Vanessa Anne Hudgens: California Girl Makes Name for Herself
Vanessa Anne Hudgens was born in Salinas, California on December 14, 1988. She grew up in San Diego and has a sister, Stella, who is also an actress. Her father is Irish and Native American and her mother is of Filipino, Chinese and Spanish ancestry. Vanessa started her singing career at age 8 and was already appearing in productions such as Evita, Carousel, The Wizard of Oz and other Broadway classics. When her audition for a commercial was successful, she and her family moved to Los Angeles. In 2003, she debuted on film with the movies Thirteen and Thunderbirds.
In the film Thirteen, she was featured as Noel; in Thunderbirds, she was cast as Tintin. Her face also graced some television shows such as Quintuplets, Cover Me, Brothers Garcia and the Suite Life of Zack and Cody. She also had a role in Drake and Josh playing Drake’s girlfriend. She became famous among teenagers when she starred opposite Zac Efron, Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel in Disney’s, High School Musical. Her success landed her a contract with Old Navy to appear in several commercials, one of which was a swimsuit commercial which was shot in 2005.
Her first song album, V, was released recently; more specifically in September this year. It is scheduled to be released in the US in 2006 and in the UK in 2007. Hudgens described the album herself: “pop/rock, pop R&B and pop-dance.” She is slated to appear in The Cheetah Girls in their Party’s Just Begun tour where she is expected to perform in 20 out of the 40 cities that are on the tour agenda.
Vanessa Ann was seen on ABC’s Good Morning America show where she performed Come Back to Me. On MySpace, she added two more songs entitled Promise and Let’s Go. Apart from her album V released this September, Vanessa also recorded the following singles: Breaking Free (with Zac Efron), Start of Something New, We’re all in this Together, What I’ve been Looking For, When There was Me and You and others.