Connie Kreski Bio 
Connie Kreski was an American actress, glamour and nude model. She was born Constance Joanne Kornacki on September 19, 1946, in Wyandotte, Michigan. Playboy named her its January 1968 Playmate at 21. She was later named Playmate of the Year 1969. Her appearance came during the 1960s, as Playboy grew into a major force in American magazine publishing.
Kreski had natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 35-23-36.
Connie Kreski was already preparing for a very different life when Playboy altered the trajectory. She had studied nursing in Detroit and briefly worked as a psychiatric-care assistant at a hospital in Ann Arbor before being noticed by a Playboy scout at a University of Michigan football game. The attention that followed quickly pulled her away from the hospital world and toward modeling, travel and, eventually, acting—an adjustment Kreski herself admitted happened so quickly that it sometimes felt unreal.
Film opportunities soon carried her far beyond Michigan. In 1969, Anthony Newley cast her as the female lead in Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, a production shot in Malta with Joan Collins, Milton Berle and George Jessel. More screen work followed in The Trackers, The Outside Man and The Black Bird, while television later included projects such as Captains and the Kings and Aspen. Kreski was frank about wanting more than decorative parts, arguing that producers too often valued appearance over acting ability.
Europe became another important part of that period. Playboy travel took her to London, where the Mod shops, open spaces and energy of the city made a particularly strong impression. German photographer Frank Habicht, known for documenting Swinging London, also photographed Kreski while she was living there. For someone who had previously seen relatively little outside Detroit, the sudden exposure to London, Malta and the international film world was a dramatic expansion of horizons.
Her Hollywood years also brought her into the social circle of Sharon Tate, whom Kreski regarded as a close friend. She had been invited to visit Tate on August 9, 1969, but did not go; Tate and four others were murdered that night by members of the Manson group. Kreski later wrote about her reaction for the Detroit Free Press. From 1971 to 1975, she was also romantically involved with actor James Caan.
Kreski died in Beverly Hills on March 21, 1995, from a blocked carotid artery. Her public life was much shorter than the ambitions she once described, but it ranged remarkably widely: nursing, Playboy, European travel, film, television and the restless late-1960s Hollywood scene all became part of the same story. What began as an unexpected discovery at a football game turned into a career far removed from the hospital work she had originally imagined.
