Michelle Torres--aka Melena Star--was born Sheila Montez (an August "Leo") in Galveston, TX. Her life started out difficult; she was adopted at the age of four and grew up in the small west Texas town of Uvalde. She took part in several school plays, the choir, 4-H, and was involved in band--she played trombone in her junior high and high school years. However, there wasn't anything that really captivated her attention for very long. Not content with small-town life, she moved to San Antonio, Texas, and dreamed of bigger and better things. She worked numerous jobs in San Antonio, including waitress and assistant manager at a health club, and while working there she met a Scandinavian businessman, got married, had her first son and moved to Europe. This would be her first of three abusive marriages and travels to three different countries before settling back in the US.She was restless and, having wasted so many of her years in a troublesome childhood and failed marriages, she finally made a choice to enroll in college in 2007 in Mississippi. Her goal was to make a better life for herself and her three children. She took many classes, at first concentrating on Medical Transcription. However, as luck would have it, she was given a chance to work as a background actress in neighboring Louisiana. New Orleans was becoming the new "Hollywood South", having a chance to reinvent herself after the tragic Hurricane Katrina in 2005. New Orleans would be the future shooting location of many new movies and a new era. She also was introduced to "indies", or independent films. This would ignite her love for acting, and she enrolled in Theatre at her community college. She had finally found what her niche in life was and would continue to be, even if it did take a little time getting there.