family relocated to the United States.

As a young woman, she entered California State University and began training in their police academy program, but decided that law enforcement was not for her when she came to the realization that she may someday have to use a gun. She then decided to try her hand at acting and began her career as an extra in films.

Landon began acting in a bit part in Gary Troy's 1979 crime drama Bitter Heritage (alternate title: Naked in My Grave) starring Rory Calhoun and Michael DeLano. The same year, she was cast as a featured skater in Mark L. Lester's Roller Boogie.

She gained a small role in 1981's Full Moon High, her first of many collaborations with director Larry Cohen. 

Landon spent part of her early career as a model and in 1980 was a runner-up in the Miss Black Velvet pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada. While there, a casting director told her to go see another casting director in Los Angeles (Rueben Cannon), regarding a feature film called ...All the Marbles (alternate title: The California Dolls). As she found modeling boring and was unable to sit still for hours at a time, she took his suggestion and landed the role of Molly in ...All the Marbles, a film starring Peter Falk and Vicki Frederick. She described this as her most satisfying role. She was chosen as one of the final four women for the role and was required to undergo rigorous training at a professional wrestling school. Even though she broke her foot during the last match of the tryouts, she and Vicki Frederick won their parts over 2,000 other young actresses trying out, including one young actress named Kathleen Turner. The successful film was the last directing effort by Robert Aldrich (whom she famously referred to as Robert Altman upon meeting him for the first time).

Landon starred as Mike Hammer's right-hand woman Velda in Larry Cohen & Richard T. Heffron's acclaimed 1982 Mickey Spillane movie adaptation *I, the Jury. *

She appeared as a stewardess in Ken Finkleman's Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). She is also known for appearing in science fiction and fantasy films such as Hundra, Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, and Maniac Cop. Theresa, her character in Maniac Cop, was named after her mother.

Recent success

Off movie screens since 1990, Landon returned to film acting in 2005 appearing as "Birdy" in the television movie Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up, directed by Larry Cohen, and in the films Stand Up (2007) and Knife to a Gunfight (2013). In August 2008, she was slated to begin filming Alien Vampz, for Monolith Pictures, playing a major role as Assistant U.S. Attorney Theresa Van Helsung, of the ancient and eccentric vampire-hunting Van Helsung family. She was also offered subsequent roles in two other film projects for Monolith, including Alien Vampz 2, the sequel to the first film (2009). 

Sometimes credited as Laureen Landon, one of the roles in the offering from Monolith Pictures is as a divorcee in a comedy named Strap-Off, which was scheduled to be filmed in the latter part of 2008. 

In 2015, she starred as Major Sintel opposite George Lazenby in Hunter, played Detective Higgins in Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance, and had a supporting role as Ann Malone in the feature film Day Out of Days, directed by Zoe Cassavetes. Also in 2015, she was seen as Charlene opposite Diane Kruger and Norman Reedus in Sky.

In 2017, she starred as Carol Driscoll opposite Mel Novak in the crime drama Syndicate Smashers.

Most recently, in 2020, Landon was seen as Sharon Stann in Harley Wallen's horror thriller Agramon's Gate.

Her current projects include Future Punks, Clown Motel 2, Pay Attention, and Sorrow's Way.

Landon is single and never married, citing "Never met a man who wanted to follow me around with a mop and a can of Lysol the rest of his life—I'm a serial slob." She is still active in Hollywood as an actress, rescues pit bulls, and is also an award-winning lyricist authoring rap music for the L.A. Metro Transit Authority video and a new song being played often on KROQ called "Captivity". She also enjoys writing screenplays in her spare time.