Julie Bowen

Posted January 4, 200718 yr

Julie Bowen Luetkemeyer was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 3rd of March 1970. The second of three daughters, she initially had dreams of becoming an artist, while older sister Molly was set on acting. Excelling in high school, Bowen fed her love of art by majoring in Italian Renaissance studies at Brown University. Although she was head of her drama club in high school, art was where her interests lay.

Bowen spent her junior year in Florence, Italy, learning Italian and experiencing life abroad. Upon returning to the United States, she tried out acting in the independent film Five Spot Jewel before graduating. The role was significant enough to land an agent, and with the prospect of acting as a full-fledged career, Bowen moved to New York.

In the Big Apple, she spent three years studying and attending Shakespeare festivals. She was able to land spots in several commercials and landed her first solid role on Loving, a daytime drama. Slowly, Bowen won bigger parts and was featured in a student film directed by Edward Burns (who went on to make movies like The Brothers McMullen and Sidewalks of New York).

Having done all she could to prepare for her acting breakthrough, Bowen moved to Los Angeles in 1994. It took only weeks for her to get the lead role in the made-for-TV movie, Runaway Daughters. Bowen followed this up with a role in the short-lived adventure series Extreme and gained more recognition as Adam Sandler's love interest in the hilarious Happy Gilmore.

Bowen stuck with making movies in 1996, with a significant role in Multiplicity, and an appearance in 1997's An American Werewolf in Paris.

As an up-and-coming star, Bowen seemed to have everything going her way as the '90s drew to a close. In 1998, she was cast as one of the lead characters on Three, a promising new spy series on The WB. Unfortunately, because of the popularity of other shows on the network like Dawson's Creek, Three was soon dropped. (But speaking of Dawson's Creek, Bowen did have a guest role on the show in 2000.)

Were it not for a nine-episode guest spot on ER, things would have looked downright gloomy for Bowen during this period. Luckily, the medical drama reminded fans that she was a supreme talent deserving of much attention. After a lead role in the futuristic UPN movie The Last Man On Planet Earth, Bowen was finally rewarded for her decade-long career of relatively small-time acting.

Bowen landed the part of Carol Vessey on Ed, an NBC comedy/drama with a lot of potential. The show debuted in 2000, and immediately became critics' favorite -- to date, it continues to have a large following, thanks in large part to Bowen.

Though she had finally found a secure job, Bowen didn't slow down. She churned out an impressive four films in 2001: Joe Somebody, Amy's Orgasm, Venus and Mars, and You're Killing Me.... Only the first one, with Tim Allen, went mainstream, but Bowen was still enjoying time in the spotlight as one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People of 2002. She also became a spokeswoman for Neutrogena and continues to delight audiences on Ed, with the promise of more movies to come in the future.

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