She walked away from the teen movie machine on purpose, and the machine never forgave her for it.
At a glance
- Known for
- Laney Boggs in She's All That, the 1997 'Brain on Drugs' PSA, Hallmark Channel regular
- Before fame
- Started as a child print model at 10, appearing on Milk-Bone boxes and in Target ads
- Off-screen
- Runs her own production company, Ben's Sister Productions, named after her younger brother
Rise to Fame
An 18-year-old smashing an entire kitchen with a frying pan was the introduction. The 1997 "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" PSA made her face nationally recognizable before she'd done anything else of note. Two years later, She's All That opened at number one over Super Bowl weekend and grossed $103 million against a budget of roughly $7 to $10 million.
Josie and the Pussycats broke the streak. She couldn't sing, couldn't play guitar, and got cast as the lead of a band movie anyway. It pulled in $14.9 million against a budget of at least $22 million, and she's said it landed her in "movie jail," where the industry stops calling regardless of talent. The film flopped in 2001 and quietly became a cult classic without her career getting any of the credit.
In the Spotlight
The Hallmark pivot wasn't a retreat. Starting in 2016, she turned the channel's reliable production pipeline into a personal operation, producing films through Ben's Sister Productions while starring in them. Love, Guaranteed landed on Netflix in 2020. A Tourist's Guide to Love was her own concept, shot on location in Vietnam, and landed on Netflix in 2023.
The Christmas Affair brings Prinze Jr. back, 26 years after they played prom king and makeover project. The nostalgia economy keeps circling back to her, and she keeps finding ways to own the product instead of just appearing in it.
Side Notes
The blueprint was Parker Posey. After She's All That made her famous, she met Posey on a set and decided she wanted that career instead: edgy, smaller films, no studio machine. She's described the choice as "most detrimental to my overall career and very helpful to my mental state simultaneously." Hollywood sorts people into categories, and she picked the wrong one on purpose.
In 2017, she went back and remade the kitchen-smashing PSA, this time for the Drug Policy Alliance, arguing the war on drugs did more damage than heroin ever did.