Alexis Bledel She’s best known for portraying the super smart and bookish, yet also witty and romantic Rory Gilmore on the hit CW television network drama Gilmore Girls. But she’s also earned her name through her starring roles in the films Tuck Everlasting, Sin City and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Alexis, short for Kimberly Alexis Bledel, was born on September 16, 1981, in Houston, Texas, to parents Nanette Blake, a Mexican, and Martin Bledel, an Argentinean. Even though Alexis is American, English is actually her second language, as Spanish is her mother tongue—she even speaks a little Spanish in one episode of Gilmore Girls in season six).
Alexis was a very shy child, and her parents got her involved in Community Theater to help her develop confidence. She was later discovered at a mall and offered a fashion-modeling job, and then studied at the Page Parkes Center for Modeling and Acting, as well as New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 2000, Alexis got her big break when she landed the role of Rory Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, the sixteen-year-old daughter (even though Alexis was nineteen at the time) of Lorelai Gilmore, played brilliantly by actress Lauren Graham. Gilmore Girls quickly became a hot, very popular show and gathered a loyal fan following; it is now currently it its seventh season, having moved from the late WB network to the new CW network, and is also under a new producer, David Rosenthal.
Because of her critically acclaimed work on the show, Teen People voted her as one of Hollywood’s Hottest Stars Under 25 in 2002. Alexis made her breakthrough role on the big screen in 2002with her lead role in Tuck Everlasting, a film based on the book by the same title written by Natalie Babbit. She co-starred with Sissy Spacek, William Hurt, Jonathan Jackson, and Ben Kingsley. Another of her films is Sin City (2005), in which Alexis plays a much darker role than anything she’d ever done on T.V. or film—a betraying prostitute with piercing blue eyes—alongside a throng of big-name actors like Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, and Mickey Rourke. Also in 2005, Alexis co-starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with Blake Lively, America Ferrara, and Amber Tamblyn. Alexis, who goes by her real first name, Kim, with close friends and family, dated actor Milo Ventimiglia for three and half years before they split in early 2006. Ventimiglia played Jess Mariano, Luke Danes’ (played by Scott Patterson) troublemaking nephew and Rory’s second boyfriend on Gilmore Girls. YUDDY |
