Vanessa Hudgens

BIOGRAPHY

Vanessa Anne Hudgens was born on December 14, 1988, in Salinas, California. While still a toddler, Vanessa and her younger sister, Stella, were uprooted and moved to San Diego. Vanessa’s passion for music was borne early on, and undoubtedly stems from the presence of her grandparents, who were actively involved in the big-band scene in the 1930s.

By the time she was just eight years old, Vanessa successfully petitioned her parents to allow her to try out for a whole host of local musicals (including The King and I, Cinderella and Evita). It quickly became evident that Vanessa had a real gift for both performing and singing, and she consequently decided (along with her parents, of course) to spend some time in London studying drama and music.

VANESSA HUDGENS IN STILL STANDING
Upon her return from the United Kingdom, Vanessa decided that her best shot at securing a bona fide career in show business involved a move to Los Angeles. There’s little doubt that Vanessa would still be toiling on local stages were it not for the support of her family, who abandoned their comfortable lives in San Diego to support the burgeoning star. Vanessa immediately dove into the grueling auditioning scene, trying out for anything and everything she was allowed access to. Her hard work paid off in 2002, when she landed one-off guest spots on a pair of television shows: the sitcom Still Standing and the crime drama Robbery Homicide Division.

VANESSA HUDGENS IN THIRTEEN
A year later, Vanessa found herself cast opposite fellow up-and-comers Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed in Thirteen, a drama revolving around the reckless exploits of several teenagers. She followed that up with a role in the 2004 live-action adaptation of Thunderbirds (opposite no less than Ben Kingsley), and popped up on TV shows such as The Brothers Garcia and Quintuplets. But it wasn’t until she successfully auditioned for the part of Gabriella Montez in the Disney Channel movie High School Musical that Vanessa finally began to receive the recognition she so richly deserved.

VANESSA HUDGENS IN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL

After blowing away the producers with a stirring rendition of Robbie Williams’ “Angels” during her audition, Vanessa soon found herself starring alongside folks like Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale in the smash hit High School Musical (2006). The film, along with its soundtrack, quickly became a sensation among the tweener set, propelling Vanessa to household-name status within the ranks of such viewers. Vanessa soon found herself being offered spots on commercials for high-profile companies like Old Navy and Blockbuster, and the actress even won a Teen Choice Award for Choice Chemistry with costar Zac Efron (it was a good choice -- as the pair became a couple).

Vanessa Hudgens went on to star in High School Musical 2 and High School Musical 3.

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Heidi Montag

BIOGRAPHY

Heidi Montag (the middle child) was born on September 15, 1986, to restaurant owners in Crested Butte, Colorado. Out of high school, she says she studied fashion in Italy for a year before moving to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art. It was a fateful decision, since it was there that she met Lauren Conrad. Neither would finish at the Academy. Instead, they both moved south to L.A. to attend the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and moved into an apartment together.

In 2005, Heidi Montag dropped out of the Institute, claiming it wasn’t sufficiently challenging, to take an internship with Bolthouse Productions. The internship ultimately led to a position as an event planner with the company.

HEIDI MONTAG IN THE HILLS

Heidi Montag's association with Lauren Conrad landed her on a few episodes of Laguna Beach, but it was the developing friendship between the two that landed her a featured role on that show’s spin-off, The Hills, which premiered at the end of May 2006.

From there, her profile mushroomed, thanks in large part to her developing relationship with The Hills costar Spencer Pratt and deterioration of her friendship with Lauren Conrad. The public explanation for her feud with Lauren Conrad is too banal to be believed, and it has kept them both on the front pages of gossip magazines and websites ever since.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have also become the young Hollywood power couple people love to hate. Lauren Conrad left the show in 2009, but with rumors circulating that Kristin Cavallari might be taking over as the lead, it looks like our weekly dose of Speidi isn't over yet.

HEIDI MONTAG MARRIES SPENCER PRATT

On April 25, 2009, Heidi Montag officially became Heidi Pratt in front of 200 guests, including Audrina Patridge, Kristin Cavallari and Brody Jenner in Pasadena, California. The wedding took place five months after Heidi and Spencer supposedly tied the knot in Mexico but didn't have a wedding license. They did, however, get the cover of Us Weekly that week. Isn't that the same thing in Hollywood?

