Amanda Bynes Biography And Filmography:

Amanda Laura Bynes was born on April 3, 1986, in Thousand Oaks, California. You may attribute her love for comedy to her father, Rick, a television and comedy fan who encouraged the family to act, joke, sing and dance.

As a young and hopeful actress, Amanda starred in community theater and various plays like "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Music Man" and "The Secret Garden", and took classes at comedy school type programs sponsored by famous groups like The Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. At the age of ten, she performed at the Laugh Factory children's comedy showcase and was soon approached by an executive from the Nickelodeon television network and asked to join the network. 

Nickelodeon hired Bynes for the  sketch television variety and  comedy series called "All That" alongside Jamie Lynn Spears and Drake Bell, where she regularly stole the show from her fellow cast members. She became famous for her feisty role in "Ask Ashley," a comedy skit about an advice columnist. Viewers started to take notice, and still do, that she has a talent for comic timing and funny adlibbing, in the same style as sexy female comedians like Meg Ryan and Jamie Lee Curtis.

After five seasons on the comedy series, during which time she won five Kids' Choice awards, she was given her own television show, fittingly titled "The Amanda Show" with Drake Bell, Ashley Tisdale and Nancy Sullivan. For four seasons it was the highest rated comedy show on the Nickelodeon network.

As with most young celebrities, Bynes career has benefited from the inspiration of a guru. Dan Schneider was the originator of both of her smash hit Nickelodeon shows, so it makes sense that he was the driving force and producer behind "Big Fat Liar", her 2002 film introduction. Although Frankie Muniz, from the television cult classic "Malcolm in the Middle" was the movie's sexy male celebrity star draw, viewers believed that her character was the funny one, in part to her physical comedy and hilarious impersonations.

In 2002, the WB network started airing the sitcom "What I Like About You", which had been in production for some time as a comedy project developed for the young actress. She stars as a teenage girl who moves in with her oldest sister in New York City and of course, turns her sister's world into a complete mess.

In 2003, she could be seen in her first leading role, in "What a Girl Wants" about an American teenage girl in search of her Dad in London. Two years later she appeared in the films "Robots" with Halle Berry, Robin Williams and Paula Abdul, and "Lovewrecked", where on a Caribbean cruise, her character is marooned on a beach with her rock and roll idol. Head-over-heels in love with the idea of time alone with him, she manages to hide the fact that they're a short distance from their resort. 

In 2006 she was hired and cast in a small part in "She's The Man", where her brother decides to skip school for a couple weeks in London, and she heads over to his privileged boarding school, disguises herself as him, and proceeds to fall in love with one of her soccer teammates. Little does she realize she's not the only one with romantic troubles, as she, as he, gets in the middle of a series of confusing love affairs.

In 2007 Amanda appeared in "Sydney White", a modern retelling of Snow White set against students in their freshman year of college in the sorority system, and the hit movie musical "Hairspray" starring next to mega sexy celebrities John Travolta, Michelle Pfieffer and High School Musical friend and co-star Zac Efron, where a pleasantly plump teenager, Tracy Turnblad, teaches 1962 Baltimore a thing or two about integration after landing a spot on a local TV dance show.

Also in 2007, she signed a three year contract with Steve & Barry's to create and promote her own stylish, teen clothing line called "Dear".