Elizabeth Gillies

Background

Elizabeth Egan Gillies was born in Haworth, New Jersey, on July 26, 1993, to Dave and Lorrie Gillies and has a younger brother. Gillies has stated that she has Irish and Italian ancestry.

Her acting career began at age 12 when she began attending casting calls. She quickly began appearing in commercials for companies such as Virgin Mobile. She dropped out of high school in her freshman year to pursue acting and participated in an online high school program. Her first television role was as a recurring character on “The Black Donnellys” (2007). At first, she stated that she was not allowed to watch the full show because her parents felt it was inappropriate for her at the time. However, she appeared in three episodes.

In 2008, she played small roles in “The Clique” and “Harold and Locker 514.” That year, she was also cast as Lucy in a Goodspeed production of Jason Robert Brown’s new musical “13,” opposite Ariana Grande. Later that year, the musical was moved to Broadway, making it the first Broadway production to have an all-teenage cast and band. Gillies remained with the production until its closure on January 4, 2009. Shen then received two big numbers, ‘Opportunity’ and ‘It Can’t Be True,’ along with minor appearances in other songs, such as the title song, ‘Hey Kendra,’ and much more. In 2010, Gillies was cast as the bad girl and occasional antagonist Jade West on the Nickelodeon television show “Victorious.” This marked her second time working alongside Grande. During “Victorious,” Gillies was featured on several songs from the “Victorious” and “Victorious 2.0” soundtracks, including ‘Give It Up’ (a duet with Grande) and ‘Take a Hint’ (a duet with Victoria Justice). She also wrote and recorded the song ‘You Don’t Know Me’ for an episode of the television show, which was later featured on “Victorious 3.0.”