HEIDI MONTAG ON I'M A CELEBRITY... GET ME OUT OF HERE !

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt appeared on the 2009 NBC series, I'm a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! The couple quit the show in an embarrassing display of tears, were voted back in and then left it again. It reminds us of how they approached marriage: twice.

HEIDI MONTAG ON MISS UNIVERSE

Using her fame from The Hills, Heidi Montag launched a would-be music career, via MySpace. In 2008, she released a music video "Higher," shot by Spencer Pratt, which was panned by critics, bloggers and the peanut gallery, but like all things Speidi, everyone saw it. Heidi responded to Us Weekly (who else?) by saying: “I cried myself to sleep that first night after my video came out… I am just a 21-year-old from a small town in Colorado trying to follow her dreams.”

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January Jones

BIOGRAPHY

January Jones was born January 5, 1978, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The eldest of three sisters, she attended Roosevelt High School where she balanced her studies with a part-time job at Dairy Queen. “I loved my after-school job at the Dairy Queen, though I’m sworn to secrecy about their recipes,” she says. “I’d whip up my own concoctions, like mixing ice cream with their slushy, which is now called a Misty Freeze. I did that before it was even on their menu.”

JANUARY JONES BEGINS MODELING

January Jones also found gainful employment as model and she eventually moved to New York City at the age of 18 to further her career. It proved to be a savvy decision, and before long she was appearing in high-profile ads for Abercrombie & Fitch and Clearasil.

She also participated in a particularly precarious photo shoot in Paris that nearly ended her career. “I was in lingerie on a trampoline and had to jump into the air and do weird poses for eight hours,” she recalls. “The constant jumping made my legs start to buckle. And no one on the shoot spoke English, or at least they pretended they didn’t. I was so angry.”

JANUARY JONES IN FULL FRONTAL

The experience made her think twice about her choice of professions, and January Jones eventually transitioned into acting, making her big-screen debut in 1999 in All the Rage, an award-winning independent film starring Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels and Gary Sinise.

A succession of small roles soon followed in The Glass House, starring Diane Lane, Bandits featuring Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton and the controversial Steven Soderbergh project, Full Frontal.

JANUARY JONES STARS IS AMERICAN WEDDING

January Jones truly came into her own in 2003 thanks to substantial roles in Anger Management, starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, Love Actually, featuring Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson and American Wedding in which she played Alyson Hannigan’s younger sister.

“I feel as though my career really hit its high point when I was cast as a supporting actress in American Wedding,” she says. “I thought the script had a lot of depth and intelligence, and it really just jumped off the page.”

January Jones especially enjoyed working with the film’s talented ensemble cast. “They were great to me. They were very supportive and helped me out,” she says. “They were just like brothers. And Alyson [Hannigan] was awesome to work with. She gave me everything I needed.”

JANUARY JONES STARS IN WE ARE MARSHALL

American Wedding helped secure her reputation as a star on the rise, and January Jones benefited with a pair of plum parts in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada alongside Tommy Lee Jones, and in the moving sports film We Are Marshall as the loyal wife of grief-stricken football coach Red Dawson. “The story was so good,” she says.

JANUARY JONES JOINS THE CAST OF MAD MEN ,IS NO .98 ON 2009 TOP 99

January Jones stepped away from the big screen in 2007 to join the cast of Mad Men, an original AMC series about one of New York’s most prestigious ad agencies. The program, in two seasons, won six Emmy Awards and a pair of Golden Globes. “It's a very fun series to shoot,” she says. “Never having done a series before, I was pleasantly surprised how similar to movies it was. I wasn't too rushed creatively and was a very safe environment to act in. I am blessed with amazing colleagues and beautiful writing.”


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Karrine Steffans

BIOGRAPHY

Karrine Steffans was born into difficult circumstances in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Raped at 13, she later ran away, was briefly homeless, became a stripper, and soon got involved in hip-hop videos. Before long, Steffans was so in demand as a background dancer that she was earning $2,500 a day and was the undisputed queen of the hip-hop video scene. A massive groupie, by all accounts it would seem that she was as much in-demand for the services she provided off-camera as for those she provided on-camera.

