Buzz Editor

I grew up the youngest of six children in New Jersey. When I was eight years old, I won the “Little Miss Union” talent contest dancing to Whitney Houstons “I wanna Dance with somebody”, and my journey into entertainment began. At 12, I was acting in plays at Burnet Middle School. I played Snoopy “Your a good man Charlie Brown” and Doris in “Fame. I was also dancing outside of school and around that time started to train professionally in New York City. My senior year of High School, I won the Rising Star Award for Best Actress in New Jersey, given by the world-renowned PaperMill Playhouse for my role as Princess Winifred in the musical “Once Upon A Mattress”. It was a sweet victory against my biggest rival, Anne Hathaway, who was nominated for the same role the same year. It was in that moment that I chose to fully pursue acting as a career. My first big gig was Law and Order: SVU, a few Mike’s Hard Lemonade commercials, and 2 roles in the off- Broadway play “Six Goumbas and a Wannabe”. I even played young Liza Minnelli in an off broadway workshop “Hat’s off to Liza”. After that, I left NY to Los Angeles, to chase my dreams.

Upon arriving in LA and not knowing anyone, I took dance classes and was hired on the spot for the original “PussyCat Dolls”, a burlesque review, at The Roxy in Hollywood. We performed to sold out celebrity audiences and it starred Carmen Electra, Christina Applegate, Gwen Stefani, Charlize Theron, Christina Aguilera, Brittany Murphy, Dita Von Teese, and me! I was one of the 12 original girls to do all the burlesque and Fosse style choreography. I also was in a Paulina Rubio video as a dancer. These were my first jobs in LA and I was immediately thrust into the world of celebrities. My first acting gig was a role in the indie film, “Descendant” starring Katherine Heigl and Jeremy London.

After the Pussycat Dolls shows, I began my foray into producing. I produced the documentary, “Dying For Meth” that followed a young girl who survived an explosion while cooking meth in a van, burning over sixty percent of her body. For three years, we followed her and her family’s addiction while watching her struggle to care for her five year old son and thirteen year old sister. We received the Prism Award in Beverly Hills for outstanding work in documentary and public service. This led me to star and produce in my first narrative feature “Iowa,” a Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection. My first day on set, I found out I was pregnant with my son, Golden, and only twenty-two months later had my daughter, Ivy. It was, and still is the greatest achievement of my life getting to be their mother.

After “Iowa” dominated independent cinemas in NY, LA, and Chicago, we received a call from Jeff Cuban, owner of Landmark Theaters chain. He suggested that with the success of “Iowa” and it’s edgy, gory, and very intense subject matter, that we make a horror film. We began producing the slasher/horror film, “The Orphan Killer” that I starred in, creating a cult following of over 500,000 fans on Facebook. It became an instant cult classic with over 3 million illegal downloads of the film worldwide. We even sold the mask of “The Orphan Killer” in Sears and Walmart!

“The Orphan Killer” had us traveling to Europe, Spain and Italy to premiere at festivals to sold out audiences. The crowds would stomp, scream and chant at the screen as if they were attending a heavy metal rock show! When we returned, to get in shape, I began boxing at Glendale Fighting Club. It was there that I trained alongside Ronda Rousey, who would years later enter the UFC. We became fast friends as the only females in an Armenian male gym. During this time, I started working on the sequel “Bound X Blood: The Orphan Killer 2”. Submerged in the world of MMA and boxing, we were determined to include that as a part of the sequel securing Ronda and “The Four Horsewomen” as supporting actors along with many other well-known wrestlers and UFC fighters. During filming, my marriage of 17 years began to fall apart. It was the beginning of a tumultuous roller coaster ride of divorce, incarceration, and nearly fatal car accident.

At the time, the only focus I had was survival in a now single mother world and starting my life over. I was in therapy for my PTSD and healing the years of physical, mental, psychological, and verbal abuse I went through in my marriage. It was in therapy that getting back to my roots became so important. My therapist asked me “besides having your children when were you your happiest?” My answer was: when I was 18 years old, doing shows, taking extensive acting, singing, & dancing classes, and had just won the Rising Star Award! My therapist suggested going back to acting class and mentioned the school Beverly Hills Playhouse (BHP). I googled it and signed up a week later.

