Lauren Chase appeared on Santa Barbara as Lady Elizabeth Peale, a dazzling English aristocrat who settled in town and immediately got involved with devious Lionel Lockridge (played by Nicolas Coster) in an art hoax. She portrayed the role from December 1984 to March 1985.

When Chase joined the show, she said she couldn't be more like the character of Elizabeth Peale, including their mutual love of polo, underwater diving, travel and art. "It was almost as if they asked me to play myself," said Chase, who came to Hollywood planning to stay only a week visiting a friend and ended up getting work on such television shows as The A-Team and Matt Houston.

Chase, a former Boston stage actress and model, said, "I consider myself very lucky indeed. I was fascinated by Hollywood and never believed I would get work so quickly. I had no plans to stay here. It was just a brief vacation from the East Coast weather. That was almost two years ago now."

She credited her youthful tomboy days with giving her an insatiable appetite for horseback riding, water sports, flying and travel. "When they decribed Liz Peale to me I said to myself, 'Wow, I really am like her. This is going to be very interesting to see where it goes,'" Chase added. "We both have lots of spunk and our irreverant and fiery sides."

During her first month on Santa Barbara, she filmed a scene in which she and Coster actually had to dive for a sunken treasure chest that went down with the sunken Lockridge ship a hundred years before. "I'd taken a SCUBA course and never thought it would prove so useful. Being under the Pacific was both beautiful and eerie. A few sea lions played tag with our diving party. It was definitely one of the more memorable acting assignments I've ever had," said Chase, who, when not working, spent time diving in the Caribbean near St. Croix.

She felt her stage work in Boston, which included a part in The Rimers of Eldrich at the Boston Center for the Arts and the role of Helena in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, truly helped her develop actings skills that carried over into television. "The theatre is great training for cold readings and lots of discipline. I think the theatre helped me land a variety of parts that I may otherwise not have gotten," said Chase.

Chase received her education at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. She was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and her birthday is April 17.