Kristen Anne Bell was born near Detroit, Michigan, on July 18, 1980. Like her former character Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell knows what it's like to come from a broken home: Her parents split when she was just two years old.
Her mother started checking out modeling agencies after several people said her daughter would look great in pictures. Before her 13th birthday, Kristen Bell had an agent and began to appear in newspaper advertisements for several Detroit retailers, including Kmart.
She took her act to Los Angeles and scored a few guest-starring roles, appearing on Everwood, American Dreams and The Shield in 2003. In 2004, she was in the cable film Gracie's Choice, playing a girl forced to help raise her sickly siblings while her mother tries to overcome a drug addiction.
She is TV stints filled 2007. She became the narrator on the hit show Gossip Girl and she also landed the role of Elle Bishop on the wildly popular TV drama Heroes. As if her relatively small but crucial role on the ensemble show Heroes wasn't enough, 2008 also saw Kristen complete work on the Star Wars-driven Fanboys and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.