Childhood & Early Life
Amy Smart was born on March 26, 1976 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was always a curious kid who wanted to explore the artistic side to her personality as much as she could. Growing up in a middle class household, with both her parents working, she grew accustomed to loneliness somehow, but it only helped her grow as an artist.
Her mother was a museum curator, her father worked as a salesman and Amy grew up with her brother Adam Smart. In order to cope with her loneliness, she enrolled herself into ballet classes, which further helped her move over her stage fright.
She grew up very fast and as dancing was her passion; it helped her in maintaining a toned physique. She performed through her middle and high school days. During her later high school years, she also started to gain a significant interest in the art of acting. She keenly observed plays during her school events and outside.
She said in later interviews that theatre helped her grow as an actor as playing the same character over and over again gets her accustomed to different nuances of the character with each time.
By the time she was out of her high school, she had already started modelling, making quite a lot of money. She modelled for agencies across USA and Europe and during one of her modelling assignments in Italy, she got acquainted with Ali Larter and both the young models decided to join acting classes together.
Amy started with her acting training soon as she landed in New York and at the same time, she started giving out auditions and had her first tryst with camera in 1993 with Lemonhead’s music video for the song ‘Its About Time’.
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Career
While most of her auditions didn’t take her anywhere, there were a few which were successful. She eventually bagged a role in the 1996 TV movie ‘Her Costly Affair’ but the television didn’t suit her really and she then concentrated all her focus on the film roles instead.
She took a few more months to finally bag her first decent movie role, in form of the anthology film ‘Campfire Tales’, where she played a small role in the section named ‘The Hook’.
1997 turned out to be a major year for her acting aspirations as she got back to back roles in films such as ‘High Voltage’, ‘Starship Troopers’ and ‘The Last time I committed Suicide’. She was going nowhere with those roles though as they were mostly just small appearances.
In 1999, she had two major roles to her credit. First she appeared as the bubbly girlfriend of a football player in ‘Varsity Blues’. Later that year, she appeared in the film ‘Outside Providence’, a stoner comedy film which somehow became quite popular among the youth.
2000’s small lived TV series ‘The 70’s’ had her playing the very first starring role of her career, but the project got lost in the obscurity. The only upside was that she now had a series to her credit, which was a testimony of her acting chops.
During this time, she also bagged a major recurring role in the series ‘Felicity’ as an ex girlfriend of Scott Foley’s character in the series. After that came a series of popular films with Amy playing side roles in them, including ‘The Butterfly Effect’, ‘Road Trip’ and ‘Rat Race’ in the early 2000’s. She was careful in choosing the scripts to do as she hated getting type casted in certain roles.
Amy’s career received a major breakthrough in the year 2005 with the release of her film ‘Just Friends’ opposite Ryan Reynolds. The film although, was a moderate critical success, raked in some pretty large box office numbers and is considered to be one of her most successful films to this date. Amy’s role in the film as a beautiful young girl who friend-zones her childhood lover, Ryan’s character was stupendously well received.
Amy in 2003, became a part of popular sitcom ‘Scrubs’, where she played the role of JD’s girlfriend.
In 2005, Amy played the leading role in the comedy film ‘The Best Man’, which was a moderate success. She was paired opposite Seth Green in the film, where her performance received notice.
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Another major career breakthrough came to her after she starred in the action thriller film ‘Crank’ in 2006. The film featured her as girlfriend of the leading character played by Jason Statham. However, the film ran in some controversy regarding the sex scenes that took place outside on the roads. The film was a success nevertheless and Amy’s career received a major boost.
In 2008, she played major roles in the films ‘Mirrors’ and ‘Seventh Moon’ and in 2009, she appeared in the sequel to ‘Crank’ titled ‘Crank 2’, which was a continuation of the previous instalment. Although the film was talked about a lot before its release, it did receive well recognition among the critics for its flashy visuals and creative use of camera angles.
In 2011, Amy became part of the drama ‘Shameless’, which was a highly successful series. The comedy drama had her playing the role of Jasmine Hollander, which happened to be a recurring character within the series. Her role was intended for first season only, but the public interest in her character had the writers rethinking about extending her role further for the second season.
She then carried on with her film career with films such as ‘Break Point’ and ‘Hangman’. Her TV career was then furthered by roles in ‘Men at Work’, ‘Justified’ and ‘Law and Order: Special Victims Unit’.
Personal Life
Amy Smart had been in a relationship with the TV professional Carter Oosterhouse and got married to him in September 2011.
The couple had a kid in 2016. Amy became quite a topic of discussion after she openly claimed that it was her surrogate baby.
Apart from being an actor, she also works as a yoga teacher.
Amy is very conscious towards environment conservation and participates from time to time in the NGO conventions for the same.
