![]() Not only could I stand by a mountain bike or by the skis, I could ride down that mountain and do a jump.'įrom those assignments she leaped onto the television screen in 1992, landing a job as an assistant on ESPN's 'Bodyshaping With Cory Everson.' 'My only assignment was to keep track of the reps, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out,' she recalls, laughing. 'I had to be unique, considering my ethic background. 'I started doing fitness modeling and signed with an agency that only did advertising with health products,' she says. She hung up her posing suit after the show. At about '99 pounds'but ripped' Kiana took the Novice Lightweight and Overall at the San Diego Championships, then followed up that auspicious debut with a second-place finish in the Lightweight class at the Palm Springs Championships a year later. Not before competing in her first bodybuilding contest, however. I was mentally and physically stronger.' Eventually, she earned her degree in communications, with an emphasis in journalism and business. ![]() 'I was becoming more muscular, stronger, and my posture was better. 'I became a fanatic about the weights,' she says. Kiana hit the books at UCLA, but she still reserved time for her training, at the university's Wooden Center and at Gold's Gym in Venice. And I wanted to be a broadcaster, like Connie Chung, and to get into modeling and acting too.' 'First, I needed to get more serious about school. I always had piano and guitar lessons I had to be home by 12 on prom night.'Īfter two years at UCSB, Tom transferred to UCLA. My life had been so structured in the past. 'I was away from home for the first time, and my parents were very conservative. 'I kinda went crazy,' she says, admitting that she concentrated on having a good time instead studying. 'My father asked me if I was at a college or a resort,' she says, laughing. When she wasn't on the sand or in the water, she could be found in the school weight room. 'When I picked the college I wanted to go to, I selected the one I thought was the most beautiful.'Īfter settling into her new home'a dorm room with an ocean view at the University of California at Santa Barbara'Kiana said good-bye to her tennis career and hello to beach volleyball, scuba diving and wind surfing. ![]() She was an A student at Marina, although she admits she didn't put much effort into her books. Kiana was an ace in the classroom as well as on the courts. Thus began a lifelong affair with the iron. 'I found out that lifting weights made me hit the ball harder, move quicker and, best of all, look shapelier,' Tom says. He suggested she head for the weight room. I looked like a chopstick!'Īn extremely competitive person, Kiana asked her coach what she could do to gain an edge over her opponents. 'It's always been a challenge for me to keep muscle on. 'I was really skinny back then,' she says. Tennis was the name of the game for Kiana during junior high school and at Marina High. They always instilled the principles of being in shape.' 'I was playing tennis and snow skiing when I was five. 'Instead of playing classical music when I was a baby, my mother would have sports on television,' Kiana says. ![]() Kiana's mother was a physical education teacher for 30 years. Her father, Layne Tom Jr., is a former actor who played Charlie Chan's son in the early TV series. Kiana's passions for athletics and being in front of a camera come courtesy of her parents. 'It was a replica of a United States smart gun, a heat-seeking missile.' It was the same type of heat she has generated ever since making her television debut nearly a decade ago. 'The gun weighed more than I did,' the 5'6', 115-pound bodyshaper reports, laughing. And a year ago Tom landed her first co-starring film role in 'Universal Soldier: The Return,' in which she got to kill off that big, nasty Bill Goldberg, saving the life of the flick's headliner, Jean-Claude Van Damme, in the process. ![]() The former star, host and producer of 'Kiana's Flex Appeal,' which ran on ESPN2 from 1995 to 2000, says she has two new health-and-fitness-related projects in the works with Fox Sports Network. She seems to have it all these days: beauty, intelligence, a marvelous new custom-built, 8,000-square-foot Newport Beach crib with a killer ocean view and a career that's ascending quicker than a Marion Jones 100-meter dash. 'It was basically a blue-eyed, blonde community at the time, and I would be teased so much, I'd cry at school.' 'I grew up in Huntington Beach, California, and my classmates used to make fun of me because I was different,' says Kiana, a self-described 'chop suey' child of Chinese, Hawaiian and Irish descent. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |