Carmen Electra “struggled” with her ‘Baywatch’ action scenes as she couldn’t work out how to hold her breath in water.

The 52-year-old actress, born Tara Leigh Patrick, kicked off her career with glamour modelling in 1996, including appearances in Playboy magazine, before she landed her breakthrough role as Lani McKenzie on the lifeguard show.

She has now told People in an interview to mark the 35th anniversary of the hit series one of the first things she was asked in her audition for the show was about her swimming abilities.

Carmen added: “I said, ‘Yes, of course I can.’ The thing is, I’m okay in a pool. I mean, I was a gymnast and trained in classical ballet most of my life, and I grew up swimming in friends’ pools and in the river and stuff, in the Ohio River, little swim parks.”

But she admitted when it came to actually shooting ‘Baywatch’ she started to battle with the reality of tough action scenes.

Carmen went on: “When we were rehearsing and we were really getting in the water, sometimes it was really hard.

“I would end up getting through things, but that always felt like such a great accomplishment.

“If I could dive off the speeding boat with the rescue cam, tandem dive with two other people right on time, to me that was a great accomplishment.

“Doing surfing scenes and tandem surfing, which was really scary.

“There were a lot of scenes I’d struggle with.

“I never could understand how you push the water out and still hold your breath.

“It was always a strange thing for me that I never really got.”

But she added completing rough scenes gave her a huge sense of achievement.

Carmen said: “When I would do a scene and it was completely successful, it felt like a huge accomplishment, and those times were really good.”