Everyone knows and loves Manhattan's favorite It girl Serena Van der Woodsen. The actress behind her is, of course, the magnificent Blake Lively. She's won the audience's heart with her charisma and talent, and every movie that features her is a guaranteed success. She found international fame with Gossip Girl, and she portrayed Serena for six years. Now, mother of three kids and married to movie star Ryan Reynolds, she's still going strong.
Blake has had quite a colorful career before the series that not many people know about, and that will make readers fall in love with her even more.
10 Instead Of Leaving Her With A Babysitter, Her Parents Brought Her To Acting Classes
A lot of actors learn their craft from an early age, mostly at programs that their schools offer, but Blake was learning about acting before even knowing what it was. She comes from an artistic family, and her parents both taught acting classes. Since they didn't want to leave little Blake with a babysitter, they would just take her to classes with them. The actress is happy that they did that because it helped her "out of her shell." She said she's naturally a shy person, and being present in those classes was very good for her.
9 She Scored Her First Movie Role When She Was 10
With such artistic and driven parents, it wasn't long before Blake was excited to be a part of the acting world. Her father was happy to oblige and got her a part in an independent film he was directing, titled Sandman. It was Blake's first movie role, and she was just ten years old. It was a fantasy movie about Early Knapp, a retiree from Fantasyworld, who thinks children no longer believe in him. Blake had a small part, but it was the beginning of what would later be her amazing career.
8 Overachiever
"Overachiever" is the word Cosmopolitan used to describe Blake Lively, and frankly, it's an accurate term. Blake did not only concentrate on her acting but she also took classes of everything he could and found countless programs to be a part of when she was young. She was even part of a choir.
"I was class president, on the cheerleading squad, in a competitive show choir, and in, like, six different clubs," she explained. All of that was a big part of her formative years and helped her become the artist she is today.
7 Her Brother's Influence
Despite her love for her craft, there was a period when Blake just wanted to concentrate on her studies. The problem was that, contrary to what most families do, her parents and brothers didn't encourage her to follow an academic path. Her older brother Eric saw her talent and potential very early and insisted she dropped out to dedicate herself to acting full time. For that, he contacted agents and set up auditions for her.
"I was really busy at school and I would have these agents calling and saying, 'We have an appointment for you.' It was really hard to say no, because I didn't want to make my brother upset."
6 Her First First Big Movie
In 2005, when she was a junior in high school, Blake finally decided to hear her brother out. Eric was not wrong about her talent, and it only took Blake a couple of auditions to land her first major role. She was cast in a comedy-drama titled The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and it was based on a novel by Ann Brashares by the same name that had come out in 2001. Her character was Bridget Vreeland, one of the female leads, and she filmed during the summer so it wouldn't interfere with school.
5 Teen Choice Awards
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was the beginning of stardom for Blake, although the real fame would come later with Gossip Girl. Regardless, after that movie, her talent was not going unnoticed by people in show business, and in the same year her first big movie came out she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Breakout – Female.
It was the first important nomination for her, and although she didn't win that year, it put her name on the radar.
4 Why The Movie Accepted Was So Important To Her
After The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Blake was starting to make a name for herself, and the following year she got a part alongside Justin Long in the movie Accepted. The film, although it wasn't necessarily controversial, made some observations about the education system, and that was one of the reasons Blake loved it.
"I think it's really important. So many times in school, you get so bogged down by things that you 'have to do' to get into a good college. And you end up being so overwhelmed that you don't do a great job at any one thing," she explained. "I think it's really important to have real life experience."
3 She Received A Hollywood Life Award
Accepted was not as successful as it had been expected, and it didn't receive very good critics. In fact, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus was: "Like its characters who aren't able to meet their potential, Accepted's inconsistent and ridiculous plot gets annoying, despite a few laughs."
However, Blake Lively's performance was stellar, and she was recognized for that. In 2006, she received the Breakthrough Award of the Year from Hollywood Life for her role as Monica Moreland.
2 She Appeared In Elvis & Anabelle
In 2007, Blake got the lead in the movie Elvis & Anabelle. It was the story of a bulimic girl who has taken her obsession with beauty pageants too far. A near-death experience made her realize she had to abandon that unhealthy lifestyle and quits all beauty pageants to run away with Elvis, a guy with whom she would start a love story.
Blake's performance in this movie was moving and proved her talent, and since not too long after she became Serena Van der Woodsen, it became a lot more appreciated.
1 She Nearly Turned Down Gossip Girl
The show everybody knows Blake from is obviously Gossip Girl, but what people don't know is that the world almost missed out on Serena. Thankfully, the creators of the show were stubborn.
“We didn’t see a lot of other girls for Serena,” said Schwartz, the creator of the show. “She has to be somebody that you believe would be sitting in the front row at Fashion Week eventually.”
“I said, ‘No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though,’" explained Blake. "Then they said, ‘O.K., you can go to Columbia (University) one day a week. After the first year [of the show], it’ll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you can start going to school. We can’t put it in writing, but we promise you can go.’ So that’s why I said, ‘O.K. You know what? I’ll do this.’”