Karina Lombard

Karina Lombard was born in Tahiti, French Polynesia, the youngest of five children. Her father, Henri Lombard, is French, and her mother, Nuupure Mataitai, is Tahitian (although some sources have claimed her father was a Swiss-Russian aristocrat and mother was a member of the Lakota tribe).^{[note 1]}

Lombard has stated she was raised in Spain, Switzerland and Peru, and speaks English, Spanish, Italian and French and German.^[2] Upon graduating boarding school in Switzerland, she moved to New York.

Lombard's major break in modeling was a photo-shoot with a 'Native American' theme. A year later, one of her photographs was chosen for a billboard that led to her first acting role. Photographs of her as a model have appeared in the magazines Elle and Vogue.^[3]

Lombard studied acting in New York City at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Actors Studio, where she also gained stage experience performing at the Gallery Theatre and Neighborhood Playhouse.

Lombard's first film role was as a princess in L'île (The Island).^[3] In 1993, she played her first major role as Antoinette Cosway, a Jamaican heiress, in Wide Sargasso Sea, based on the novel of the same name by Jean Rhys. She had supporting parts in The Firm (1993) and Legends of the Fall (1994), and starred in Last Man Standing (1996) with Bruce Willis.^[3]

In the 2000s, she moved to television, appearing in The 4400 and as restaurateur Marina Ferrer in the first season of The L Word. She also played the recurring character Geneviève on FX's Rescue Me.

She currently resides in Venice, California.^[2]

• Karina Lombard at IMDb