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| Minka Kelly Leighton Meester |
Minka Kelly: Minka Kelly was born in Los Angeles, California and she is the only child of former Aerosmith guitarist, Rick Dufay, and Maureen Kelly, an exotic dancer and single mother, who often moved with her daughter to different communities before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by the time Minka was in junior high school. Her paternal grandfather was actor Richard Ney. Minka's ancestry includes Austrian, German, French, Irish, English, Scottish, and Dutch.
Chosen Fact: After graduating from high school, she returned from New Mexico to Los Angeles with her father to pursue acting as a hobby while she went to school to become a surgical technician. However, after her first acting class, she got hooked and began pursuing acting as a career.
Leighton Meester: Leighton Marissa Meester was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Constance Lynn (Haas) and Douglas Jay Meester. Although born in Texas, Meester spent her early years in Marco Island, Florida with her grandparents. There, she became involved with the local playhouse and made her stage debut in a production of "The Wizard of Oz". She moved to New York with her mother at the age of 11 and was soon working as a model and appearing in TV commercials. A few years later, at age 14, she and her mother moved again, this time to Los Angeles, where she began to pick up TV work, making her debut in Law & Order: Disciple (1999). A steady stream of TV work followed, and in 2007 she landed the role of Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl (2007), which made her famous. This led to more TV and movie roles. In 2009, she launched a recording career with the single, "Somebody to Love".
Chosen Fact: Her mother served a federal prison sentence for her involvement in a drug ring that smuggled marijuana from Jamaica to the United States in 1983. She was able to give birth to Leighton in a hospital and nursed her for three months in a halfway house, before returning to complete the 16 months left on her sentence. At this time, Leighton's grandparents cared for her.
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