Lively was born in Los Angeles to actors Ernie and Elaine Lively. She was raised as a Southern Baptist.[1] The youngest of five siblings,[2] Lively has a brother, Eric, two half-sisters, Lori and Robyn, and a half-brother, Jason. Both of her parents and all of her siblings are, or have been, in the entertainment industry.[3] During Lively's childhood, her parents would take her with them to acting classes that they taught because they didn't want to leave her with a babysitter.[3] Lively stated that watching her parents teach acting classes helped her learn the "drills" of acting and gain confidence as she got older.[2][3] Lively stated that as a child, her mother would bring her to Disneyland twice a week as an opportunity "to have some extra time to bond"; Lively stated that due to all the time she spent there, she felt that she "grew up at Disneyland."[2]
Lively's mother, who was a former model from Georgia, inspired Lively to have an interest in clothes when she was a child.[4] During Lively's childhood, her mother would sew clothes and dress her with garments from boutiques and vintage stores. She also tailored adult clothes to fit her. Lively has stated, "She just did that because she was so creative and because she didn't want me to be dressed in big T-shirts cinched with a plastic clip like all the rest of the kids."[4] Lively has stated that, due to her wardrobe, when she attended a private school in Los Angeles in second grade for the first and only time in her life she did not fit in. "It was the only school where people were just downright mean to me [...] They would make fun of my clothes because I dressed differently than the other kids."[4]
[edit] Education
During Lively's' childhood, she attended 13 different schools. When she was three years old, her mother enrolled her in the first grade because Lively's older brother was supposed to start school, but he didn't want to go alone. Her mother told the school Lively was six since she "was so tall".[2] After a few weeks, her teachers "said they would have to put me in mentally disabled classes because I wasn't up to pace with the rest of the kids," and they thought that she "was slow because all I wanted to do was sleep while the other kids were doing their projects." Shortly afterwards Lively's mother took her out of the school.[2] As a child, Lively was homeschooled.[5] Lively attended Burbank High School in Burbank; while attending the school, Lively participated in Burbank High School's show choir, In Sync, and was a cheerleader.[6] Lively had originally planned to attend Stanford University after finishing high school, before deciding to pursue an acting career.[3] When Lively was fifteen, her older brother Eric took her out of school for two months to go on a grand tour of Europe. While on the trip, Eric used most of the time trying to talk Lively into having an acting career.[3]
Lively was not at all interested in acting but during the summer between her junior and senior years, her brother, Eric, made his agent send her out on a few auditions over a period of a few months; of the few auditions, she got the role of Bridget for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.[7] Lively filmed her scenes in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants between her junior and senior years at Burbank High.[7] In 2008, Lively stated that, while Stanford isn't in her immediate future due to her Gossip Girl filming commitment, she hasn’t altogether put aside the idea of getting a college education.[7] She stated that attending Columbia University one day a week is a possibility and the option of being able to attend the school was a factor in accepting her role on Gossip Girl. Because the show is filmed in New York; to-date she hasn’t enrolled in any classes.Ronb1224 (talk) 15:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
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