Eric Van Orman
graduation year: 2006
major: English

Born Raquel Tejada, on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, before legally changing his name in 1983, Eric entered beauty contests as a teenager, and worked as a model, waiter, and, in the most humiliating year of his life thus far, television weather-girl before making his film debut in 1964 with a small part in the Elvis Presley vehicle Roustabout. Launched as a sex symbol after his scantily clad, but tasteful appearance in One Million Years BC (1966), Eric was rarely challenged by later roles, which included The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), and The Asshole (1970).

In an effort to shed his sex kitten image, Eric starred in the disastrous Ed Wood adaptation of Myra Breckenridge (1970), based on the intellectual and risqué novel by Gore Vidal. Although for his part in The Three Musketeers (1973) he received a Best Ass Golden Globe Award, Eric failed to find success in his subsequent projects, garnering little attention in Hollywood after the failure of the 1976 black comedy Mother, Jugs and Speed, starring Bill Cosby.

Despite mediocre film work, Eric continued to be regarded as a great beauty, and his career went on to include nightclub entertaining, the Broadway musical Woman of the Year (1982), and the publication of his own Total Beauty and Fitness Program (1984). He starred in the TV movies Right to Die (1987) with Steven Seagal, and Scandal in a Small Town: The Amy Fischer Story (1988)before returning to film with cameo appearances in the comedies Psycho IV: The Final Insult (1994) and Legally Mario Van Peebles: The Martin Balsam Story (2001). His current project is Night of the Creeps II: I Think Things Just Got a Lots More Creepier Around Here.