Actress Carla Gugino was born on August 29, 1971 in Sarasota, Florida. She is of Irish descent and born of a broken home, as her parents separated when she was only two years old. Her mother moved to Paradise, California two years later where she raised her daughter. Gugino proved adaptable to changing conditions, however, and she maintained straight-A marks in school and graduated as the valedictorian of her public school class.

Gugino made her first tentative steps into the entertainment industry when, at age 15, she was spotted by a modeling agency. She moved to New York to pursue a burgeoning career in fashion and proved a hit despite the fact that she was a mere five foot four inches tall, generally considered too short to walk the catwalk. She found the experience too much, however, and moved back to California in the same year – though soon enough she was pressed to go into acting.

Gugino made her debut in the entertainment business playing smaller parts in a number of television shows, starting with Saved by the Bell in 1989. A year later she appeared on American Dreamer, and two years after that in Quantum Leap. Over the years she’s had smaller parts in a number of notable shows the likes of ALF, The Wonder Years and Who’s the Boss?, also appearing in a Bon Jovi music video for “Always” in 1994. She also played the character of Ashley Scahaeffer in the first season of Spin City, which promised to be a central role; however Gugino left after only a few episodes, bringing an abrupt end to her on-camera romance with Michael J. Fox and prompting a recurring gag of his character’s poor track record with women.

Gugino is also the star of two television series of her own, Karen Sisco and Threshold. Neither did spectacularly, however – Thresholdat the least was the victim of poor time slots and even poorer decisions in regards to moving it to garner a bigger audience – and both have been cancelled.

She’s more recently adopted a taste for film and makes most of her appearances in movies. Her first was among a slew of other young stars in the comedy troop Beverly Hills, a movie that received poor reviews but has since attained a cult following among fans.

Gugino has continued to appear in movies ever since, with spots in all three Spy Kids films, Son in Law, The One, Sin City, Night at the Museum, American Gangster and her latest movies, Women in Trouble, Watchmen and Race to Witch Mountain, all of which are set for release in 2009.

Gugino is unmarried but has a boyfriend in the form of director Sebastian Gutierrez, who she worked with on Karen Sisco. He is also responsible for writing Women in Trouble.