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Blake Lively biography

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Blake Lively is an actress notable for her role as Serena van der Woodsen on the CW network's teen drama Gossip Girl.

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Synopsis

Blake Lively was born in Los Angeles on August 25, 1987. Her father was an actor and director, and her mother was a talent scout. During her junior year of high school, Lively had an audition for and landed a major role in the 2005 blockbuster "chick flick" The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Two years later, Lively landed her most famous role to date on the CW's hit teen drama Gossip Girl.

Early Life

Blake Lively was born into a Los Angeles show business family on August 25, 1987. Her father, Ernie, was an actor and director, and her mother, Elaine, was a talent scout. Blake Lively is the youngest of five children, and all four of her older siblings are also actors. Before moving to Los Angeles to pursue their show business careers, Lively's parents lived in Georgia, and the household always maintained its Southern influences. "I have a tight-knit Southern family," she says. "So whenever I tell people I'm from L.A., they say, 'Yeah, but you don't count,' I guess because of the Southern values I was raised with, and the way I eat—the more sugary and cheesy and fried, the better."

Lively began the first grade when she was only 3 years old. Her 6-year-old brother was so nervous about beginning first grade alone that her mother told the school that Blake (who was extremely tall for her age) was also 6 years old so that she could accompany him. "After a few weeks," Lively remembers, "they said they would have to put me in mentally disabled classes because I wasn't up to pace with the rest of the kids. They thought that I was slow because all I wanted to do was sleep while the other kids were doing their projects." After getting that early, if perhaps ill-advised, jump on her primary education, Lively attended a staggering 13 different schools by the time she graduated from 12th grade. She finally settled at Burbank High School, where she stood out in both her academics and her extracurricular activities. Besides receiving stellar grades in her AP coursework, Lively was a cheerleader, class president, and member of her school's show choir.

 

Acting Debut

Despite strong pressure from her older siblings to ditch school and embark on an acting career, Lively initially expressed no interest in acting. Instead, she had her own dreams of attending Stanford University. Nevertheless, sensing her star potential, her older brother Eric relentlessly pushed Blake Lively to try auditioning. "He was trying to get me to make life decisions at 15!" she recalls. He then began contacting agents and telling them about his beautiful, talented younger sister. "I was really busy at school," Lively remembers, "and I would have these agents calling and saying, 'We have an appointment for you.' It was really hard to say no, because I didnt want to make my brother upset."

During her junior year of high school, at the age of 17, Lively finally consented to attend a few auditions. She found nearly instant success. After only a few months of auditioning, she landed a major role in the 2005 blockbuster "chick flick" The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which filmed during the summer between her junior and senior years at Burbank High.

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