14 Things You Didn't Know About "Pretty Little Liars" Star Lucy Hale
1. Her birth name is Karen Lucille Hale. Lucille is after her great-grandmother. Earlier in her career, she went by Lucy Kate Hale.
2. She's a Gemini. Her birthday is June 14, 1989.
3. She was homeschooled as a child. In order to make more time for her acting and singing lessons.
4. Lucy's big break came in 2003. She was one of five winners of the singing competition reality show American Juniors, a spinoff of American Idol.
5. She moved to LA in 2006 to pursue a music career, but wound up acting instead. She guest-starred on Drake & Josh, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Wizards of Waverly Place, The O.C., and How I Met Your Mother.
6. She didn't even have to audition for Pretty Little Liars. By the time she was cast in December 2009, she was famous enough that she simply got the part - no formal audition needed, Cosmopolitan.com reports.
7. She initially wanted to play Hanna, not Aria. "That type of character was one I hadn't tackled before," she told Cosmopolitan.com. Showrunner I. Marlene King added, "We started [pairing] her with some different guys for chemistry reads and that's when she realized she really wanted to be Aria."
8. Lucy came up with the iconic "shhh" gesture in the intro. It wasn't planned. "[My] shushing the camera was actually a spur-of-the-moment idea that happened to make the final cut," she told Cosmopolitan.com. Of course, that gesture became iconic, and eventually, the cast got matching initial tattoos on their "shhh" fingers.
9. Her on-set nickname is Goose. Given to her by the other Liars, according to Bustle.
10. She has another TV series lined up for after Pretty Little Liars ends. This fall, Lucy will star in the new CW series Life Sentence as Stella, a woman who learns she doesn't actually have terminal cancer - but now has to live with all the choices she made when she thought she was dying. Stella and Aria couldn't be more different, but Lucy told Bustle that choice was intentional. "I think that I strategically wanted to do that right after PLL because I don't want people to be like, 'oh she's a one-trick pony,'" she said.
11. She has strong feelings about teeth. After suffering through braces for three years and Invisalign for a year ("because my dog chewed up my retainers," she explained to Us Weekly), she knows a good smile when she sees one. "I'm obsessed with teeth," she told the magazine. "I have teeth crushes on people."
12. She believes in the supernatural. "I believe in ghosts and I'm really intrigued by paranormal activity," she told Us Weekly.
13. Her debut album Road Between came out in 2014. It's a country album featuring a single called "Lie a Little Better," which she says is written about a crush she had on a castmate (but "not who you think").
14. Lucy has been dating musician Anthony Kalabretta since 2015. Falling for a musician seems right up Aria's alley, doesn't it?
Hannah Orenstein is the assistant features editor at Seventeen.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram!
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