My Mystery Actress

It all started innocently enough.

The year was 1989 and I was just 12 years old. I had started really enjoying magical sitcoms - things like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, which were my morning mainstays before school. Then along came a show called Free Spirit with a similar plot device. In this case, a young boy wished for some help or something and blammo! A good witch appeared - Winnie Goodwinn. (Is she good?)

The show didn't last very long.

A number of years later, I noticed someone in a commercial and thought, "Huh - she looks familiar." But I couldn't place her! I remember banging my head against the wall to try to remember who she was. Who was she? I never found out.

Then I got into the show Inside Herman's Head (later Herman's Head) and... there she was! But who was she? I had forgotten, again.

Years and years and years passed and that same actress appeared in even more commercials. And each time I started thinking, "Huh - she looks famili... WAIT WHERE IS SHE FROM?!" It started to really bother me that I couldn't remember. But there she was, selling Massengill or Swiffer or what-have-you. I started to hate her.

At my company Christmas party just last month one of my coworkers shared with me her story of a mystery actress, one from a Swiffer commercial. I couldn't place her either but I did tell her about my mystery actress. Better still, my brain started jogging and I could remember that she was in some sitcom that probably had something to do with magic. I liked that stuff, still do (Charmed) and remembering that brought a whole new spin to this mystery actress. So now I knew she was in something... but what?!?

Thankfully while watching TV the other night I saw her yet again, this time in a commercial for Totino's Pizza Rolls. (Also in my freezer!) For grins yesterday I Googled "totino's pizza rolls actress." And there it is. The first result held my answer, the person whose name I had forgotten for nearly 19 years: Corrine Bohrer.

Odds are good now that you see her, you recognize her too. She's done a ton of commercials (here are some..) Her IMDb entry is rather long: Police Academy 4, Vice Versa, "St. Elsewhere", "Friends", and even "Will & Grace."

My quest was over. Thanks to the Internet and Yahoo! Answers in particular, one of the long-standing mysteries in my life was solved. Amazing.

So, Ms. Bohrer, I just wanted to say after all these years: "You were great in Free Spirit!"