Carmen was born in New York City of Spanish, Cuban and German ancestry. Her acting training was with Sanford Meisner at Neighborhood Playhouse and with Uta Hagen and Alice Spivak at HB Studios. Carmen was on the Board of Directors of Women in Film for three years during which time she was the keynote speaker at the WIF Gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, speaking about "The New Wave of Latinos and Latinas in Hollywood". Julie was on the Board of Directors of IFP/West for six years during which time she created the John Cassavetes Award for emerging filmmakers who direct with the experiential style iconic of Cassavetes.
She has starred in a variety of films including Gloria directed by John Cassavetes, Night of the Juggler (1980), Comeback (1982) opposite Eric Burdon, Last Plane Out (1983), Condo , Blue City (1986), Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Fright Night Part 2 (1988) as vampire Regine Dandrige, Paint It Black (1989), John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995), NYPD Blue (1999) and King of the Jungle (2000) opposite John Leguizamo. Julie starred in Dawn Patrol (2014), You Can't Say No opposite Peter Fonda, and Windows on the World opposite Edward James Olmos.
Carmen appeared on television most recently starring as La Doña on Tales of the Walking Dead and guest starring as Sarah in the 2022 Fall season of Grey's Anatomy. Julie played the female lead in the 1992 NBC mini-series Drugs Wars: The Cocaine Cartel, as well as playing the mother of Angelina Jolie's character in the 1997 Hallmark Entertainment miniseries True Women and the female lead opposite Val Kilmer in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid directed by Billy Graham. Julie played female lead opposite George C. Scott in two made for television movies, Finding the Way Home and Curacao (also called Deadly Waters). She was a series regular, as Linda Rodriguez Kirkridge, on the short-lived ABC sitcom Condo (1983), and guest starred as Nina, the environmental revolutionary in three first-season (1990) episodes of the HBO original comedy series Dream On.

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