Shannon Whirry

Shannon Whirry is an American actress who grew up in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after being accepted in 1985. Her first film role came in the action picture Out for Justice, and she went on to star in a run of direct-to-video erotic thrillers, among them Gregory Hippolyte's Animal Instincts I and II, Body of Influence and Mirror Images II, plus Private Obsession and the Playboy production Playback. Entertainment Weekly compared her partnership with Hippolyte to that of Dietrich and Von Sternberg. In the late 1990s she moved into mainstream television and film, playing Velda, Mike Hammer's secretary, in Mike Hammer, Private Eye and guesting on ER, Felicity, Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Malcolm in the Middle and Nash Bridges, with a small part in Me, Myself & Irene (2000). She later appeared in the BBC miniseries Nuclear Secrets and in Raising Buchanan in 2019, and has performed with theater companies in Arizona.