Taylor Momsen’s star is on the rise. Although she’s only a high school freshman, the 14-year-old is already a veteran performer. Best known to teen-soap fans as Jenny Humphrey, the social-climbing little sister on the CW’s runaway hit Gossip Girl, Momsen took her first job at the age of three and has worked steadily since. “Acting is all about a kind of self-expression,” she says. “When you take on different roles and become different characters, you have to draw upon your own experiences.”

Momsen also appears in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park as a self-obsessed cheerleader whose skater boyfriend accidentally murders a security guard. It was a long way from the passions of Manhattan’s Upper East Side wealthy teens, but she enjoyed developing the role. “On Gossip Girl, Jenny is just coming into her own. She’s the sweet, nice, shy kid. In Paranoid Park, Jennifer is the popular girl… It was such a change for me.” Asked whether her own high-school experience resembles the cutthroat atmosphere of her TV show, she laughs and says, “It’s the usual teenage dramatics, but it’s not that extreme. I mean, no one’s flying to France to run away.”

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