December 18: Actress and musician Ashley Benson - Pretty Little Liars - is 24-years-old today.

Ashley Victoria Benson was born and raised in Anaheim Hills, California. She started dancing competitively in ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and lyrical at age 4. She also enjoys singing, and has appeared in several choir groups and musicals.

At age 4, she was asked to audition to sing solo at four Christmas services for her 2,500 member church. At 5 years old, she modeled in dance catalogs, and at age 8 was pursued by The Ford Modeling Agency and worked steadily in print.

She made a very small appearance in Zoey 101 in the episode "Quinn's Date." She has also performed in NLT's music video "That Girl," and Hot Chelle Rae's music video "Honestly."

In 1999, Benson started pursuing an acting career. She began working and appearing on a number of commercials, but quickly made the transition into film and television. In 2004, Benson signed a three-year contract with the daytime television series, Days of our Lives, and on November 12, 2004 began her role as Abigail "Abby" Deveraux, the oldest child of supercouple Jack Deveraux and Jennifer Horton, until May 2, 2007. She also played a witch disguised as a cheerleader in a 2008 episode of the CW series Supernatural.

In films, she was one of the "Six Chicks" in 13 Going on 30, and appeared as Carson in an installment of the Bring It On series, Bring It On: In It to Win It. To land the lead role, she had to terminate her contract with Days of our Lives. For Bring It On: In It to Win It, she had to attend cheerleading practice, which was "hard for [her], because [she is] afraid of heights."

In 2008, she appeared in the Lifetime TV movie Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal, where she played head cheerleader Brooke of the Fab Five, which is based on a true story which took place at McKinney North High School in Texas.

She also landed a supporting role in Bart Got a Room, which aired mainly on film festivals in 2008 before having a limited release in 2009, because it allowed her to work with William H. Macy.

Benson starred in ABC's 2009 television series Eastwick. The show was based on John Updike's novel, The Witches of Eastwick, and the 1987 film adaption of the same name. Her character, Mia, was the teen-aged daughter of Roxie Torcoletti (Rebecca Romijn). The series was short-lived and only lasted 13 episodes before ABC cancelled the series due to low ratings.

In December 2009, Benson was cast as Hanna Marin in the ABC Family Teen Drama television series Pretty Little Liars based on the book series by Sara Shepard. The role is considered Ashley's breakout role. The series premiered to a successful 2.47 million viewers with Benson's performance being praised by critics. Besides Ashley, the series also stars Troian Bellisario, Shay Mitchell, Lucy Hale and Sasha Pieterse.

In 2010 Benson starred in the Made-for-Television film Christmas Cupid y which also aired on ABC Family.

Her next project is Spring Breakers, a comedy drama, alongside, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and James Franco, which is due out in theaters sometime in 2013.

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For more about Ashley, visit her Website at -

http://ashleybenson.net/

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