Kristen Anne Bell (born July 18, 1980 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American actress who currently stars in the television show Veronica Mars.
Bell was born to a Polish American family, and raised in suburban Huntington Woods. She went to her first audition at age 11 and won a dual role as a banana and a tree in a suburban Detroit theater's production of Raggedy Ann and Andy. She attended Shrine Catholic High School in nearby Royal Oak, where she took the starring role in the school's 1997 production of The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy Gale. She also appeared in Fiddler on the Roof (1995), Lady Be Good (1996), and Li'l Abner (1998). In 1998, the year of her graduation, she appeared in Polish Wedding, a movie that was being filmed locally. She was named the yearbook's "Best Looking Girl" by senior class vote.
Bell performing the theme from Fame on "Emmy Idol"Bell was attending New York University in 2001 when she left to take a key role as Becky Thatcher in the short-lived Broadway musical of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. That same year she officially made her credited film debut in Pootie Tang (though her appearance in that film exists only in the credit sequence), and she auditioned for the Smallville TV role of Chloe Sullivan (the part eventually won by Allison Mack). In 2002, she appeared in the Broadway revival of The Crucible.
Bell then appeared in a handful of television shows as a special guest before landing a role in the Hallmark movie The King and Queen of Moonlight Bay in 2003. A year later, she appeared in the television movie Gracie's Choice.
In 2004, Bell made her big-screen debut, appearing in David Mamet's Spartan as Laura Newton, the President's kidnapped daughter, acting alongside Val Kilmer. Following this, Bell's career continued to progress as she won the role of the title character in UPN's drama Veronica Mars, which was launched in the fall of 2004. The show has earned positive reviews from television critics, as has Bell's performance, which some critics have mentioned as potentially worthy of an Emmy nomination. The show recently was renewed for a third season and will return in the fall on a new network, The CW. Bell also has guest-starred on HBO's drama Deadwood in a two episode story-arc, the episodes "Bullock Returns to the Camp" and "Suffer the Little Children".
Bell received major publicity in 2005 when she was chosen to perform the theme from Fame on the "Emmy Idol" portion of the 57th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. She was very likely chosen as the awards were hosted on CBS, part of the Viacom media conglomerate (now CBS Corporation) with UPN, which aired Veronica Mars. Regardless, Bell's performance was very well received by fans and critics. Kristen Bell and Veronica Mars were nominated for 2 Teen Choice Awards in 2005 for "Choice Breakout Actress" and "Choice Breakout TV Show". Bell won the Saturn Award in 2006 for "Best Actress on Television," beating others like Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The show also was nominated for "Best Network Television Show".
Bell appears as Gracie in Fifty Pills, a Tribeca Film Festival entry which premiered in April 2006, and continues to star in Veronica Mars. She currently is filming Fanboys, also to be released in 2006. She now lives in Los Angeles and has made several appearances on popular late-night television shows. A film version of her off-Broadway musical Reefer Madness (a spoof of the 1938 exploitation film of the same name, which was in turn based on an anti-marijuana propaganda film entitled Tell Your Children) debuted on the Showtime network in April 2005, with Bell reprising the role which she played in the musical. She appeared in a short independent film called The Receipt. She also has roles in the films Roman and Pulse, both scheduled for release in 2006; the latter is an American remake of the Japanese horror film Kairo.
