Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an American actress and singer who has built a successful career in film and television. She was born on November 28, 1984, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and was raised mainly in Sandy, Utah. She is the youngest of five children and developed an interest in performing at an early age. As a child, she studied ballet and attended a summer training programme at the Joffrey Ballet School in Chicago. She also sang in the International Children’s Choir and appeared in local theatre productions. Although she originally hoped to become a ballerina, she eventually turned to acting after realising that her height would make a professional ballet career difficult. She began appearing on television as a teenager and gained her first major role as Jessica Bennett on the soap opera Passions from 1999 to 2000.