While many child actors tend to be forgotten or fall into trouble and financial ruin with their show business careers over when they reach adulthood, Alyssa Milano was determined to make the jump. Known for her eight years as Samantha Micelli, the tomboy daughter of Tony Danza on "Who's the Boss?" (1984-92), she had been acting since she was eight years old and went on tour as one of the orphans in the musical "Annie." 

After more theater and stage roles, and one small role in Marisa Silver's "Old Enough" (1984), she was hired and cast in "Who's the Boss". She worked in television movies including "The Canterville Ghost" (1986), "Crash Course" and "Dance Till Dawn" in 1988, and gained attention for her role as Arnold Schwarzenegger's daughter in the feature "Commando" (1985). She also released an exercise video for teens and three music albums in Japan.

After the cancellation of "Who's the Boss?," however, she had a hard time even getting job interviews. Short, but a bundle of energy and with a flair for changing her hairstyle, she played leads in various films such as "Where the Day Takes You" with Will Smith and Lara Flynn Boyle, "Little Sister" (1992), and "Double Dragon" (1993), where she played a teen vigilante leader with a wild haircut. 

Then, in 1993, she was chosen to play Amy Fisher, the sex crazed teen in the CBS television movie "Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story." Her role was the naughtiest, meanest Amy character in that year's total of three Fisher related projects. Playing a very sexual role on network television crushed the Sam Micelli good girl image. She followed by posing nude for a magazine spread, partly covered with mud.

The job offers started to flood in after her naked photo spread, although the quality of the projects were poor. She took roles in several television movies such as the lead role in "The Surrogate" (1995), as part of Ma Barker's gang in "Public Enemy No. 1" (1996),  "To Brave Alaska" (1996) and "Deadly Sins" (1996). In 1997, she joined the cast of the popular primetime soap "Melrose Place" as Jennifer, the scheming sister of Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro).

The actress appeared in three 1995 video releases, "Embrace of the Vampire," "Glory Daze" and "Poison Ivy II: Lily". She finally earned decent attention for her role as yet another sexy teen, the best friend of Reese Witherspoon, in the thriller "Fear" (1996) with Mark Wahlberg. She landed the title role opposite Robert Downey Jr. in "Hugo Pool" (1997), a comedy about a pool service worker who goes on a road trip that leads to a series of encounters with a film director (Robert Downey Jr.), a local politician who moonlights as a gangster (Richard Lewis) and a young man suffering with Lou Gehrig's disease (Patrick Dempsey).

Her adult success was firmly cemented when she signed on to another Aaron Spelling venture, the WB series "Charmed" (1998- ), playing Phoebe Halliwell, one of three twenty something sisters who discover their family tradition of witchcraft. While relationships were pleasant on-screen, things were not so friendly behind the scenes, and original star and notorious Hollywood bad girl Shannen Doherty soon left the show after reports of fighting with Milano and the production team. Often taking roles in small budget independent features, her next big on-screen appearance was as a hitchhiker in the David Spade comedy "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" (2003). 

She then appeared in the dramatic "The Blue Hour" (2007) about several strangers in Los Angeles who weave their stories of loss and hope, not knowing that their lives have brushed up against each others in small but sometimes profound ways. Next was the crime thriller "Pathology" (2008) about a group of medical students who devise a deadly game - to see which one of them can commit the perfect murder. The actress also had a recurring role on the smash hit television comedy "My Name Is Earl". To wrap up the year she appeared in the crime drama "Wisegal" (2008), a drama centered around Patty Montanari, the widowed mother of two who went to work for her lover Frank Russo, a captain in a Brooklyn crime family. 

She also had a major impact on the way celebrities protect their images on the emerging Internet medium. After her mother Lin found still captures of movie scenes in which Milano appeared naked, as well as many fake pictures, the actress and her family became vocal advocates against celebrity copyright infringement, using the proceeds from her legal triumphs to launch a family friendly web entertainment search engine, safesearching.com.