Hope Marie Carlton

Building an Video Store Icon

Hope Marie Carlton wasn't chasing an Oscar when she arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-eighties. Her look fit an industry that needed magnetic faces for a video store market booming at the time. In July 1985, her appearance in the centerfold of Playboy defined her career before she had even delivered her first line in front of a camera.

It was a matter of timing.

Andy Sidaris made her the centerpiece of his lightweight action films. In 1987, she starred in Hard Ticket to Hawaii and played Taryn, an agent who handled heavy weapons with the same ease as a bikini. That shoot in the islands turned her from a model into a cult actress for fans of B-movies.

But action movies weren't her only stop. In 1988, she took part in Slaughterhouse Rock, looking for a foothold in horror cinema. And although the film didn't have a great commercial run, it showed that Carlton could carry a plot outside the Sidaris universe.

That same year, she returned to work with her favorite director on Picasso Trigger. Her characters always combined physical toughness with a look that was very much shaped by the fashion of the era. In that low-budget Hollywood, presence and the ability to shoot complex scenes in record time were what mattered most.

The Turn Toward Utah's Red Rocks

In the early nineties, her interest in film sets gradually began to fade. In 1990, she premiered Savage Beach, and soon after she decided that constant public exposure wasn't worth the effort. She chose to focus on her personal life and left the spotlight of California in search of a quieter setting.

B-movies don't forgive the passage of time.

She moved to Utah and devoted herself to running the Sorrel River Ranch, a high-end resort located in Moab. There, she swapped scripts for business administration and direct contact with guests in a privileged natural setting. She became a businesswoman in the tourism industry, far from the red carpets and photo shoots of her youth.

In 2005, she finalized her divorce from Rob Levin and kept her residence in the state of Utah. Her last credited appearance in a fiction production came before the turn of the century. The ranch she ran during her business years covers 160 acres of land along the Colorado River.