When Mother Nature paid an unexpected visit, Elan Carter's life became a ball of confusion. January's earthquake in Los Angeles shook Elan out of bed, then tossed her against a painting on the wall. The painting is still crooked, and Miss June is thinking of moving to solid ground. "Maybe living in
...a house on stilts is asking for trouble," she says. Not that Elan has lost her elan. She's still as poised and self-assured as a second-generation celeb ought to be. It's just that she's not yet finished making Daddy proud of her. Her dad is Otis Williams, a founding member of the Temptations. Despite her own success in the music business, Elan's not as famous as she would like to be. But look out - this month's centerfold is Elan's wake-up call to the world.
There was irony in the earthquake: "I always worry about my dad when he's onstage. I'm so proud of him. He's 52 and he's still going strong. But every so often I think, I sure hope he doesn't have a heart attack. So who was almost the first to go? Me. When the earthquake hit, it felt like the whole world was shaking and I thought, God's coming and I'm not ready! I'm just 24 and I'm a sinner - I can't die now."
Good news for the video biz: The stilts under her house held. Elan - who has appeared with acts as diverse as the Jacksons, Duran Duran, Terence Trent D'Arby, Bobby Brown, Richard Marx and Tone-Loc - can now resume her career. She has already modeled all over the world, from Europe to Mexico to Jamaica to the Bahamas. Her acting debut came in a recent gangster film, "Lookin' Italian", in which she gets shot a lot. Says Elan (looking fine but not at all Italian), "They always kill the black people in those movies." She says it with the laugh of a survivor. For Elan Carter (who's been known to double the speed limit in her favorite toy, a plum-colored Porsche), the world is a place where daddy's little girl is starting to make a name for herself.
