FULL NAME: Darla Michele Queeneland
KNOWN AS: Dar, DQ, Queenie, Dairy Queen
DATE OF BIRTH: July 29, 1987
AGE: 24
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
OCCUPATION: Actress
SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Straight
MARITAL STATUS: Single

◎ Overtly bubbly, but has a foul mouth. Most people don't know what to make of her right off the bat.
◎ Feels strange if she goes more than a day without talking to childhood best friend, Jo Astley.
◎ Her favorite films include Audrey Hepburn fare, 80s films, Cameron Crowe's work, and lewd comedies like Clerks and Superbad.
◎ Wasn't interested in horror films until she started acting in them. Now she has an affinity for the genre. She lists Cabin Fever, The Shining, The Changeling, and the original Halloween franchise as her favorites.
◎ Has a skewed sense of humor.
◎ Vices include red wine and the occasional cigarette.
◎ Loves visiting old cemeteries.
◎ Since working with Jeremy Lefors on the 2007 film, Halloween, she's formed a sibling-like relationship with the fellow actor.
◎ Plays guitar recreationally.

Darla Queeneland never set out to be an actress. In fact, if you had asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have told you she wanted to take over her mother’s business. The daughter of a florist mother and a school teacher father, the Massachusetts native had an outward appearance of sugar, spice, and everything nice. At a young age she idolized Shirley Temple and Hayley Mills, organized the most pristine of tea parties for her dolls, and tried to take home stray dogs that wandered the brownstone lined streets of her neighborhood. The color pink dominated her wardrobe and she only wore skirts until the east coast winters forced them into hibernation. Frilly, girly, and sweet, the young girl didn’t fit in very much with the neighborhood kids. Not until her father’s job moved the small family to the suburbs of Boston at age nine and she befriended her next door neighbor, Josephina Astley, that is. The two were polar opposites and turned heads wherever they went from the sheer oddity of the union.

It only seemed natural that when Darla entered junior high and high school, she would don a cheerleading uniform. In her adolescence, she was every high school movie cliche: head cheerleader, prom queen, the works. Fashion magazines, boys, and make up became her life. She could have been called ditzy, though she managed to get by with marginal grades. Unless she was in math class, then she was absolutely fucked. The only anomaly of it all was her continuing friendship with Jo. High school should have torn the two apart, but as an only child, Jo was the closest thing to a sister she had. To have a teenage head inflated so much by titles and boys knocking on her door, she needed that foil. While her image changed drastically to most, when she was with her childhood friend she was the same girl who sang Mariah Carey into her hairbrush while the other had rolled her eyes and groaned.

If every day life was a horror movie Darla would have been the prime candidate for an early demise, which is exactly what a casting agent saw when looking for new talent at a local mall. It was the summer after high school had finished, and Darla was set to attend cosmetology school that September. To help along with the payments, she had taken a job at a Delia’s. It suited her just fine, discounts on cute clothing and the opportunity to scope out cute guys? She was sold. The mall had been dealing with a pest problem since that spring- something her managers had neglected to tell her, of course. Bending to grab a box of hangers from behind the cash register, she was met with two, beady eyes starring up at her. The self-professed animal lover had one fear, and that was rats. So, she screamed. Loudly. She shrieked so loud that mall security and a few onlookers had high tailed it into the teen boutique. Feebly, she apologized when they realized she wasn’t being robbed at gunpoint. A few of the worried bystanders even laughed, which she might have if she was one of them.

It had taken nearly 18 years to feel complete humiliation, and that was it. When she saw a younger man in a suit approach, she turned the same shade of red as her dress. She was already mortified, she didn’t need the sympathy of a stranger who looked that good in a suit. The man presented a card, introduced himself as an agent from Los Angeles, and told her he was there trying to cast the latest installment of Final Destination 3. The franchise used a lot of “fresh” talent, also known as virtual unknowns, and he wanted her to audition. Her? An actress? The last time she had performed was in the third grade in a production of Cinderella, and she had gotten so nervous she refused to come out for the final act. The only lines she knew how to recite were rhymes about being aggressive and “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Taking the card, she said she would think about going to the casting call at the end of the month and went back to her day, side eyeing every corner for fear of another rodent.

As the weeks went by, she resigned herself to go to the audition. She told no one, not even her best friend. Her shaky delivery should have caused her to bomb. However, the casting director thought she had the right look and the scream for the part. After much deliberation with her parents, they agreed to let her use the money they had been collectively saving for her schooling to go to Los Angeles for the remainder of the summer for acting lessons, waitressing to help supplement her dwindling savings. By the early fall, she was shooting the film. While she was grateful for the experience, she was almost counting on returning home for Christmas, and starting up a semester late at cosmetology school. She liked acting, but it seemed like everything was such a fluke. It had been fun for her to shed that girly demeanor for once in her life and get a little dirty, or in her case, bloody. She just didn’t want to get her hopes up. Rejection was something she wasn’t exactly used to.

It was then that she made herself a pact. She would give this whole acting thing a shot for one year. Several girls she had met around Los Angeles could easily go months without booking a job, and had told her that she shouldn’t get her hopes too high for another gig right off the bat. In the interim, she continued to go to acting classes, countless auditions, and earning her bar tending license since that was where the money was in food service. She was starting to feel discouraged until roles started to come her way. They were all horror films, which wasn’t surprising. Her agent called it “paying her dues,” but she enjoyed it. This was the first time in her life that she truly had something to work towards, something that made her feel a little more three dimensional. Her big break came in the form of the reboot to the Halloween franchise. Taking on the role of Laurie Strode, she had big shoes to fill. She was willing to do whatever it took to do Jamie Lee's iconic role justice.

In attempts to show some versatility, her manager had advised that she take a try to take a few roles outside of the box. It seemed strange to Darla to abandon the genre that had given her something to strive for, but she wasn’t about to turn her back on the people that had helped her from the very beginning. The independent feature was met with little fanfare, but it opened up some new doors which she hadn’t tried to knock on before. Not that she really knocked. She couldn’t stay away from her niche for long. Spicing things up was good for some, but as time went on she was glad to have traded the title of prom queen for scream queen.