Bringing the “bad girl gone good” character of Serena van der Woodsen to life is Blake Christina Lively, born August 25, 1987, in Tarzana, California. Though she never aspired to be an actress, it seemed a natural fit for the girl born into a family full of actors — her father Ernie is an actor/ director, her mother Elaine an acting coach and manager, and her four older siblings have all worked as professional actors. Brother Jason played Rusty in National Lampoon’s European Vacation and sister Robyn starred in Teen Witch.
Her parents taught acting classes and would bring little Blake along. After being homeschooled, she went to Burbank High School where she joined the show choir, the cheerleading squad, and was the class president in her senior year.
Blake was on the path to applying to Stanford after high school graduation until her brother Eric stepped in. On a summer trip to Europe, he pestered his sister about what she wanted to do with her life; once back home, he asked his agents to start sending her out for auditions. Before landing the Sisterhood role, Blake had only one credit to her name: a bit part playing the tooth fairy in Sandman, a film directed by her father, when she was just 10 years old. Ernie Lively would be on set for her first major role as well, playing the father to Blake’s character.
Cast as Bridget Vreeland in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Blake had to bring a beloved character from the young adult fiction series of the same name to the screen. The bestselling novels by Ann Brashares revolve around four BFFs who find a pair of jeans in a secondhand store that magically fit each differently shaped girl perfectly. Bridget spends the summer at a soccer camp in Mexico (where she falls for the hunky counselor), so Blake had to improve on her non-existent soccer skills before shooting began. But she didn’t need any training in the being-a-bestie department.
The first-time actress was up to the challenging role and received a 2005 Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Breakout Female, along with her Sister Pants co-stars America Ferrera and Jenna Boyd.
With her newfound success, Blake decided to temporarily put her Stanford dreams on hold. Her compromise paid off; in 2006, she filmed two movies, Simon Says, where she worked alongside her then-boyfriend Kelly Blatz, and Accepted, playing Justin Long’s love interest in the fake-college comedy. Next up for the budding actress was the dark comedy Elvis & Annabelle. The film, about small-town Texas beauty queen Annabelle, who meets a young mortician (Max Minghella) when he brings her back from the dead with a kiss, premiered as the opening night gala at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and Blake went on to win the Newport Beach Film Festival Breakout Performance Achievement award. Despite its festival circuit tour, the film didn’t get a theatrical release.
Moving from the big screen to the small screen wasn’t the only daunting shift for Blake when she was cast as Serena in Gossip Girl. It was moving across the country from Burbank, California, to New York, New York. The city wasn’t the only draw; Blake was happy to play a popular girl who wasn’t a stereotypical mean girl. Her plans for Stanford were put on a much longer hold as she signed a multi-season contract for Gossip Girl, but she considered taking classes at Columbia one day a week while filming.
Like the rest of her cast mates, Blake was soon the subject of gossip columns, with rumors flying that she and Leighton were real-life frenemies, that she’d had a nose job, and that her onscreen romance with Penn Badgley had moved off-screen. The press did get the love connection right. In May 2008, paparazzi photographed Blake and Penn kissing while on vacation in Cancun, and shortly thereafter the couple stopped hiding their romance. The two actors had actually met long before they worked together on Gossip Girl; they were homeschooled together when they were 11 years old. The success of Gossip Girl and the popularity of her character put Blake on the covers of magazines and earned her another nomination at the Teen Choice Awards. This time she won, taking home surfboards for Choice TV Breakout Star Female and Choice TV Actress Drama. Audiences saw Blake return as Bridget in the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Lively was happy to revisit the role, as she told CNN.
Declared part of the New Wave of Hollywood by Vanity Fair, Blake seems to have her head on her shoulders and her feet on the ground — she doesn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, and she has a close family and the support of her dear friends.
No hidden vices for Blake besides an addiction to Chanel and an undying love for Guitar Hero. But just ’cause she’s a good girl doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to have fun — even if it’s at her own expense doing an SNL skit playing a transvestite. With film roles in New York, I Love You and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (playing the teenaged version of Robin Wright Penn), Blake Lively has proven she can still work in film and not just be known for her role as Serena.