Blake Lively was persuaded to become an actress after her actor brother Eric treated her to a whirlwind trip across Europe. The Gossip Girl star's older sibling, a former child actor, wanted to inspire his sister to find a job that allowed her to travel the world, and so he pulled her out of school and whisked her away to Europe to show her the world.

She explains, "It was the winter holidays. He told my mom that he would be taking me out of school for two weeks and he ended up keeping me out for a month and a half. That was the plan all along but he knew they wouldn't let me miss so much school. I was 15, he was 21. It was an amazing trip; he took me to London, Cambridge... Rome, Brussels, Cologne, Florence and Paris, staying everywhere from five-star hotels to hostels."

But not everything about the trip was thrilling: "Every single day I would dread going to lunch with him, because every single day he'd be like, 'What are you going to do for a living?'"

However, Lively will always be grateful for her brother's intervention - because she learned so much on her tour: "I got a much better education about world history in that month and a half than I did in the entirety of my high school life."

-Blake recently showed up for a photocall for "The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee" in this outfit, GASP!

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(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)