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Alexandra Paul

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File:Alexandra Paul in Bonaire 2004.jpg
Alexandra competing in the Bonaire EcoSwim 10K race.

Alexandra Paul (born July 29, 1963 in New York City) is an American actress. She is probably best known for her role as Lt. Stephanie Holden in the television series Baywatch from 1992 to 1997. She has appeared in over 50 movies and television programs.

Apart from Baywatch, Paul is also known for her roles in movies like Christine (1983), the sleeper American Flyers (1985), and the movie version of the classic series Dragnet. Aside from acting, she has also hosted non-fiction tv shows, including WE's Winning Women and southern California local environmentalism show Earth Talk Today.

Paul also co-wrote and co-produced two documentaries: Jampacked, a documentary regarding the world human population crisis, and The Cost of Cool: Finding Happiness in a Materialistic World. Jampacked received a Bronze Apple Award and first place recognition at the EarthVision Environmental Film and Video Festival. The Cost of Cool won a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

Personal life

Paul is married to triathlon coach Ian Murray and has an identical twin sister named Caroline Paul, who was a San Francisco firefighter for 13 years and is now a novelist.

Political activism

Paul is a very dedicated environmental and political activist. In 2005, she was named "Activist of the Year" by the ACLU of Southern California. She avidly recycles, and will not use any products tested on animals. She has traveled to Nicaragua with a medical aid group and to South Africa to register voters, and has been registering voters locally every Wednesday night for the past eighteen years. The United Nations honored her in 1997 for her environmental work.

She has often committed herself to civil disobedience to protest against some policy or action that she believes is wrong. She has been arrested over a dozen times at the Nevada Nuclear Test site in peaceful protests. On March 19 2003 she was arrested for trespassing onto federal property during a protest against the Iraq war and spent 5 days in jail. In 2006, Paul donated $250 to the Ned Lamont campaign against Joe Lieberman, because Lieberman supports the war in Iraq [1]. She supports Representative Dennis Kucinich for President and has donated $2,300 to his campaign, the max allowable.

She was arrested again on March 14 2005 while protesting the crushing of the environmentally friendly electric vehicles (EV), in Burbank, California. This arrest was featured in the documentary film Who Killed The Electric Car. As part of the protest, she parked her car in the way of the truck carrying the EV1s to the junkyard. She personally drives an EV, the fourth one she has owned.

Paul is an active member of Plug In America, an advocacy group supporting the development and promotion of electric cars.

Trivia

  • Paul is a competitive endurance athlete. She competed at the 1997 Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, a grueling 2.44 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile marathon, which she completed in 13:18:52. In 2004, Alexandra competed in the Bonaire 10k race, a 6 mile swim off the island of Bonaire. In 2006, she raced in the Maui Channel Crossing, a 10 mile swim from the Hawaiian island of Lanai to Maui.
  • Her younger brother is Jonathan Paul, a well known animal rights activist. Accused by the US federal government as an "eco-terrorist", he is serving a sentence of four years three months for the 1997 arson of a horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Oregon, and for the liberation of thousands of animals from testing laboratories. He was a member of the underground Animal Liberation Front.
  • Paul is one of only two leading Baywatch actresses without breast enlargements. Her character was a competitive swimmer and Olympic swim coach, mirroring her own real-life athletic interests.
  • She is a certified Emergency Medical Technician. This is yet another real-life parallel with her fictional lifeguard's portrayal on Baywatch.
  • She made a cameo appearance in Borat in a deleted scene parodying her Baywatch role.
  • Height: 5'10"

Filmography

At the Sundance Film Festival 2006
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