Leskanich was born in Topeka, Kansas. She is of Irish, German and Czech ancestry. Her father was a colonel in the United States Air Force, and Katrina and her five siblings (four sisters and one brother) moved frequently as children. After she was born, they moved from Kansas to New Mexico, and then California, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Stuttgart, in (then) West Germany, and the Netherlands before arriving in the United Kingdom in 1976.