Free Preview: Playmate of the Month July 1997 - Daphnee Lynn Duplaix

Miss July will not be denied. As Daphnee Lynn Duplaix, dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket, strolls to her table at Avanzare in Chicago, patrons glance up from their <i>piatti</i> and then stare. It could be Miss July's vivid green eyes or wonderful Haitian-Italian features that attract their attention. But more likely it has to do with an intangible quality - presence. Along with her talents as an actress, model, dancer and singer, 20-year-old Daphnee has a knack for being noticed. Not bad for a girl who says that at 16, she was "a skinny little tomboy". <br><br> What happened? "I just blossomed," she says with a smile and a shrug. <br><br> One person who noticed Daphnee was Sylvester Stallone, whom she met while playing an extra in <i>The Specialist</i>, which was filmed near her home in North Miami Beach. He told her she should audition for roles rather than take part in cattle calls for extras. Sly's advice turned out to be sly advice. Without heading for Hollywood, Daphnee has already bene in nine movies. You can catch a glimpse of her in <i>Striptease, Girl Talk, The Substitute</i> and <i>Donnie Brasco</i>, and she appears alongside Matthew Modine and Dennis Hopper in <i>The Blackout</i>. Her ambition is to play "kick-butt action roles", and her biggest part so far, in the forthcoming <i>Kickboxing Academy</i>, seems to fit the bill. "I play a 16-year-old who is in a good kickboxing school," Daphnee says. "But a bad school wants to take over our space. The...