A pretty blonde performer with a soulful look and a whispery voice, Julie Benz started out not on stage, but on ice, competing on the national level and ranked 13th in ice dancing, following the lead of her older siblings, a pair of ice dancing champions. Injury led to the end of her skating career but she soon switched modes to acting, starting out in community theater and landing her first film role in Dario Argento's "Two Evil Eyes" in 1990. The following year she landed her first regular series role, playing the daughter in a 1950s sitcom family that has been relocated to 1990s suburbia on the quirky "Hi Honey, I'm Home" (aired on ABC and Nickelodeon from 1991 to 1992).
Benz filled out the 90s with guest shots on such series as Fox's "Married... With Children" (1994) and "Sliders" (1996), ABC's "Boy Meets World" and CBS' "Diagnosis Murder" (both also 1996), before originating the role of vampire Darla on the popular supernatural series "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" (The WB) in 1997. Her one-off guest shot was turned into a recurring role, with Darla even making the jump to the spin-off "Angel" in 2000, with a recurring role that became regular beginning in the fall of 2001; she would continue to appear sporadically on the series through its final season in 2004. A smattering of fan sites devoted to Benz's delightfully sinister Darla popped up on the Internet, with audiences responding well to the actress' take on the very youthful looking 400-year-old vampire whose main occupation is torturing David Boreanaz's eponymous bloodsucker cursed with a conscience. Her devilishly seductive performance also made her a favorite featured celebrity model in such "laddie" magazines as Maxim and FHM.
With such forgettable short-lived sitcoms as Fox's "Ask Harriet" (1998) and NBC's "Payne" (1999) under her belt, Benz seemed to have better luck with supernatural TV drama with a longer running recurring stint on The WB's "Roswell" from 1999-2000 as well as a featured role in the ABC TV-movie remake "Satan's School for Girls" (2000) to her credit.
Benz has continued to make inroads on the big screen as well, and has proved a versatile and capable player, following up her 1990 debut with 1997's "Inventing the Abbotts". That same year she had a small but very memorable role in "As Good As It Gets", playing a receptionist who bears the brunt of Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson)'s chauvinism when she complements his writing. That scene, featured in the trailer and referred to in nearly every promotion or discussion of the film, helped to raise the actress' profile considerably. The 1998 parody short "Eating Las Vegas" was a much smaller venture, though it showcased the actress with a larger role. The 1999 black comedy "Jawbreaker" co-starred Benz as a one of a group of popular high school students whose prank goes horribly awry, while 2000's "Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Halloween" (aired on USA Network) saw her returning to the parody genre. In 2001, she took somewhat more serious work as a supporting player in "The Brothers", a comedy-drama about young African-American professionals.
Benz's career received a major boost when she was cast by producer Steven Spielberg in the highly rated SciFi Channel miniseries "Taken" (2002), playing the mother of an angelic-looking child (Dakota Fanning) who is actually the result of a generations-long series of extraterrestial experiments that have made her the key to the alien domination of earth. Next she took over the role of Ursula in the direct-to-video sequel "George of the Jungle 2" (2003), then headlined the telepic "The Long Shot: Believe in Courage" (2004) as a jilted single mom who rebuilds her life by becoming involved in showing horsesbefore appearing the ensemble cast of the HBO adaptation of the play "Lackawana Blues" (2005).