Yet the parties came to a halt in 2001 when she overdosed, and Steffans realized that the celebrity men that had given her so much -- money, gifts and attention -- didn't actually care about her well-being.

STEFFANS MAKES SOME CONFESSIONS

As a consequence, Karrine Steffans wrote Confessions of a Video Vixen, which hit the shelves at the end of June 2005 and became a surprise best-seller. The book seemed to spare nothing and nobody, blatantly naming the names of rich and powerful men who she hooked up with. TV hosts fell for it, hook, line and sinker: Tyra Banks, Bill O'Reilly and Oprah Winfrey all beat a path to her door.

In 2005, Karrine Steffans told Jet magazine that, following publication, the men she named weren't angry -- in fact, she said, some ex-boyfriends were asking why they weren't in the book. A Newsweek book review suggested otherwise, but by then the book's success had scored Steffans an additional three-book deal.

STEFFANS WRITES A SEQUEL WITH DIARIES

In March 2007, after just one book, Karrine Steffans decided to give back by establishing what amounts to her own literary agency. The imprint Steffans Publishing accepts manuscripts and synopses for review and reputedly recommends the best of them to the publishing houses with whom she has affiliations.

Her second book, The Vixen Diaries debuted later in 2007. It wasn't quite the name-dropping, wall-to-wall sex and excess tell-all that her previous book had been, but it quickly landed on the New York Times bestseller list nonetheless, thanks in part to Steffans' tirelessly aggressive promotional skills.

STEFFANS FIND REDEMPTION IN THE MANUAL

Karrine Steffans' third book, a self-help guide to relationships for women, The Vixen Manual: How to Find, Seduce and Keep the Man You Want went on sale in the summer of 2009. Featuring graphic sexual depictions and no-nonsense language, Steffans told The Today Show that the book is meant to tell women of all ages the many things that Steffans wished she knew when she was younger. While the book does feature some intelligent advice, it's also fraught with its share of those tedious turns-of-phrase we associate with self-help books, like: "If you don't go within, you go without."

Raising two young sons and currently in a relationship (she used to be married to Kool G. Rap), Karrine Steffans' career is definitely on the rise. The Vixen Manual has been complemented by an internet dating site and its own community in the virtual world Second Life. Expect to see and hear plenty more of Steffans, whether you want to or not.

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Stephanie Courtney

BIOGRAPHY

Stephanie Courtney was born and grew up in New York, but headed west to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. Not long thereafter, she joined the renowned Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings (she's a still a senior member), where funny woman Kristen Wiig also got her start.

By 1998, she started landing one-offs on shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and Without a Trace. She was a regular cast member of the short-lived Tom Goes to the Mayor, and in 2007 she scored a five-episode recurring role as Marge on TMC's enormous hit Mad Men, which stars January Jones and Jon Hamm.

STEPHANIE COURTNEY AND THE CULT FLO

Courtney auditioned for the spots in the fall of 2007, and a year later, people were dressing up as "that Progressive Car Insurance Chick" for Halloween. Goofy but approachable, Flo is a high-energy nurturer who clerks at a retail store that sells Progressive insurance policies, a store that's just surreal enough to resemble the heavenly setting of a 1980s sitcom dream sequence.

Interestingly, in 2008, Courtney landed a small role in two episodes of ABC's Cavemen, a sitcom based on the much-maligned Neanderthals from the Geico commercials.

STEPHANIE COURTNEY AND THE BOTTOM LINE

Of course, Progressive is very aware of what they have in Courtney/Flo: The company's 2008 letter to shareholders gushed, "We let 'Flo' loose on consumers in 2008 as part of our television advertising, in a campaign that by all accounts has trumped our prior efforts."

But the most interesting phenomenon has been a subtle one: Not since the earliest ads has Flo interacted with female customers. It seems that once the blogosphere and the forums began to percolate with the smitten "Cult of Flo," her female customers disappeared and a diverse line of male customers emerged -- nerdy intellectuals, motorcycle bad-boys and every Joe Schmoe in between.

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