Actress and model Tawny Kitaen became one of the icons of the 1980s through her iconic appearances and album covers for rock bands like Ratt and Whitesnake , which made her one of the most striking faces of the era.
After appearing on the covers of Ratt (1983) and Out of the Cellar (1984) and in the music video for Ratt's "Back For More," Kitaen even tried to distance herself from work in that field to focus on acting in films like Bachelor Party with Tom Hanks, but her romantic involvement with David Coverdale during a delicate time in the Whitesnake vocalist's life would change that.
At the time, the singer had been divorced from his first wife for some time and was facing serious financial problems, difficulties that inspired the big hit "Here I Go Again," originally released in 1982, four years after the end of Coverdale's relationship with Julia Borkowski . When the track was re-recorded for the album Whitesnake in 1987, the musician was already dating Tawny, but the band intended to cast the German Claudia Schiffer for the second version of the music video.
Everything changed when director Marty Callner saw Coverdale's new girlfriend. Without even greeting the actress, he was already certain of his choice. “We went to his house (…), he opened the door and his jaw dropped – you know, Tawny was absolutely gorgeous – and he said, 'It's her! She's the Whitesnake girl!'” the singer told Heavy Consequence in 2019. “It was so unusual to have a woman in a beautiful dress, doing somersaults from a black Jaguar to a white Jaguar. It was fascinating. Nobody had that. It was unique.”
Despite having refused to work with bands after her projects with Ratt, Tawny decided to support her then-boyfriend and appeared in "Here I Go Again," which quickly became a worldwide hit and one of MTV's most popular videos at the time. The partnership was repeated in the videos for "Still of the Night," "Is This Love," and "The Deeper the Love," but did not continue after her divorce from Coverdale in 1991.
Tawny died last Friday , May 7th, at the age of 59. The cause of death has not yet been released.
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