Actress and model Carrie Stevens always loved music, so it only made sense that she would fall in love with a musician - former Kiss drummer Eric Carr. When he died, she began a journey of personal discovery that took her from rock star's girlfriend to mother of a child with the director of Rock Star.

She is looking at you, right into the lens of this very big and expensive camera, filling the frame, the scene, your eyeball. carrie Stevens is the star of this moment. And she looks rather nice, posing for you by the window, in thestudy, on the beach, upstairs, downstairs, stepping in and out of a fine selection of denim and leather. She is a model, an actress, doing that sexy, pouty, come-hither thing she learned to do so well as a Playboy centerfold not so very long ago. But things are different now. She is not naked. And she is not alone. Never far away is a sleepy teenage girl, here to baby-sit the boy with the heavy-metal name : Jaxon, a mere six months old, square-jawed ans still tiny. He is at the center of this universe, even at Miss carrie's first modelling session since giving birth as an unecpectedly single mother. And he already has an agent. We are on the narrow beach of Malibu, California, in a three-level brick house loaned to her by a couple of friends who are away for the weekend. And Stevens is slowly returning to a career that only seriously began after appearing in Playboy in 1997. That led to paying gigs on television, in movies and in music videos, from Beverly Hills 90210 to jobs as a gyest host on E! Television. Then came a momentous, if small part in last year's Mark Wahlberg film Rock Star. But at the beginning of the' 90s, she was content to be a rock star's girlfriend, spending her free days on the road with drummer Eric Carr of KISS. She was an actress even then, winning the occasional part in a Lexus commercial, but usually opted for the KISS tour bus over casting calls and other paths to acting glory. Then Eric Carr died of cancer, leaving her alone at 22 to make sense of a sudden collision of love and loss, and later of renewed purpose and recovery. There were others, men like crooner Enrique Iglesias or Friends star Matt Le Blanck, the first short haired guy she'd ever been with, and still a struggling actor when they first met. Athletes, actors, musicians. Famous people, long-distance relationships. For a moment, there was even tabloid TV fodder that she was breaking up Hugh Hefner's marriage : Next up : The younger Playmate that stole Hef's heart ! Not true, but a rumor that gave Hef some ideas in the months after his separation, a man just two years younger than Carrie's own grandma. "He has been so good to me," she says now of Hefner. "I actually regret not taking him up on it." Look at Carrie Stevens now and she again looks the part of Playboy/model/actress/etc. But back in January, the scene is much different. She is not the svelte figure strutting in front of of your camera. She is nine months pregnant and alone. Jaxon's delivery is just days away, but the boy's father, Rock Star director Stephen herek and Miss Carrie are no longer a couple. Herek is far away. Out of touch. "It's been hard, but I'm very strong, I've been through a lot," she says, sitting in her house, with the white picket fence and a baby's room ready for use, deep in the hills of Los Angeles. "I have definitely sowed my oats and had a lot of fun, and I'm ready to be a mom. I think I was craving something more meaningful in my life. She grew up in Hardwick, Massachusetts, on a farm with chickens, pigs and goats, and where she collected the eggs every morning before school. Stevens was also a teenager with an unhealthy obsession with David Lee Roth, dreaming mainly of becoming a VJ on MTV. At 17 she moved to Memphis, briefly got acne, and dabbled in modeling on runways and trade shows. A snapshot from November 1987 captures her right before her life was about to change. She is with some girlfriends, sipping a drink in a tight pink skirt, a shiny low-cut top, and big' 80s hair. The girls were on their way to see KISS. In those days, Stevens knew lots of girls interested in meeting rock bands, targeting all the big metal acts of the day : Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Ratt, Bon Jovi. "These girls were hardcore," she remembers. "They would drive around and see where the tour buses were parked outside, hang out in the lobby bar. They knew the hotels that the bands were going to stay at. They would drive around and see where the tour buses were parked outside, hang out in the lobby bar. They knew the strip joints the bands would hang out at. Some of them had sex with Motley Crue. After the concert, a friend called Stevens to say KISS was stuck in Memphis a few extra days, and staying at the Peabody Hotel. Soon enough, Carrie herself was meeting Eric Carr in the lobby bar. KISS was a different band in 1987. Though Carr had been at the tail end of the makeup era, replacing Peter Criss at the beginning of the decade, this was a new band with a new pop metal image, and "Lick it Up" was the signature tune. Before KISS, Carr was fixing stoves with his dad and playing in a garage band. Not anymore. Stevens fell for him that