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B-Movies Star

LoriDawn Messuri is probably one of the most gifted actresses around today. To all her roles she brings an acting ability commensurate with her astonishingly good looks. In Mike Tristano's WASTELAND JUSTICE, she portrays a vengeance-crazed warrior of the future. Playboy Enterprises' THE BIG HUSTLE has her as the befuddled girlfriend of a petty criminal, and, in her best role, she is a demented and homicidal stripper in the classic dark comedy, CRUISING PURGATORY.
Now the petite redhead takes her considerable talent and places it in Dominion Entertainment's THE BACKLOT MURDERS, in which she plays the victim of a psychotic killer. As the title of the film implies, THE BACKLOT MURDERS, which is produced and directed by David DeFalco, takes place on the back lot of Universal Studios. One by one, the participants in a music video being shot there are eliminated -- a la FRIDAY THE 13th -- in increasingly bizarre ways. Messuri is one of the killer's first victims. As Wendy, the special effects expert, she is chased through the set of a Western town until she is impaled on a pair of wooden stakes.
Unfortunately, Messuri's role as a human shish-kebab is all too short. "The truth is," says the always-smiling Messuri, "my part was expanded. They threw in a few more shots of me running from the killer. It was so funny, because I sort of got into that film by accident. I was writing a series of articles for Stun Magazine, a new publication of a good friend of mine, Bill George. I had interviewed Dave DeFalco and other people associated with the film, and that's how I got to know Dominion. When they were in casting, I called up just to congratulate Dave for being in Playboy Magazine, because he had a little picture published in it, and the publicist said, 'Why aren't you reading for a part?' I said, 'Bring me in. Nobody called me.' So then they brought me in and I read for a part, and they gave this cute little part of Wendy. I thought it was a cute little part."
"Little" is good word for Messuri's role, because she is on screen for less than ten minutes. "Yes," continues Messuri, still smiling, "it was a small part, but you know the saying, 'There are no small parts -- only small actors.'" The Messuri glow fades briefly, then instantly recovers. "You know something, I was confused about that quote for a long time. I never really understood what it meant until recently. There are no small parts, even extra parts. An extra part is not really a small one, because the more you make of it, the better off you are, the more you bring to a film. So there are no small parts, only small actors, which means, in height, you could be small. Take me, for instance. On screen I look about 5'7", but I am actually 5'4." When people see me in person, they are surprised to see how tall I really am, but for film work I'm a good height. That's all that matters for me.
"The way that I got into the industry was asking myself what I would choose to do if I believed it was impossible to fail. I believe you have to have passion for what you are doing. When you're in college, and you don't know what to do, everybody's asking you, 'What are you going to do when you graduate?' I went into the career center in San Jose, California, where I was going to school, and I saw these limitations of boxes that people could be put into, like, you could be an ice-cream server and make $2500 a year maximum, and you could work eighty hours a week, and all these things, and I was like, 'Not for me. Not for me.' I said, 'I guess you've got to take failure out of the equation, if that's what you want to do to get ahead.'
"One of my favorite sayings is 'Live each present moment completely, and the future will take care of itself. Enjoy fully the wonder and beauty of each instant.' I have believed that most of my life, and for most of my life, it has turned out to be very, very true."

Selective filmography

Python, The Big Hustle, and Insatiable Wives.