Amanda Bynes

Amanda Bynes was born on April 3, 1986, and raised in Thousand Oaks, California. She began acting professionally at seven, in commercials for Buncha Crunch, a Barbie doll and Taco Bell, and attended a comedy camp at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, where she got advice from Richard Pryor and Arsenio Hall. A Nickelodeon producer spotted her performing there, and the network cast her on its sketch series All That, where she stayed from the third season through the sixth. From 1997 to 1999 she was also a regular on Figure It Out.

At 13 she got her own spin-off. The Amanda Show ran on Nickelodeon from 1999 to 2002, and in 2002 she moved in two directions at once. Her first feature film, Big Fat Liar, cast her opposite Frankie Muniz, and a WB sitcom, What I Like About You, had her playing Holly Tyler until 2006. What a Girl Wants, with Colin Firth, followed in 2003, the same year she appeared on the July cover of Vanity Fair. She won Kids' Choice Awards for both her television and film work, including Favorite Movie Actress twice.

Then came She's the Man (2006), a soccer comedy based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, in which her character, Viola, poses as her twin brother to play on a boys' team, with Channing Tatum among her co-stars. Roger Ebert wrote that he "didn't for one second believe the plot" but "did believe for the entire movie that Amanda Bynes was lovable." In 2007 she played Penny Pingleton in the movie musical Hairspray, whose cast won the Critics' Choice Award for best acting ensemble, and launched a clothing line called Dear with the retailer Steve & Barry's. She appeared in Easy A opposite Emma Stone in 2010, the year she first announced that she was retiring from acting.