Through BHP, I have met a huge community of like-minded people whom I’ve created long-lasting friendships and many great projects with, including three short films and a feature. Most recently I starred in rock legend Glenn Danzig’s music video for “Last Ride” and his directorial debut feature, “Verotika”. Everything was right in my world again and then it stopped at an extreme halt with the tragic accidental death of my only brother, Walter in 2017.

Wally, as we affectionately called him, was fifty-four years old and a father of four. He worked his whole life at the Sunoco gas station in Short Hills, NJ that he would eventually own. He was an avid softball player and bar fly and simply put, everyone loved my brother. Over 1,000 people attended his wake, some complete strangers who he had helped during his life came to offer their condolences and praise what an amazing man and friend he was to so many. I was angry and depressed and upset that this world took him away from us with no notice or reason. His death has had the biggest impact on my life. Since we were kids, my mother would always say, “family is first and most important”. My five siblings are my best friends and we lost a son, husband, father, brother, and friend. During this time, as I struggled to get back to my own reality, I was working odd jobs to support my life and two children on my own and continued getting producing jobs.

For many years, I wanted to start my own production company so my projects could have a banner and team of people behind them. I thought long and hard about what the name would be and in one moment it hit me like a rocket, a childhood name we called my late beloved brother, “WallyBird”. Walter was tall and lanky, with a giant smile and an infectious laugh. To honor my brother’s life that was cut too short, WallyBird Productions was born. Since 2018, WallyBird Productions has produced a two act play, three short films, a web series pilot, and an award-winning documentary. We are currently working on two features, a web series, a guitar education series, several music videos, and a short film.

My songwriting partner, Dennis and I didn’t necessarily have the intention of starting a band together. Dennis was asked by a friend of his to compose a song for an indie film about 10 years ago, and he asked me if I wanted to collaborate with him on it. We found out that we had really great musical chemistry in the process, so we started writing some songs together for licensing purposes. Ultimately, those songs would eventually become Batfarm songs.

I sold my first costume in 2005. Up until then it had just been a life-long hobby.

It was a costume I made for myself & someone randomly emailed me asking about it. I was so proud of myself that I started looking for costume work locally in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I found an agent advertising her services on Craigslist, so I had my girlfriend take some photos of me dressed up in different outfits I had thrown together & set up an interview. The agent was happy to represent me & I got several jobs in 2006 making costumes for locals.

In 2007, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a master’s degree, but ended up changing my mind. I tried to find opportunities to do costume work for the film industry & ended up helping with a student film. Later, I found a job as an extra for a company making military training videos & ended up helping them with art department and wardrobe work off & on for a couple years.

In 2010, I started a desert festival called Wasteland Weekend. Running themed events was always a dream of mine. It was a lot of work, with little reward, but I cemented my place in the post-apocalyptic fan community & also made a great network of lifelong friends.

Ever since moving to LA, I had nothing but a string of jobs with horrible bosses. I was ready to leave the medical field that had made ends meet for good. Also, after 5 years of running Wasteland Weekend, I was ready for something less stressful, and a new horizon to conquer.

That’s when I started getting serious about one of my biggest passions: designing clothing, costumes & accessories. So in 2015, I officially started Karol B Clothing.

Like most artists, my love for singing and performing started when I was a kid. My earliest memories are blasting Motown records in the living room and forcing my family to watch me perform. I’d make the coffee table my stage everyday. There are videos of me teaching my classmates dances that I created on the spot and everyone would follow me like a conga line. I had a lot of artistic interests growing up – dancing, singing, theater, photography. When my father passed, I turned to music as my main escape from the stress – I was around 16 at the time. It wasn’t until I was abroad in England my senior year of college that I started actually recording music. Since then it’s been nonstop. I moved to LA from the east coast in January 2018. I didn’t know anyone out here and just came with a carry-on bag. Definitely had no idea what I was doing and I’m still figuring out my artist direction. But since moving here I’ve been working more and more vigorously with music. This year I’m aiming to release at least 6 songs and visuals with the help of my producer and friend, Choice.