Born: June 24, 1980

With an exotically beautiful appearance attributable to her Canadian mother and Uzbekistani-Jewish father, brunette actress Liane Balaban was born in North York, Ontario, in 1980, and grew up in nearby Willowdale, where her parents worked as a medical secretary and a real estate agent. Balaban never seriously intended to become an actress, but a chance encounter with Canuck producer Julia_Sereny (April_One) -- who reportedly lived in the same neighborhood as her aunt and uncle and became acquainted with the young woman via holiday dinners -- changed all that. Sereny invited Balaban to audition for the low-budget drama The_New_Waterford_Girl (1999), to be directed by Allan_Moyle (Pump up the Volume). She not only landed the lead role of doe-eyed teenager Agnes-Marie "Moonie" Pottie in that film, but received a Special Jury Congratulation at the Toronto Film Festival and snagged a nomination at the annual Canadian Comedy Awards. Those successes set the young woman on the path to stardom, and though she spent her first several years as a thespian in mostly Canadian efforts -- such as the 2001 feature After the Harvest and the 2006 miniseries Above and Beyond -- she eventually began to branch out into Hollywood roles, commencing in 2008 with a turn as the bride-to-be daughter of Dustin_Hoffman in the low-key romantic drama Last_Chance_Harvey (2008) and a small supporting turn in the Ryan_Reynolds/Isla_Fisher romantic comedy Definitely,_Maybe (2008). Nathan Southern, Rovi

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