night. The 19-year age difference didn't seem to matter. "I didn't know if it was the Long Island iced teas that I drank or if there was something there," she says. Carrie Stevens eventually became part of the KISS universe, joining Carr in Los Angeles during the recording of the band's Hot in the Shade album. "We did the regular rock star stuff," she says. "I used to have sex with him in the bathroom at the recording studio. He was a very sexual guy. We had sex at least three times a day." They were a couple, making big plans and encouraging each other in their careers. When Stevens got her first TV commercial in 1990, Carr made sure everyone watched. Then a tumor was discovered on Carr's heart. It was cancerous, and Stevens stayed with him in New York to help him through chemotherapy. They did the usual cancer ward arts and crafts to kill time. When his beloved long hair fell out from the radiation, she tried his remaining strands into a braid. They wore matching bandanas. "Weird memories I have from that time. I wpuldn't trade it for anything, even though I had no business at 22 having to go through something so horrible," she says. "That was closest I had ever been to anyone. You must know true love when you stand by somebody through that." The cancer spread to his lungs. But in some ways, carr seemed more concerned about losing his place in the band. During his treatment, Kiss hired a drummer for some new recording sessions, and Stevens still remembers his anguished phone calls to Los Angeles. And then, after three chemo sessions, the cancer seemed to be fading away. carr traveled to LA in time to appear in a video for KISS's "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" and a surprise party in his honor. Things seemed to be returning to a happy norm. When Carr returned home to New York, he called Stevens, and without saying hello asked, "Will you marry me?" She laughed. "Why are you laughing at me?" "Because you're not serious". Within days, she got a call from KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick : Eric was in a coma. A brain hemorrhage. When he finally awoke in the hospital, Carrie was there. But he was paralyzed on his left side, and he couldn't speak. In those days, she helped take care of him, putting headphones on him with his favorite music, brushing his teeth, anything. he died on Nov.24, 1991. For years, Stevens was angry at KISS, for what she interpreted as an abandonment of Carr during his illness. "I somehow had to blame somebody, and it was easy to blame them, because they were still at the top," she says now. "And I didn't have Eric anymore. I actually hated them so much that I used to pray for them. I would pray for them to find love in their lives. "It worked. It melted away all my bad feelings towards them. And then over the years I've bumped into them here and there, and in my own journey after many years, I've been able to look back and say, 'Carrie, he was very sick. He was dying. He wan't in any shape to play drums anymore." She tought about returning to memphis and going back to school. But she decided not to forget the career Carr had long encouraged. Stevens focused again on her acting, paying her bills as a coctail waitress, moving to New York to study acting in a serious way, even cutting her hair. She did a few plays, a recurring role on the daytime soap Days of her Lives. Then came an unexpected revelation : Playboy magazine. Now she was 27. And this was when Pamela Anderson was huge, Jenny Mc Carthy a popular rising actress. Carmen Electra wasn't far behind. They had all been in Playboy. And Stevens remembered an intimate coversation with Carr. "He had these mirrors all over his bedroom in New York, and I remember laying with him naked, and he told me I had one of those bodies, like one of those girls in the magazines. I was too shy to ask about it then. But he encouraged me. He said he would be proud." Posing nude turned out to be easy for her, and she was quickly accepted by the magazine as a playmate. There were parties at the Mansion, trips abroad, famous boyfriends, auditions, interviews, more pictures for the magazine, acting opportunities. When she heard of a casting call for a film to be set in the Metal '80s, Stevens put on leopard pants and her KISS Hot in the Shade leather tour jacket. She got the part of a rock star's wife. And for her, the movie would be more than another acting gig, but a personal flashback to another time. "I was so happy on that set," she says. "That whole era for me ended very sadly, just when all that grunge shit came in and Eric died. The party was over. It was a really beautiful thing for me to be on the set of Rock Star for a month." The relationship with the film's director did not survive, and she skipped the Rock Star premiere, by then already pregnant and showing. But now that she has Jaxon, things somehow make sense, with a life and career put in unforeseen perspective. She wants to work, but these days spends most of her nights at home. And as the big photo session in Malibu comes to a close, she says her good-byes amid the cleaning up and fading sunlight. Before she leaves, Carrie does the dishes herself. Domestic bliss at last.

