Alyson Hannigan biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actress. Alyson Hannigan was born on March 24, 1974 in Washington, D.C. Of mixed Irish and Jewish descent, her father, Albert, was an overnight truck driver, and her mother, Emilie, was a real estate agent. Her parents divorced when she was only two years old, and Hannigan and her mother moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Hannigan got her start in show business at a very young age, appearing in her first film — an instructional video for new parents called Active Parenting — before her first birthday. While still a toddler, she appeared in dozens of print advertisements and developed a love for posing before the camera. "Whenever they needed a baby, they would put me in front of the camera, and I loved it," she says. Hannigan then moved into commercial acting. At the age of four, she appeared in her first commercial for Duncan Hines, and she later appeared in national TV commercials for Oreos and McDonald's as well.

Hannigan attended the Northside School of the Performing Arts in Atlanta, where she played clarinet in the band and also featured for the soccer team. At the age of 11, she and her mother moved to Los Angeles so she could pursue her budding acting career more seriously. Three years later, in 1988, a 14-year-old Hannigan made her film debut in the sci-fi comedy My Stepmother is an Alien. For the next two years, she had a small but recurring role on the ABC fantasy sitcom Free Spirit. Still, at this point in her career parts were hard to come by, and Hannigan worked at a video store and as a babysitter to supplement her acting work. For a time she babysat the real-life daughters of Bob Saget, the legendary comedian and TV dad who would become her future costar on How I Met Your Mother. Hannigan graduated from North Hollywood High School in 1992 and enrolled at California State University, Northridge to study psychology. While taking classes at Northridge, Hannigan also continued to act, appearing in TV series such as Almost Home (1993) and Touched by an Angel (1994).

Breakthrough Roles

Upon completing her studies in 1997, Hannigan retuned to acting full time and landed her breakthrough role in the long-running and enormously popular TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show follows Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), a teenage girl with superpowers that allow her to fight off vampires and other demons. Hannigan played Willow Rosenberg, Buffy's quirky and complicated best friend, who is revealed to be a lesbian in later seasons. The show's creator, Joss Whedon, did not initially want to cast Hannigan in the role. Recalling Whedon's initial reluctance to cast her, Hannigan says, "Until the day I die, I will give him a hard time." Nevertheless, Hannigan won Whedon over and quickly settled into the role of Willow, who became something of an idol and role model for gay teens. "I never had any apprehensions about it," she says of portraying a