Elan
Carter

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.