At the tender age of four, Arielle Perkins' childhood ambitions weren't so much about what she was going to be as who she was going to be: her aunt, Christina Silverstone, an A-list film star who had no children of her own and considered Arielle probably the closest she was ever going to get. For Arielle, this meant the opportunity to get fancied up and attend the premiere for every notable G-rated movie with a premiere in the Los Angeles area; for Christina, it meant being idolized by the young girl, who had an endless amount of questions about how movies were made and the energy to ask every single one of them. Over time, what started as mere curiosity turned into a desire to be in movies herself - a desire which her parents quickly tried to put an end to. They were spending good money putting her through one of the best private schools on the west coast, and while goofing around with Aunt Christina was fine for weekends and vacations, making the most of her education and maximizing her options for her future was important, even if it was a little early to be plotting her path to Stanford. Arielle persisted, they resisted, and after having to hear it from both sides for a little too long, Christina presented a compromise: what if they let her try it, just once? She'd pull some strings, find something small that wouldn't take much of anyone's time. If Arielle hated it, that'd be the end of it, back to attending premieres and smiling pretty on the red carpet.

Surprise of the century: nepotism works. Second surprise of the century: she didn't hate it, just as her aunt (and, more subconsciously, her parents), knew she wouldn't. She wanted more. The chaos of a movie set was much more exciting than being at school, and it didn't hurt that everyone else knew that you don't mess around with Christine Silverstone's favorite niece. When one was done she begged for more, begged her parents to let her quit school or get a tutor like other kids her age. Naturally, they resisted again, insisting that their daughter would not become one of those teenagers who never finished high school because her parents rolled over and let her do whatever she pleased. And when she temporarily dropped off of the honor roll while filming The Patriot in 1999, they put their collective foot down: that was enough. If Arielle wanted to be an actress that badly, she would still want to after she graduated high school. And went to college. And graduated from there, too, preferably magna cum laude.

Needless to say, Arielle wasn't exactly on board with this decision, but short of filing for emancipation - which her aunt assured her that no, was not a good idea - there wasn't much she could really do about it other than suck it up and wait. Train. Keep training. Never stop training. Come back to Hollywood even better than she'd left it. So, although with no lack of eyerolling and snappy comments muttered under her breath, Arielle trudged through four years of high school, with only her school musicals and the occasional local theatre production to keep her from losing her mind entirely. She did get back on the honor roll, however, and even began compiling the necessary credits to graduate early so she could spend her spring semester on the hunt for work. When her college acceptance letters began rolling in, her parents held their breath in wait for an envelope to arrive from Stanford. Finally it did, and with it came good news: Arielle had been accepted. She was on the track they had always dreamed of for her.

"Yeah, fuck that," Arielle promptly said.

Though her parents were understandably less than thrilled with her decision to defer her admission, they took a step back; Arielle was almost a legal adult, after all, and capable of making her own decisions, and pushing her once again to do as they said would undoubtedly push her away for good. Plenty of students took a gap year after high school, they reasoned, and after a year of trying to make it on her own she'd surely be tired enough to want to give it a rest. This put Christina in the awkward position of being stuck between her sister's unspoken demand that she not do anything to help nudge along Arielle's career, and Arielle's unspoken expectation that she would do exactly that. The only way to remain even remotely impartial was to do nothing; she'd continue to talk her niece up when appropriate and let her know when suitable opportunities came down the pipe, but blatantly pulling any strings on her end was out of the question, at least for the moment. That meant Arielle would have to hit the streets on her own, like anyone else - which was fine with her, she insisted; she'd take whatever she could get, just to prove she had it in her.

It was, literally, taking everything she could get, as she accepted offers in everything from TV guest starring roles to bit parts in action flicks to terrible low budget horror movies to the occasional vaguely humiliating modeling gig at a mall car show. But she worked steadily enough and lined up enough work to insist that she simply couldn't return to school and balance all of her obligations, forcing her parents to begrudgingly accept that a college degree likely wasn't going to be in the cards any time soon. In 2008, Arielle landed a role on the much-hyped 90210 reboot on the CW network, which was already riding high on their recent success with Gossip Girl. The show was applauded as enjoyable teen soap trash, if not exactly the cultural phenomenon its east coast sister was, and Arielle was considered a cast standout as fan-favorite mean girl Naomi Clark. The attention the cast received for their time spent off camera took a slightly less positive tone, with accusations flying regarding everything from the girls' excessively skinny frames to their messy party habits; however, like most B-list drama, it all blew over quickly enough. The B-list had never been Arielle's goal, though, and after a few seasons, things began to feel stale. The small screen was so... well, small. And small was not what she was looking for.

Arielle's casting in the star-studded The Town didn't come without its fair share of rumors about what kind of nepotistic messery must have occurred for her to land the role over any other arguably more qualified starlet, but she took it in stride, leaving the hard work of spinning her into a viable movie headliner to her publicity team. She had more important things to worry about now, like hitting the hottest parties and working her newfound connections. When she followed it up the next year as the lead in thriller drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, even her usual critics were left confused. Might she actually be a decent actress after all? Maybe it was a fluke? Deserving or not, more doors were opening for her, and while being trapped in her CW contract meant there was only so much she could do with her time outside it, when 90210 announced its last season, she made it clear with her agency: she had shown the world (or at least followers of the sundance circuit) what she could do, and she was ready to be rewarded for it. Open season was coming, and she wanted to be everywhere.

Wheels spinning, Arielle hit the audition trail hard, looking for the perfect role to replicate the success Martha Marcy May Marlene had brought her, but this time on an event larger scale. As project after project was relentlessly hyped only to fail to live up to expectations, she grew frustrated. What the hell did she have to do to succeed? Meanwhile, an undercurrent of rumors rippled through the tabloids that the fame she had achieved was beginning to get to her head - she treated her assistants terribly, she pitched fits behind the scenes on the job, she was both verbally and physically violent toward her boyfriends and had a fuse that burnt out at the drop of a hat - though without ever any substantial evidence to back up the claims, as hearing something from a friend of a friend of a neighbor was hardly credible enough proof to make anything stick. Finally, her agent came to her with a new approach: what about a franchise? Practically everyone worth anything was either already in one or in talks to join one these days; there wasn't a star to be found who would claim not to be game for spandex in their future. Arielle initially resisted. She had jumped at everything from Twilight to X-Men to (more than slightly misguidedly) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo without success. Franchises consistently eluded her. Still, there was something appealing about the nearly guaranteed enthusiasm of a comic book fanbase, and privately, the thought of getting to suit up and fight some bad guys (or some good guys, she could be impartial) left her more than a little geeked. But how did you break in to the market that everyone was gunning for?

The short answer? You show them that you want it more than anyone else. And Arielle? Well, she was willing to do just about whatever it took.