Rainbeaux Smith

Cheryl Lynn "Rainbeaux" Smith (June 6, 1955 – October 25, 2002) was an American actress and musician who appeared in a number of mainstream features, as well as exploitation and horror films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these films have become cult classics. Early life Smith was born in Los Angeles to Ronald (Ron) V. Smith (1912–2005) and Jayne Bradley Willhite Smith (1916–1994). Smith's father was a brick mason, and her mother performed in vaudeville as a dancer on the Orpheum circuit and later taught ballet. After the divorce of her parents in 1964, Smith and her mother moved to a home located one block south of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Smith attended Bancroft Junior High School and Fairfax High School, with classmates Danny Sugerman and Brett Smiley. She quit school in order to pursue her dream of acting in films. Career Smith's first film appearance was in avant-garde filmmaker Leland Auslander's short The Birth of Aphrodite (1971), after a friend of her mother suggested her for the role. The Birth of Aphrodite won the Silver Phoenix for Best Experimental Film award at the 1971 Atlanta International Film Festival, the CINE Golden Eagle, and was screened in competition for the Short Film Palme d'Or award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Jay Lovins later included The Birth of Aphrodite in an anthology of noteworthy short films that were screened at various film festivals titled Threshold 9 Illusions (1972). In 1973, Smith made her starring debut as the lead in Richard Blackburn's cult-horror film Lemora. 1974 saw the release of four films featuring Smith, three of which are now considered cult classics: Caged Heat (featuring the directorial debut of Jonathan Demme); Video Vixens; Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise; and The Swinging Cheerleaders (directed by exploitation filmmaker Jack Hill). Smith was in the early stages of pregnancy while shooting The Swinging Cheerleaders, and in September 1974, she gave birth to her son Justin Sterling (fashion model, musician, and DJ), whose father is rock and jazz guitarist John Sterling.