A sexy, attractive actress-singer who gained recognition as an MTV veejay and used that as a springboard for an acting career, Kari Wuhrer began to build leading roles in pay TV-movies and feature films in the 1990s. Wuhrer sang in amateur contests in her native Connecticut and made her first film appearance with a small role in "Fire With Fire" (1986). She had a cameo in "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane" (1990), which traded on her MTV face value and co-starred and "Beastmaster 2: Through the Portals of Time" (1991). But Wuhrer first got a chance to "act" in features with Sean Penn's "The Crossing Guard" (1994), as a one-night stand for Jack Nicholson and "Boulevard" (also 1994), in which she was a young hooker learning the ropes. Other significant credits include John Singleton's "Higher Learning" (1995, where she was billed under her married name as Kari Salin) "Beyond Desire" (1996), as a sexy call girl out to track down William Forsythe for the mob and "Stephen King's 'Thinner'" (also 1996), as a gypsy.
On TV, Wuhrer went from the cable TV series "Swampthing" (1989) to hosting MTV's "Remote Control" game show to becoming a veejay all within about a year. Her veejay status helped Wuhrer begin to get parts in Hollywood, first in an episode of "Married...With Children" (1991), and then as femme fatale Robin Farr on the short-lived Fox drama series "Class of '96" (1993). She was also a college student in her first significant dramatic TV role, as she fell for her professor (Eric Roberts) in HBO's "Sensation" (1994). In "Terminal Justice" (HBO, 1996), she was a sensuous star used as a model for a virtual reality clone and continued in the sci-fi genre in 1997 when she joined the cast of "Sliders" (Fox; Sci-Fi Channel, 1998- ).