Born and raised in the Bronx, Desiree Marie Velez finished off her schooling in Virginia, majoring in drama. A stage actress as well as a TV and film lady, the star has done everything from dinner theatre to Shakespeare, and indie to Hollywood productions. She actually made her first on-camera appearance as Doreen Elizabeth Newman in the long-running high-school series In Our Lives in 1980, when she was younger, then came out big and bold playing the role of Angelica in the video-game-based action movie Super Mario Bros. (1993), starring Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper. Desiree, or Desi to her friends, of which Mr. Skin now considers himself one of, did a couple of TV movies, including playing a nurse in Twilight Man (1996) with Tim Matheson and Dean Stockwell. She helped kick off the HBO series OZ by appearing in the pilot as Gintare Ortolani in 1997, and popped up on an episode of Ghost Stories with Rip Torn that same year. She earned her spot on Skin Central with her role as Vanessa in the movie Asunder (1999), directed by Tim Reid (aka Venus Flytrap to WKRP fans). In the flick, she gets wicked with Blair Underwood, taunting him in a slipping white shirt until he hits the point of no return and he reacts, causing the shirt to fall away and let Desi’s dark-tipped twins breathe the air and take up film space. If you’re a fan of Johnny Alonso, you’ll recall this coal-haired cutie from multiple projects the two have worked on together, including the films Coffin 2 (2017), Harvey(2021), Legacy of Love (2021), and The Riddle House (2022). Or hey, if you’ve been to a festival or kid’s party in the Virginia, Maryland, or D.C. area, you might have been transformed into a tiger by Desi, who owns Mystical Smiles, a face-painting service.
