Mary Elizabeth Winstead was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She grew up in Salt Lake City and North Carolina many years of her life and actually had an ambition to become a ballerina, for which she attended Joffrey Ballet School in Chicago at the age of 11 and started taking acting lessons too. Her theatre credits include "The Nutcracker" and the Broadway production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with Donny Osmond. Her most notable roles are in movies such as Sky High (2005), Final Destination 3 (2006), The Ring Two (2005) and the horror remake, Black Christmas (2006). On the small screen, Winstead is probably best known for her role as "Jessica Bennett" in the popular NBC daytime drama "Passions" (1999), for which she received nominations from the Hollywood Reporters’ Young Star Awards and the Young Artist Awards for her performance on the show. Other television credits include the CBS series "Wolf Lake" (2001), the MTV original telepic Monster Island (2004) (TV) and guest roles in popular shows such as "Touched by an Angel" (1994), "Tru Calling" (2003) and "Promised Land" (1996). She ia a distant cousin of Ava Gardner.