Alison Marion Lohman (born September 18, 1979) is an American actress who was born in Palm Springs, California to Gary Lohman, an architect, and Diane Dunham, a bakery owner. Although her family has no show business connections, she has been acting since age 9. Lohman, although infamous for being shy, is also a professional singer, and has performed as a featured solo vocalist for Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and the Desert Symphony. When she was a senior at Palm Desert High School, she won an award from the National Foundation of the Advancement of the Arts. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. A fresh-faced ingenue who has excelled at playing attractive, if troubled, characters, Alison Lohman began her acting career like many aspiring performers, by putting on plays in her family's backyard in her hometown of Palm Springs, California. At age nine, she landed her first professional role as one of the Von Trapp children in a local production of "The Sound of Music" and within two years had graduated to playing the carrot-topped title role in the musical "Annie". While still in high school, Lohman also enjoyed a career as a solo vocalist, appearing with such heavy-hitters as Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope. After graduation, she was offered a scholarship to NYU, but opted to head to L.A. to pursue her career. Lohman made her film acting debut in a small role in the fantasy thriller "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999) and had roles in indies like "White Boy" and "The Auteur Theory" (both 1999) as well as the festival-screened "Delivering Milo" and "Alex in Wonder" (both 2001). On the small screen, she enjoyed a recurring role on The WB's short-lived family drama "Safe Harbor" (1999-2000) and made her series debut as the enticing girl-next-door in the equally short-lived "Tucker" (NBC, 2000). Lohman returned to series work as the inquisitive teenage daughter in a wealthy Southern California family that has numerous secrets on the primetime serial "Pasadena" (Fox, 2001). The rising starlet also solidified her status when she won the plum part of Michelle Pfeiffer's daughter in the screen adaptation of the popular bestseller "White Oleander" (2002), where despite the film's middling reviews she caught the attention of critics, audiences and Hollywood execs. She was well cast against Nicolas Cage in 2003's "Matchstick Men," playing Angela, the unknown 14-year-old daughter of Cage's quirk-addled con-man and making a convincing teen despite being a decade older than her character. That same year, Lohman was used to good effect opposite Ewan McGregor in the fanciful and mythic flashback sequences of director Tim Burton's "Big Fish," playing the younger version of Jessica Lange's character.
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