Erica Gavin was born and raised in Hollywood. She spent her teenage years as, she says, "a stoned-out hippie", and when she was 19 years old she dancing at a topless bar called Losers (with future colleagues Haji and Tura Satana). One day while waiting at her dentist's office she saw an ad in "Variety" for girls to audition for a new Russ Meyer movie. She applied, and found herself cast in the title role in the soft core classic Vixen! (1968), the first mainstream (non-porn) X-rated film.
Audiences had never seen anything quite like the film, or Erica, and the movie was a financial (and, surprisingly enough, critical) smash and propelled her into virtually instant stardom. However, after only two more films--Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (1970) and "Caged Heat" (1974), a Roger Corman women-in-prison picture--she abruptly left Hollywood and stayed away for almost 30 years. Erica has only recently taken some tentative steps at re-entering the movie business, attending a retrospective of "Vixen", setting up her own website and being scheduled to attend fan conventions.