DISHING WITH THE DEMON - A Q AND A BY GENE SIMMONS :

Gene Simmons : Where were you born ? Carrie Stevens : In Buffalo, New York, but we moved to Massachussetts when I was a year old. I stayed there till I was a year old. Gene : What happend at 17 ? Carrie : She'll kill me for saying this, but it's true. my mom kicked me out of the house. i was a bit wild. There was nothing to do in a small town, and i was doing bad things. I don't blame her for making me go away. Gene : Tell us about those bad things. Carrie : I had an older boyfrind. He was 22 and I was 17. Gene : Is that how you lost your virginity ? Carrie : No, that was before that, with a different guy. Gene : Tell us about the first time. Carrie : I was 14, and I think he was 18 or 19. Looking back, it was just horrible. I was in my bedroom at my house, and my family was sitting in the living room, which was right next to the bedroom. They were all watching TV thinking we were in there being innocent because he promised my mother that he would never to that to me because I was too special. And I don't know why she belived him, but she did. So he was going there, and I said "I thought you said that you would never to that with me". And he said, "I love you so much, i want to share everything with you." And I fell for it. But it wasn't . But it wasn't any explosive experience. i didn't know what I was doing. I didn'thave an orgasm until I was 21. It really wasn't until Eric Carr that I appreciated sex. He like forced me to an orgasm. Gene : How did you get your first orgasm ? Carrie : When Eric was recording with you guys in LA...we stayed at his place. And how can I put it ? He just like went down on me until my heart was pounding. It was like an out-of-body experience. From then on, it was easy all the time. Gene : So what does the small-town girl think when she actually gets to LA with the rock star ? Carrie : It's like my life was charmed. I don't really want to name too many names, but I've either dated or been asked out by every person whose poster hung on my walls when I was a teenager. Gene : Such as ?
Carrie : I never went out with them, but Billy Idol, Sylvester Stallone, David Lee Roth. Gene : Who have you gone out with ? Carrie : I had a three-year friendship with Enrique Iglesias. It was kind of fun. Gene : How was he as a lover ? Carrie : I can teach any man to be a good lover.
