Kristen Bell was born July 18, 1980 in
Detroit, Michigan.
For some actors, success just seems to come naturally. In
the case of talented stage and screen beauty Kristen Bell,
it wasn't so much a matter of if she was going to be a star
after realizing her dream during an early performance as a
banana in +Raggedy Ann and Andy at the tender age of 12 --
but when she would finally make the big time. Paralyzed with
stage fright as she waited for her cue off-stage, Bell was
offered a word of encouragement by her supportive mother
that would ultimately give her the drive to realize her
life's calling.
A native of Detroit whose early stage experiences eventually
led her to study at New York University's Tisch School of
the Arts, Bell saw her early dreams of on-stage success
begin to come true when she was chosen to portray Becky
Thatcher in a Broadway production of +The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer shortly after arriving in the Big Apple. Realizing
that she had what it took to find success onscreen as well
as on-stage, Bell was soon packing her bags for Los Angeles
and landing small supporting roles in such features as
Polish Wedding and Pootie Tang. She returned briefly to
Broadway for a role in the 2002 revival of +The Crucible,
playing alongside well-known stage and screen actors Liam
Neeson and Laura Linney. In 2003, Bell impressed television
viewers with a solid performance in the made-for-television
drama The King and Queen of Moonlight Bay before moving on
to essay the unforgettable role of a young girl struggling
to raise her three stepbrothers after their drug-addicted
mother is sent to jail in Gracie's Choice. If television had
offered Bell her most successful roles to this point in her
career, the magnetic young screen presence still had feature
aspirations, as evidenced by her involvement in David
Mamet's 2004 hriller Spartan. Of course, Bell wasn't about
to turn her back on the small screen just yet, and following
appearances on such popular series as Everwood and Deadwood,
she took the lead as a sort-of new-millennium Nancy Drew on
UPN's Veronica Mars. If that, combined with a lively
performance in the Showtime musical spoof Reefer Madness,
wasn't enough to make young Bell a household name,
subsequent performances in the college comedy Fifty Pills
and the hriller Deepwater would at least serve to expand her
feature-film resumé. Jason Buchanan.
