This beautiful child actress made her film debut when chosen by director Howard Zieff over thousands of competitors, for the plum role of the hypochondriac tomboy opposite Macaulay Culkin in "My Girl" (1991). The Chicago native was hardly new to show business, however. Chlumsky (pronounced "CLUM-ski") has worked steadily as a photographic model since appearing in her first ad at age ten months. She has acted in TV commercials and industrial films and appeared in two productions of "Annie". Chlumsky has also appeared onstage in "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The Music Man".

Chlumsky's debut as Vada Sultenfuss in "My Girl" led to its 1994 sequel, "My Girl 2", in which her character travels to Los Angeles to "discover" her dead mother. Mothers again figured in "Trading Mom" (1994), a fantasy co-starring Sissy Spacek as a Mom replaced by her evil clone. In 1995, Chlumsky shared the screen with the equally precocious Christina Ricci in "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain". She played a neglected tomboy who befriends--and gets into adventurous scrapes with--spoiled city girl Ricci.

• Born:
  December 3, 1980 in Chicago, Illinois
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Model, Food critic

Family

• Father: Frank Chlumsky. divorced from Chlumsky's mother
• Mother: Nancy Chlumsky. divorced from Chlumsky's father; born c. 1952

Milestones

• 1988 Appeared with Bob Greene in a Japanese TV commercial for a book
• 1991 Made feature film debut as star of "My Girl"
• 1994 Starred in the feature "My Girl 2"
• Appeared in first magazine ad at age of 10 months
• Has worked as a photographic model, as an actress in local and national TV comercials and industrial films and as one of the singing/dancing orphans in the musical "Annie" in Chicago

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