Whitesnake Actress Tawny Kitaen’s Cause Death Released

Whitesnake Actress Tawny Kitaen’s Cause Death Released | Society Of Rock Videos

via OWN / Youtube

Five Months After She Passed Away

Over five months following the death of Julie E. “Tawny” Kitaen, her cause of death was finally released.

She passed away in her home in her Newport Beach, California on May 7 at the age of 59. A spokesperson for the Orange County Coroner’s Office revealed to PEOPLE that the actress and ’80s music video icon died from dilated cardiomyopathy, which was a common type of heart disease. There were also contributing factors to her death that included mild coronary atherosclerosis, mirtazapine, mirtazapine metabolite, alprazolam, acetaminophen, pregabalin and hydrocodone.

Kitaen got her break in 1984 when she joined Bachelor Party. She played several roles in other ’80s movies but what made her popular was appearing on rock music videos. She appeared on Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again,” “Still of the Night,” “Is This Love,” and “The Deeper the Love”, and Ratt’s “Back for More”. She was also on the album cover of two Ratt LPs.

Interestingly, she wasn’t the original choice for “Here I Go Again”, it was actually for model Claudia Schiffer.

“But that fell apart near the actual shoot,” Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale recalled. “And I was taking Tawny out for dinner, when [director] Marty Callner called me, and said, ‘You have to stop by, we have problems.’ We went to his house on the way to dinner, he opened the door, his jaw hit the floor — as you know, Tawny was an absolute beauty — and he said, ‘That’s her! She’s the Whitesnake woman!’”

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