Popular Playboy Model and Actress Kymberly Herrin dies at 65
Ghostbusters’ “Dream Ghost” Kymberly Herrin, who also appeared in the video that made ZZ Top household names on MTV, has passed away. It was reported that she was 65 years old.
Herrin passed away in Santa Barbara in October, according to her family’s statement to the Santa Barbara News-Press, though they did not specify the cause of death.
Before appearing in the music video for “Legs” by ZZ Top in 1984, model Herrin had already graced the covers of more than a dozen magazines, including Playboy twice. This video, along with “Gimme All Your Lovin'” and “Sharp Dressed Man,” helped make the Texas boogie group regulars on the fledgling cable network. Herrin told an interviewer that she had replaced another woman who the other two “didn’t like” in the first two videos. She was the inspiration for the woman wearing the bright red top in the band’s biggest hit, “Legs,” which charted in the Top 10 in the United States and several other countries.
In the mid-1980s, she appeared in a David Lee Roth video and the 1985 video for ZZ Top’s “Sleeping Bag,” another Top 10 single. She also appeared in the 1987 longform Kiss video Exposed.
In 1984, Herrin appeared in two blockbuster movies: Robert Zemeckis’ Romancing the Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, and Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver, among many others. In the latter, Herrin plays the enigmatic apparition that materialised above Ackroyd’s bed as he slept. Although his role is brief, Herrin leaves an indelible impression.
Herrin, who was born on October 2, 1957, in Lompoc, California, has appeared as a guest star on the television series Matt Houston and St. Elsewhere and in the feature films Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Road House (1987), and Moving Violations (1985).
Kymberly’s mother, Billie Dodson, and brother, Mark Herrin, along with many nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews, will miss her dearly. The family decided to donate to the American Cancer Society in order to aid in breast cancer research.