Blake Lively

Blake Ellender Lively (born  Blake Ellender Brown; August 25, 1987) is an American actress and model who starred as  Serena van der Woodsen in the television teen drama series  Gossip Girl. She has also appeared in movies, including  Accepted,  The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,  The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,  The Town,  Green Lantern,  Savages and " Hick".

Early life
Lively was born in Tarzana, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actors Elaine Lively (née McAlpin) and Ernie Lively (born Ernest W. Brown). She was raised as a Southern Baptist.She is the youngest of five children: she has an older 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.During Lively's childhood, her parents took her with them to acting classes that they taught because they did not want to leave her with a babysitter. Lively said that watching her parents teach acting classes helped her learn the "drills" of acting and gain confidence as she got older.

Lively was initially not particularly interested in acting. During the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, her brother Eric asked his agent to send her on a few auditions over a period of a few months. From these few auditions, she got the role of Bridget for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.Lively filmed her scenes in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants between her junior and senior years at Burbank High School.

Personal life
During the 2008 United States presidential election, Lively expressed her support for Barack Obama. Lively and Penn Badgley appeared in a pro-Obama commercial, as part of MoveOn.org's Youth Vote program. The commercial, directed by Doug Liman, aired during Gossip Girl on CW, MTV and Comedy Central.

In 2011, she was featured in the annual TIME magazine 100 influential people. Additionally, AskMen.com named her the most desirable woman of 2011  and People magazine named her one of 2012's Most Beautiful at Every Age.

[edit] Relationships
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Lively dated actor Kelly Blatz from 2004 to 2007; the two had been friends since childhood. Lively dated actor Penn Badgley from late 2007 to mid-September 2010.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Lively began dating her Green Lantern co-star, Ryan Reynolds, in October 2011. In June 2012 she and Reynolds purchased a cottage in Bedford, New York, for $2 million.The couple married on September 9, 2012, at Boone Hall in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.