Birthdate: Jan 2, 1967
Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
With nearly 40 years of show business credits as a singer and actor in television and film, Tia Carrere (birthname: Althea Rae Duhinio Janeiro) is in the vanguard of Asian American performers in a diverse range of roles—particularly comedy, in which Asian Americans are severely under-represented.
It was her turns as Wayne’s (Mike Myers) rocker girlfriend in Wayne’s World (1992) and Wayne’s World 2 (1993), after all, that marked personal breakthroughs for Carrere, leading to prominent roles in Philip Kaufman’s Rising Sun (1993), with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, and in James Cameron’s blockbuster, True Lies (1994), with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Carrere co-starred in several films that went direct-to-video before landing a co-starring role opposite Kevin Sorbo in Universal’s fantasy adventure, Kull the Conqueror (1997), and another opposite Peter Weller and Dennis Hopper in Sidney J. Furie’s Las Vegas thriller, Top of the World (1997). Through the early 2000s, Tia Carrere played the voice of Nani Pelekai in a series of spinoff animated features from Scooby Doo and Lilo & Stitch, including Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005), all of which complimented her work as a series regular in Lilo & Stitch: The Series (2003-2006).
Carrere appeared in the ensemble of the rom-com, You May Not Kiss the Bride (2011), with Katharine McPhee, Rob Schneider, Mena Suvari, and Kathy Bates. In 2022, she joined fellow Filipino-American performer Jo Koy in Jay Chandrasekhar's comedy, Easter Sunday, with Jimmy O. Yang and Tiffany Haddish.
Honolulu-born Tia Carrere was raised (as Althea Janairo) by banker father Alexander Janairo and computer supervisor mother, Audrey Lee Janeiro. Carrere’s ethnicity is Filipino American, with Chinese, Spanish, and Hawaiian heritage. Carrere has three younger sisters and two half-sisters. She was a student at the all-girls Sacred Hearts Academy in the Honolulu suburb of Kaimuki, with ambitions of being a model.
Her adopted stage name is a combination of her siblings’ nickname for her and a variation on the last name of one of her favorite actors, Barbara Carrera. When they divorced, Carrere married film producer Elie Samaha from 1992 to 2000; she was married to photojournalist Simon Wakelin from 2002 to 2010. The couple had one child, Bianca Wakelin. Her height is 5’ 8”. Carrere’s net worth is $5 million.
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Hawaiian Grammy: Tia Carrere has been nominated four times in a row (and won twice) for the Grammy Award for Best Hawaiian Music Album, from 2007-2010.
Hawaiian Lingo: Carrere can fluently speak Hawaiian Pidgin.
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