Gene : And are you still friends ? Carrie : I was in it for the sex. Gene : Who else ? Carrie : I fell madly in love with a married football player, but I can't tell you his name, for obvious reasons. Gene : Some people think that marriage is a barrier that shouldn't be broken. Carrie : If I were married, it would be a barrier for me. But not at the time I got involved with him. I thought, What the hell, I'm having fun, I'm not hurting anyone, and I don't want him to leave his family. That was the first week, and then I fell in love with him, and that's when I knew why you don't date married men. Because when you fall in love with them, it's living hell. When you see them it's wonderful, but when they leave, you're just something for them to feel guilty about. I knew I was doing that to him, and i didn't like that feeling. i just wanted to be something good in hid life. Incidentally, I heard he and his wife just broke up, so I just may look that one up. He's the only guy I've dated, really. I had an eight-year friendship with Matt LeBlanc, incidentally. Gene : Where did you meet Matt ? Carrie : I met him at a club in LA, called Roxbury, before he was famous. It was right after Eric died. I was wearing a Kiss jacket, and I took it off and put on a bar stool, and some girl tried to steel it, and Matt got it back for me. Then he bought me a shot. That began our friendship. Gene : He took you home that night ? Carrie : Yes, but we didn't have sex. Gene : And you left the same night ? Carrie : No, I left in the morning. Gene : You stayed in somebody's place you just met, but you didn't have sex ? Carrie : No. Gene : He didn't try ? Carrie : Uh, yeah, he tried. Gene : You didn't want to ? Carrie : I just met him that night. It's just not something I generally do. Gene : Are you still friends ? Carrie : yeah, but I haven't seen him in years. He's engaged. I haven't hung out with him since he met his fiancee. Gene : Who else did you date ? Carrie : Well, after Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid broke up, I dated him. Only for a few weeks or so. (Playmate) Victoria Silvstedt and I were on a plane, and he was on our flight. He was still married to Meg Ryan at the time. We were trying to flirt with him and get his attention. We were bored. It was a long flight. He fell asleep and didn't even look at us. Two years later I bumped into him at a Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion, and I said, "Who invited you here, anyway?" And he said, "Hef". And I said, "No, he didn't, I did." Because I had, on the airplane two years earlier. He called the next day and we started dating. He's a nice guy. We went horseback riding. He taught me how to meditate. He took me to a Hindu temple. But we were in two completely different places in our lives. This was when he and Meg Ryan were puclicly over. So, he had just gotten out of a marriage, and I was coming to a point in my life where i was ready for something real and commited. But now I'm the sexless female version of you, Gene. I don't believe in marriage, and I don't want to be in a committed relationship. But I miss sex. I'm much too young to be sexless. Gene : So after all these, who was interesting ? Carrie : I started dating Steve Herek after Dennis. He directed the movie Rock Star. I met him when I worked on the movie. We didn't date during production. He was clearly interested in me, but he was married at the time. And to be fair, he wasn't coming onto me. He just flirted with me. We started up a friendship, and then his relationship with his wife fell apart, and they filed for divorce, and we started dating. It became heavy very fast. Then I got pregnant pretty quick, which threw the relationship into another dimension. I know what you're thinking : She finally gets a part in a studio movie and she gets knocked up by the director. But there's a lot more to it than that. I briefly but truly thought he was the one. Gene : Are you still friends ? Carrie : We won't be if we keep talking. He's a very private man. Gene : When you were pregnant, did you feel sexy ? Carrie : Not at all. Now I'm in better shape than I was before I had the baby, but I gained 68 pounds during my pregnancy. My second trimester, I was really horny. But by that time Steve and I had broken up, so I had no one to have sex with. I think it's kind of gross to have sex with a different guy than the father of the baby. It's just something that feels very wrong. And then, by the time the baby started kicking into the third trimester, the idea that I ever even had sex was the grossest thing that I've ever heard. I think I'm scared to have sex now. It's been so long. I don't know if it's going to be different after you have a baby. I feel like a schoolgirl even talking about it, all blushing and everything. I used to be kind of hot and sexual;now I feel like a born-again virgin. But I've never been big on casual sex. If I sleep with a guy right away. I know he's somebody that I'm going to know for a long time. I slept with Eric the first night I met him, and ended up with him for four years. Gene : Eric was a good guy, wasn't he ? Carrie : He was the best. No one has ever loved me like he did. He was my soul mate. He picked up where my parents left off and kind of finished me off. Sent me on my way to womanhood. I was only 18 when I met him, 22 when he died. Those were really important years. I learned a lot from him. I think he set the stage for what I would be attracted to later in my life. He was 19 years my senior, and he was somebody I could look up to and learn from. And he was ecxiting. He was a tough act to follow.