Where Is Leanna Creel Now? The Biker Girl Who Became a Photographer

By CelebPaid Research · Updated October 7, 2026 · 8 min read

Thematic illustration: a DSLR camera, evoking Creel's career in photography and film. This is a generic image, not a photo of the subject.Image via Wikimedia Commons

She rode into Bayside on a motorcycle, leather jacket and all, for the final season of the most beloved teen sitcom of the 90s — and then she rode right back out of Hollywood. Leanna Creel's story is the rare complete reinvention: from sitcom actress to film-school graduate to working photographer and director. This is the verified story of where Leanna Creel is now.

The Peak: Tori Scott Rides Into Bayside (1992-1993)

Born August 27, 1970, in Los Angeles, Leanna Creel arrived in the world with built-in co-stars: she is one of identical triplets, with sisters Joy and Monica. The three acted together as children, most notably in the Parent Trap sequels — Parent Trap III (1989) and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon (1989) — Disney television movies that capitalized on the novelty of three identical sisters.

Then came the role that defined her. In 1992, with Tiffani Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley departing Saved by the Bell, the show needed new blood for its final season. Creel was cast as Tori Scott — the leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding biker girl who blew into Bayside like a small thunderstorm. Tori was deliberately different from the Bayside archetype: tougher, cooler, less interested in the gang's approval. She appeared through the show's final season in 1992-1993, the last new face of the original run.

Tori remains one of the show's most debated characters — loved by some fans as a breath of fresh air, puzzling to others as a late addition. But there's no debating that Creel made an impression: the biker girl with the attitude, arriving just as the bell was about to ring for the last time.

The Triplets: Three Sisters, One Screen

Before Bayside, there were the triplets. Leanna, Joy, and Monica Creel — identical sisters born in Los Angeles — were a natural novelty act, and the industry knew what to do with them. As children, they appeared together, most prominently in Disney's Parent Trap III (1989) and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon (1989), television-movie sequels to the Hayley Mills classic that used the sisters' identical looks as both plot device and marketing hook.

The triplets' story is its own quiet Hollywood tale. Three girls, one face, shared credits — and then adulthood, when the novelty fades and each sister has to become a person rather than a set. Joy and Monica stepped away from performing; Leanna carried on the longest, through Saved by the Bell and into the late 90s, before making her own exit. The Creel sisters' divergence — one to film school and a studio, the others to private life — is the normal human outcome of an abnormal childhood.

It's a useful frame for Leanna's later choices. She grew up as one-third of a matched set, performing identity as a group project. Her adult career — photographer, director, studio founder — is the opposite: a singular vision, authored alone, behind the camera instead of in front of it.

The Exit: Film School Instead of Fame (1997)

Creel acted for a few more years after Saved by the Bell — her final credit was Ned and Stacey in 1997 — and then she made the decision that defines her story. She didn't just quit acting; she went back to school to learn the other side of the camera.

She earned a BA in History from UCLA, then stayed for an MFA in Film and Television with an emphasis in independent film and animation. This was not a celebrity vanity degree — it was a full graduate film education, the kind that involves years of production work, theory, and thesis films. She was, by all accounts, a serious student.

The education paid off behind the camera. In 1998, she founded Ignite Entertainment, a production company, and worked as an executive producer. She directed the award-winning documentary The Program (2015), a film about the troubled-teen industry that earned festival recognition. The actress had become a filmmaker — not by accident, but by training.

Creel Studio: Photographer and Filmmaker

Today, Creel runs Creel Studio — her photography and film production company, specializing in food, travel, and lifestyle content. As a photographer and director, she creates commercial and editorial work with her wife, Rinat Greenberg, whom she married in 2008. The couple has a son, Levi.

The food-and-travel specialization is no accident — it's among the most demanding genres in commercial photography, requiring mastery of light, styling, and appetite appeal, plus the logistical chops to produce on location. That a former sitcom actress built a working business in this competitive field, on the strength of a film-school education rather than a famous name, says everything about the seriousness of the reinvention. Clients hire Creel Studio for the portfolio, not the Saved by the Bell credit.

The studio represents the synthesis of everything she learned: the visual instincts of a performer, the technical craft of a film-school graduate, the entrepreneurial drive of a production-company founder. Her professional profiles describe a working creative — photographer, director, filmmaker — with a functioning business and a body of commercial work.

It's worth noting the through-line. The teenager who played a biker girl with a camera-ready attitude grew into a woman who operates cameras for a living. The performance became the craft; the craft became the career.

The Personal Life: Family and Privacy

Creel married Rinat Greenberg in 2008, and the couple welcomed their son Levi. She has spoken in the past about the experience of coming out and building a family — part of a generation of former teen stars who lived their personal lives more openly than the industry of their youth would have allowed.

She maintains a professional public presence through Creel Studio — portfolios, client work, the normal visibility of a working commercial creative — but does not participate in the Saved by the Bell nostalgia circuit. When Peacock's Saved by the Bell revival gave Tori Scott a shout-out, it was a nod from a distance: the character lives on in the canon, while the actress lives on in her studio.

Where Is Leanna Creel Now?

As of 2026, Leanna Creel is a photographer, director, and filmmaker running Creel Studio, creating food, travel, and lifestyle content with her wife Rinat Greenberg. She is 56, married since 2008, and has not acted since 1997. Her public identity is that of a working creative professional — the UCLA film graduate, not the Bayside biker girl.

She is the rare child star whose second act required more education than the first: BA, MFA, production company, documentary, studio. Tori rode a motorcycle; Leanna built a career.

The Legacy: Tori and the Triplets

Tori Scott endures as a Saved by the Bell curio — the final-season addition, the biker girl, the character the revival remembered. But Creel's more interesting legacy is the triplets: three identical sisters who acted together as children and then went their separate ways into adult life, with Leanna's path leading through film school to the director's chair.

Her story is the counterargument to the child-star tragedy narrative. Not every exit is a fall. Some are graduations — in her case, literally.

Then vs Now: Two Chapters

Leanna Creel rode into Saved by the Bell as Tori Scott — and rode out of Hollywood into film school, a production company, and a photography studio. The biker girl grew up to be the one holding the camera. From identical triplet to singular artist: the rare teen star who got more interesting after the show ended.

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