The sweet-voiced Christy Carlson Romano got her start as one of the orphans in a production of Annie. She later toured with The Sound of Music as one of the Von Trapp children (with Marie Osmond playing the role of Maria) but growing up with the nickname "Aretha Franklin Wannabe" pointed to something more ambitious. Playing a singing banana in Woody Allen's Everybody Says I Love You wasn't enough either so ...

The older sister of actress and teen pop sensation Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff kicked off her career by focusing more on her skills in front of the camera than her talents behind a microphone. Though she would pen the occasional tune for her younger sibling, it was screen roles in such television hits as Chicago Hope, Boston Public, and (alongside her sister) Lizzie McGuire that first opened the eyes of the pu ...

Actress Anna Kendrick earned an Oscar nomination in 2010 for her role in the Jason Reitman movie Up in the Air. In the film she plays George Clooney's buttoned-down colleague -- as opposed to his unbuttoned cohort, played by Vera Farmiga. The nomination came after a big year for Kendrick, who also plays Jessica in the Twilight films based on the novels by Stephenie Meyer. An actor since childhood, Kendrick ...

Name at birth: Jamie King James (now Jaime) King was a famously troubled teen supermodel of the 1990s; she was "discovered" at 14, a success at 15 and a heroin user at 16. After well-publicized battles with drugs and alcohol King turned sober and continued her successes in modelling; her male-sounding name, once a novelty, became her calling card. On TV she has served as occasional co-host of the MTV show H ...

A lithe brunette with a signature navel piercing, Alessandra Ambrosio was one of the many Brazilian models to hit it big internationally in the late 1990s. Alessandra Ambrosio began taking modeling classes at age 14, was a finalist in the Elite Look of the Year competition in 1996, and went from there to advertisements for Guess clothing (the same line which helped launch the careers of Anna Nicole Smith an ...

Name at birth: Kelly Palzis Kelly Preston is a television and film actor whose body of work is often overshadowed by her famous marriage to actor John Travolta. Preston was born and raised in Hawaii, and also lived in Iraq and Australia while growing up. After beginning a modelling career, she moved to Los Angeles and studied acting. After small roles in Christine (1983) and 52 Pick-Up (1986), her first not ...

Actress Amanda Bynes was the young star of the movie What a Girl Wants (2003) and the cable TV comedy series What I Like About You. Bynes was already a comedy veteran by the time she became a teenager, having performed for years on Nickelodeon's shows All That (1996-2000) and The Amanda Show (1999-2002), where her skill at broad comedy earned her comparisons to Lucille Ball. She made the leap to the big scr ...

Shannon Elizabeth played a voluptuous Czechoslovakian exchange student in the teen comedy American Pie (1999, with Tara Reid). The movie put Elizabeth on the map, and she raised her profile even more with appearances in Playboy and Maxim magazines. Her other films include Scary Movie (2000) and Tom Cats (2001). In the summer of 2001 she starred in American Pie II, the sequel to her first hit, and the offbea ...

An actress who first earned her critical laurels (and reeled in a substantial television fanbase) as Dr. Alison Cameron on the blockbuster medical drama House  (2004), Jennifer Morrison grew up well outside the realm of Hollywood, in a middle-class family in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois. As a preteen and teenager, Morrison entered showbusiness via modeling, appearing in innumerable prin ...

Name at birth: Ashley Youmans Ashley Dupré was the prostitute who was hired by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in 2008, sparking a political scandal. When the story of their transaction became public, Spitzer resigned and Dupre became an overnight celebrity. Dupre's background is not perfectly clear. She was raised in New Jersey and moved to North Carolina at age 17 to live with her father and his second wi ...