American model and noted family, the wife of actor Bill Shatner whom she married on 11/15/1999. The marriage was apparently loving but troubled – Bill had filed for divorce on 10/21/1998 before a reconciliation. Scandal magazines ran repeated accounts of drinking problems and Nerine’s California driving license was suspended at least twice for driving while intoxicated. At the time of her marriage, she was attending a court-ordered 18-month rehab program.
The daughter of a longshoreman and a secretary, Nerine was said to be a loving person, very giving. Vivacious, bold and extroverted, she loved to wisecrack and mix with people. The second of five kids, she grew up in Boston’s Roslindale district. Every summer from the time she could walk, she and her siblings would climb into the family’s old Chevy and head to their cottage near a lake in Sundown, NH. She was an experienced swimmer and not one to lose control, even later in her Hollywood lifestyle.
As a slender teenager, she began a modeling career. With straightforward, nonstop energy, she was soon doing photo shoots and walking the runways in fashion shows. Her work took her to Europe for months at a time. At a party in Los Angeles in 1996, she
met Bill Shatner, twice divorced and 28 years her senior. Shuttling between her home in New York and an apartment in Hollywood, she gradually fell in love. With marriage, she kept her career and dabbled in acting, but Shatner was her life.
On 8/08/1999, Shatner came home near 10:00 PM from visiting one of his three daughters from a former marriage to find Nerine’s nude body floating in their swimming pool. He dove into the pool and pulled her out but it was to late to revive her. Police listed the death as an accidental drowning.